What about playing Strategic View? Does that help?
What about Quick Movement? Does that help?
In a slightly unrelated topic, I hope that the next patch makes river borders on tiles more visible on hex sides that also happen to be where cultural borders are.
Can't tell you how many times I accidentally spent all my movement because I couldn't see a river because a cultural border was covering it up.
Maybe I just don't know how, but I wish I could temporarily toggle off border overlays, if only to get a good idea of where the rivers actually are. I thought the problem was exclusive to playing in Strategic View, but I've had the same difficulties when playing in Normal View.
http://store.steampowered.com/news/?feed=steam_updates&appids=8930
- Reduced Happiness a bit from Mercantile City States. You no longer get +1 bonus happiness going from Friends to Allies (since you already get the luxuries then). And eliminated the +1 Happiness entering Industrial era.
Nope. In the example you cite, there is no incremental benefit in getting more than 1 of your mercantile friends to ally status. You might still want to get more than 1, in case of coups, but that would be a defensive measure.