Whatever happened to...?

[The Bruce]

Some things I think were great ideas but were dropped in Civ3 and Civ4...

1. Airstrips. I don't want to have to build a new city just so my air units have a place to take off from (on a related note.... shouldn't it be impossible to build/station air units in a city without an airport?)
2. Colonies. What happened to them? Why does a resource need to be within my cultural borders.... sometimes it can be JUST outside them and I have to wait til the city expands before I can get it.
3. Sort of same subject - why can I only build improvements in my own land? Building a fortress on neutral territory or a watchtower (as in CTP) would be nice.
4. Fortresses exerting influence. Whenever a fortress was occupied, an enemy unit just brushing past would get hit by the units inside, at no cost to the defender.
5. Leaders and Armies. I didn't like the Leader idea in Civ3 (was too hard to get one without being a warmonger) but I DID like the idea of formation of armies. Just from the idea of being able to group your units. When I have a large empire I like to divide my forces into several batallions.... but this is a pain to organise.


I play using SevoMod which includes the mod to bring back field bombardment... or else that would have been in the list too.

If these points have been covered already I apologise - I'm new to these forums! (Long time Civ player, First Time poster I guess )