Real ball shaped world...

As the computers have became more powerful, dont you think if there is time to make a civilization game with Earth looking the way one planet should be, like in UFO: enemy unknown?

Would it be possible, and more importantly would it add to gameplay?
Has anyone thought about this before, and what do you people think, would it be cool or not?

Space age with orbital cities and things would be nice to see in such game also.

Interesting idea, but I personally like it the way it is.

How would they do that? It's a cool idea, but I think that it'd look too strange. I agree with Gogf.

You'll never achieve full realism anyway, so regarding playability I don't see the point unless it actually makes the game better

Well, here's the way it is now.

X,Y wrapping turned off - world is a planar rectangle
X wrapping on, Y wrapping off - world is a cylinder standing on flat end
X wrapping off, Y wrapping on - world is a cylinder lying on side
X,Y wrapping turned on - world is a torus (shape that looks like a doughnut)

I imagine that the conceptual model of a sphere hasn't been implemented because it would be friggin' difficult to do. If you're at map location (x,0) and move straight up, you go to (mapWidth-x,0), but what about diagonal moves? Also, how do you display this spherical world in a way that doesn't confuse things?

Just my 0.02 Euro.

It would be fairly easy to do these days if you move away from the diamond tiles (and went to a 3d engine, which Civ4 will).

The big question is would it be any more fun?