How about removing the consept of shields and use money to pay for buildings and units? Instead of shields the cities would produce money, and one would assign a certain amount of money to each city for production. Of course every city would have a limit to how much gold they could spend, as they only have so many laborers to work for the money. What do you think about that?

sounds like a great idea! :goodjob:
Sounds like galactic civs, ever played it?

I didn't like GalCiv, but this idea might be good. Not that I don't like the existing system, but this might give smaller civs a chance to fight the larger ones. There's been some complaint about this unbalance.

Couldnt u just go into the editor and make 1 shield = 1 gold?

PETEdaViking,
what he means is that instead of using shields to build improvements and units you use money by puying money on things being built like you would pay x amount of money for a unit to be built, and an improvement would cost more, a small wonder would cost even more, and a great wonder would cost the most. do you see?

but anyways good idea I like it.

So everything would have to be gold-rushed?

This seems to have almost an RTS-feel to it (particularly earlier ones like Command & Conquer), but it is an interesting possibility.