quote: Everyone knows that the threat of terrorism is very prevalent in a modern society.

The hype is very high on western country (i.e. European Community and U.S.A. / Canada), still terrorism kill less people than lot of disease or social plague as famine. You can agree or disagree with my opinion, I respect in advance your point, but back to CIV III model, I think that terrorism is (by itself) not well reproduced by units on field.

On this line I don't like to have "Barbarians spies", sorry Korn469.

I suggest to think of it more as a background event, with effect on your population happiness, city improvement destroyed, may be some population loss (still I can't imagine any terroristic attack killing as many people as CIV II show with 1 population point).

The terroristic events will happen as "news ticker", or SMAC "natural disaster":
A terroristic attack destroyed today the City bank of London. The govern suspect an influence of Arabian Republic and a diplomatic note is now sending to the Arabian Capital (less trade between the two civs, less reputation, more opportunity to start an army attack under senate "right wing" support)
or
Japanese citizen of Tokio become more unhappy because of feeling of low police attention on terroristic activity
(one more citizen unhappy)

You can cope with terrorism founding some Police department, or agency as CIA, NSA, MI5. On the other hand you can also finance terrorism, or found training camp for "liberation" army (see also "Unconventional warfare" thread on this forum).

Police points can be achieved by a special feature of a defensive unit (as in SMAC), by some City improvement, by some Technology discovered, by a Wonder (e.g. Echelon Surveillance ), by budget ala SimCity.

Terrorism points can be achieved by opposite, chose what name you like.

You can assign your terrorism (cover operation) point to some enemy target, as in central espionage missions (no spy unit), just more "dirty and wet (bloody)".

To counterface enemy terrorism you must assign your Police points (or Internal Intelligence Agency, if you prefer) to protect your country,
e.g. some percent to protect technology, some to protect buildings on cities, some to protect populations (they will be more happy if they feel themselves safe, then become unhappy if feel its too much a police control against privacy or other personal freedom).

The social choices (as S.E. in SMAC, if CIV III will adopt some kind of them), will add or subtract points to the total amount available. A democracy will be less happy to accept to finance terrorism, a police state will have more "police points" to protect itself.

Ok, just my rough idea, please dissect it until you find a useful part .

It has some stuff on terrorism too..