What I propose is that there be a system that allows civialians to have free will. This will be integrated with a customizable government system rather than simply choosing from a list. There should be a list like Democracy, Republic, etc., but you should be able to create your own modified form, or completely new government. These can probably be done by a series of options that can be selected, or de-selected by the player. Once the laws are set this way, on to the civilians.

Civilians don't necessarily do what you tell them to do, unless you coerce them to by force. To get civilians to do what you want, you need to either appeal to their loyalty, emotions, rationale, or give incentives. All of these qualities depend on the type of education you give them. So, education ciriculum should be something you get to set down for the population too. Of course, changes take time, but it will help guide your nation. Setting national goals will help guide the nation as well. You should be able to turn off national goals to allow civilians to pursue their own interest.

Depending on how you have raised your people, taught them, brainwashed them, using national goals would effect their jobs, efficiency, and happiness.

Furthermore, civilians should be able to act on their own within your laws. They should be able migrate to different cities where they feel opportunity awaits or where they want to live. So... that means there will have to be several kinds of settlements. From cities, to farm communities, to uptopias to armed separatists !

I strongly feel that cities need to be separate from farm communities. Or cities need to grow out of farm communities or commercial communities.

Merchants should be able to control their own trade on shipping lines according to your laws and international trade aggreements.

It would be nice to see if all this could happen graphically. So you can see trucks moving on roads between cities, ships moving between nations, cargo planes moving tourists and goods for trade. Keep in mind, accidents do happen, so expect plane crashes and people to die, oil spills and environmental problems.

Government vs. Private employment

This would be important if you're facing a serious depression or recession. Thats assuming those economic situations will exist in Civ 3, but at any rate, you can use government employment to internalize research projects for the military and to build infrastructure.

Civilians should be able to form their own cooporations and organizations within your nation. The goals of each will depend on what problems exist inside your nation, and what kind of mentality the people have been raised with.

Research done by civilian orgnizations or coorporations should be chosen autmatically and readily avaliable to public. That way, depending on how motivated and how economically developed your nation is, the people can research multiple civilian technologies at once.

To make it clear, research should be split into classified government/military research, and civilian technology. Government research can be contracted to certain coorporations, but cooporations and organizations will pursue their own research if otherwise. Government research can be done by government branches and government employed scientists.

I suspect that although the game won't be released for a long time, it's probably too far in to make changes like this.