This issue was mentioned in numerous other thread, but I wanna bring it up in a different thread.

Here's my idea regarding claiming territories. For land that are not yet owned by us through building of cities, we can claim it by fortifying an unit on it.

In Civ IV, a new unit order should be created with the purpose of claim land. For example, when one of my unit travel onto a yet unclaimed region where I wish to build my future cities, I can claim it by giving out the "claim" order. Then the unit will be fortified there, and all the landtiles immediately adjecent to that landtile on which is fortified this unit will belong to me. As soon as I unfortify this unit, I have effectively surrendered the land claim.

that would too two bad things i can think of, One large military human players could take the advantage by claiming things. Small military players could still cut off AI players very easy.

This issue was mentioned in numerous other thread, but I wanna bring it up in a different thread.

your missing the point, to make it easier for all persons involved, it would be best to keep dicussion in on a topic to one thread to easily have all viewpoints in one place, and if everyone made a new thread everytime they had a 'devolpment,' 'improvement,' or 'possibility' the forum would be very clutered and would be hard to find new topics

I am not sure a specialized unit for the sole purpose of claiming should be used, but this general idea could have some merit if there is also a way to balance out the advantage that this confers upon militarily-aggressive players.

i know this is more realistic and was done in real life bt i dont see it as being a good thing for civ4.i mean would territories taken when cities are captured be affected in the same way or do u need to take every square?it would slow the game down too much anyway stealin lands.we should just stick to culture (or something similar) or maybe the construction outposts that turn some squares in the vacinty into ur empire.