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- Human player; most likely the strongest empire.
- About 2-3 really (lets hope) strong and potent AI-empires.
- Another 4-5 not quite as strong AI-empires.

- Another 23-25 totally passive 1-3 AI-city miniature "empires" dotted all over the place. These Lichtenstein-empires would be "sitting ducks" - too small and too far behind in each and every area to be anything else.

Sound like fun, doesnt it.

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So why not creating a new problem for the player: the peasants, the ruling elite and rivals for power within the state?
War with other nations could become less ferocious.

Part of the problem could be the over-importance of the military aspects in the game. You just control a city or your enemies do. In real life things are more complicated. The Assyrians conquered the Babylonians roughly every twenty years: they killed some leaders of the revolt, the Babylonians were forced to pay a large yearly tribute and undoubtedly suffered much. But the Assyrians didn't dare to burn down the city; I think with good reason, not because of tenderheartedness. So in the end Ninive and Assur, the Assyrian capitals were totally burned down by the Medes and would never recover; and this was all done in alliance with those effiminate Babylonians, who prospered for another five hundred years.

So a military victory isn't the end of a story and political control can be very tight, but was during most of history very superficial. An empire doesn't necessarily grow stronger as it expands, it could possibly mean the opposite: enfeeblement. After the defeat of Napoleon did the British truly rule the waves: their commercial network enclosed the whole globe, though it was an informal empire. During the nineteenth century the maps showed more and more pink and the empire grew at an enormous speed. But British power decreased. Even they couldn't take the whole cake; some parts were taken by other powers: the French, the Germans, the Americans, the Japanese, even the Dutch.

So I would suggest to introduce a sort of gradual increasing scale of political and/or religious/economic control. Each power has a centre where power, manpower and money, are "payed" to a government; but the control of outlying provinces actually costs money and "power points"(these could be represented by political agents/satraps). Compare the decline of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, the empire of the Spanish Habsburg in Italy and the Netherlands, and also the decline of the Roman Empire. In the end the centre couldn't or wouldn't bear the ever increasing costs of keeping down subjects in the periphery, who skilfully and systematically evaded the burden of empire.

In the boardgame Pax Brittannica (quite a good game, set in the nineteenth century representing the colonization of the world by the Europeans, the USA and Japan) there are four levels of political influence in a region: interest, influence, protectorate and possession. Only the last two options involve military occupation.

Using such a political model in Civilization would add realism without being overcomplicated. Unrest or feudal rebellion wouldn't necessarily cause the creation of barbarians or a new independent civilization. The level of political control could drop, possibly resulting in expulsion of the occupying military forces, loss of control over decisions like what improvements to build in a city (these could be made by a local lord functioning like the governor in SMAC) and reduction or even suspension of tax payment.
There should remain the possibility of a reversal of fortune without use of military force: loyalty to the political centre could grow again. This could be influenced by growing trade relations and mutual economic interdependence, conversion by your priests of the locals and actions of your diplomats.

One nice consequence of the system of Pax Brittannica is the possibility of two or three powers all having influence or interest in a certain region. This doesn't necessarily cause political tension. Only if one of the powers upgrades his power in the region- for instance making a protectorate out of a region where it had before only influence- trouble arises. A protectorate automatically entails military occupation, so the other great powers have to downgrade their influence in the region, because the rules forbid two powers certain combinations of control in a region. This is a possible and realistic casus belli: the other powers either have to backdown or declare war.

The greater political control of protectorate and possession (perhaps the names should be changed) can only be estalished as a result of certain specified advances. So the enormous expanded empires of antiquity are still a possibility but your actual influence over the periphery would be restricted. Now players would have the choice of either a vast sprawling empire or a close-knit well organized polis-like state (or anything between those extremes), but without the second choice meaning to be a second-class power.

Though the explanation of Kennedy's theory on the rise and fall of great powers by the Joker is a bit simplified, essentially he is quite right. Kennedy explains the rise of a great power as a result of economic expansion. The sphere of political influence of such a power will grow, which will often cause an empire to expand and dominate its neighbours. And to defend its interests the tendency will almost inevitably be to spend an ever increasing part of its resources on defence, just to feel sure. So instead of further developing the economy which was the source of its power, the military will devour the lion's part of the budget. (The former Soviet-Union spending about 60 % of its economy on the military is a case in point; its no wonder the empire disintegrated) Other powers who are investing in their economy will surpass the original Great Power. A concept constantly reiterated by Kennedy is that of "strategic overstretch". America should consider itself warned!

I would applaud a further reduction of the military factor. In the long term China is still a great power; the vast empire of Chenggis Chan was first partitioned among his sons: the successor states all were culturally reintegrated by the conquered civilizations within two centuries.

As the discerning reader -thank for his patience and interest- will have noticed, I am much in favour of a game with about 20 civilizations, major and minor; I also would recommend the concept of neutral cities/regions. Expansion by settlers (new colonies) should be the exception. Perhaps not on another continent without a strong indigenous civilization. But in the end colonization will often defeat its purpose; I consider the American civilization, though clearly an offshoot of Western Chistianity, to be almost a civilization in its own right.

I'm very enthousiastic about your sketch of a protectorate; its almost exactly the structure as I meant it. I think that the lowest forms of influence in a region wouldn't give you a lot of taxes, and probably no research at all. Its only the beginning of spreading your culture to a mostly less advanced part of the world, establishing trade relations, converting part of the population (let's hope the elite) to the dominant religion of your civilization, building an infrastructure etc.

The true beauty of such a system of centres of power and periphery is the immense diplomatic possibilities it would create. In the classical game the only way of creating a revolt is by sending a spy or diplomat and actually bribing a city to revolt. But if you pay those staggering costs you can be sure of its success. Neither is realistic nor thrilling. In reality money does hardly ever triggger a revolt: general discontent, famine and political/economic/religious/cultural alignments do!