It would be cool that settlers don't put a city in your civ anymore. You could build them, plant them, but the cities resulting of it would not be within your political influence, even if it would be of your civ. It is the difference of political influence with the cultural influence: in History, civilizations expanded indepandantly of the political influence of one given country.

Then you would have to fight militaryly or diplomacicly, to make those cities enter in your political influence. The advantage of such a system would be that you could pop plenty of settlers (they would be cheap) and take the space around your capital, whereas you could maintain easily your new conquered cities with less effort, compared to more efforts if the cities are not of your civilization culture, that would bring civil wars and revolutions.

Plus, if you enter in a war with a city state/colony of your creation, it would not be an entire civ you enter in war with, so your frontiers would be more protected.

This system would represent the difficulty there is to unificate a whole civilization like in the time of Sumer and Ancient Egypt, with agricultural benefits according to the cities conquered (if they are on your river and/or on the upstream of it)

A "normal" settler could still be built, but it would be a lot more expansive, including the cost of buildings like courthouses or barracks that would pop in those cities as soon as their planting.

Very interesting idea...
A system like this would be fun for some players, but other players would much rather it as a selectable option.

Great thinking though:goodjob: !

That would be very cool

Nice. I could use a troop to come in and conquer them right after establishing them. I'd like that.

Nice. I could use a troop to come in and conquer them right after establishing them. I'd like that.

That may be againt the spirit of the thing, I don't know. More probably, you would need your troops to defend yourself, not attacking in a first time. And you would probably need to wait some time in order to be able to conquer them.

Sorry I know this is an old thread but I like the idea and wanted to add my comments.

Presumably you would start or very good terms with the new city state, perhaps they are a vassal. City states would not have leaders like fully blown Civ leaders, but they can fend for themselves, although they will be militarily weak, and probably need your protection, so you might have a unit stationed there from its founding. This wouldn't mean that you could just assume control, it needs to be much more complicated.

I do like this idea, but I am not sure if it is more fun and worthwhile.