In real life, most cities aren't founded so much as they simply evolve from populous centers. In the beginning each player could have an area of influence, or, a particular zone where that player's migratorial tribes and farming communities reside. Improvements such as marketplaces and banks would be built automatically as needed and major projects (wonders) would be constructed directly on the map grid. The cities would essentially build themselves, or you could also force a city to pop up by building something big in a rural community such as a major university or military base. As for tile improvements, major projects like Railroads and canals would be built by contract. Other features, you can subsidize the growth and development of certain areas (after conquering Jerusalem, pay your own citizens to move there and solidify your claim)

Government would reflect the ammount of control you would have... There are three gaugeseach providing a value between 1 and 10. These represent extremes with the first between capitalist-communist, the second democracy-despotism and the third being church separation-fundamentalism. This reflects a myriad of possible combinations for a completely customized social, political, and economic system. Under a capitalist economy everything gets built and pays for itself but you reap no benefit and have no say in the matter (because the Factory is owned by a corporation) whereas under communism things get built only if you say so etc etc. This would differentiate between a despotic communism (cuba) and a more democratic (soviet) communism and also our own total capitalism vs a more european socialist approach with free healthcare.

The entire map is populated, has a number of persons per square mile, based on technology, terrain, climate, proximity to civilization, wealth, etc. Wherever your army goes is your territory and cities that pop up in your territory are yours. Each area of the map keeps track of cultural diversity in regards to emigration and indigenousness. These demographics play a major roll during civil wars times of racist turmoil.

These cities have an area of direct influence preportionate to size, infastructure and agrigulture unlike earlier Civ games where they all have a range of 2. This is to reflect the fact that modern coastal cities are much larger and more powerful than land-locked cities.

Each map area would have also an industrial value, with specific factories (or smithys)producing set numbers of military units per year, instead of taking 100 years to create a single warrior.

Production and movement will be set in realistic time and years will progress accordingly. Each player has the option to begin play in any timeframe (prehistory, ancient history, iron age, renniassance, industrial age, information age, space age, etc.) While you can play from prehistory all the way into the space age, it would be extremely difficult and take a LONG time.

Military units have the option of going on "Patrol" whereas they can ghost themselves from direct gameplay and automatically roam within a designated area having a % chance (based on number of units, size & terrain of area, speed of units, and nature of enemy) of picking up any enemy movement in that area and returning to active gameplay with the option to strike the enemy. Another feature of certain offensive units like Submarine wolf packs, Artillery and Air Superiority fighters is that when these units are on patrol, they can attack out-of-turn upon detecting an enemy, giving them a pre-emptive strike. This allows your fighters to cover your whole airspace protecting convoys and engineers and out-of-city sites from enemy bombers which normally get through on your opponent's turn before you can attack them on your turn. This will give actual value to Air Superiority which is not even remotely reflected in prior Civ games. This also saves time on behalf of the player instead of the tedious task of moving each individual unit every single turn so he can enjoy the rest of the game.

Besides, I think what's been suggested makes the game too real - I mean, if I want real real, I'll just go and live my life, not play a turn-based strategy game.