Ah forgot to mention that, Political borders would be A: Chosen by the player claiming uncontrolled land within his cultural border. of course there would need to be a direct connection without any other civs in the way to claim uncontrolled territory. Now your political borders early on would be completely dependent upon cultural expansion. If you poured everything into culture you could potential develop a fairly large actual border early on, however that would be very difficult. Now later on you would be able to claim other civs territory but with the risk of war, it would depend on how feared you are by those civs that you are claiming. With that it would need to be impossible to claim territory that was actually used by an enemy civs city. Now du ring war you would claim territory by having a claim button for offensive units. Also the claimed territory would have to be within your cultural border otherwise you would only claim that territory directly used by conquered cities. Lastly it would need to be a direct connection with your territory, you can't just have random sections of land in enemy territory.
That sounds reasonable, although I still think it would be problematic sorting out and fixing all of your political borders, without too much tedious micromanagement, having to be readjusted every few turns, or something.
As for border disputes, this fits perfectly into the concept of border wars, often proposed.
I found
this thread, and although I haven't fully read it yet, it seems highly applicable.
I think however there will need to be some sort of cost for claiming land so the ai doesn't go crazy until it hits another civ. Perhaps a gold cost for claiming land until it is utilized, would need to create improvements for outside your city radius. Perhaps building a town improvement that would just enhance culture, not to mention regular improvements to claim resources.
Or perhaps replace city maintenance with and maintenance, paying for every controlled tile, instead of every controlled city. This would seem to be the best way of solving the problem, and is probably a better way of apportioning maintenance costs anyway.
Now for Colonies their political border would count as part of yours, so you could create forts, airbases, ports, and enter\exit it without any worry. Vassal states would be their own but obviously you would have open borders with a vassal.
I'm not fully aware as to how colonies work (Mac = no BtS), but I think they should also have separate political borders, and act like a vassal in every way, although with greater economic advantages, and friendlier relations.
Slightly OT, but I think there should be some sort of mandatory military occupation of vassals, say, one unit per vassal city. If you don't, then separatist movements may start, or something.
And, to stray even further on the theme of separatism, I think there should be separatist colonies and groups of cities, that fight civil wars, potentially, to earn their freedom. This could be determined by a mix of military power in the separatist cities, happiness in those cities, and distance from the capital, or core of the empire. Unless, of course, this already happens.
As to political frontiers, they should be established either by the BFC of your cities, like in Civ2, or by your scout discovering new lands. As your scouts progress, the political frontier expands. That would be the political frontier that would be displayed in normal map, just as the culture one is in Civ4 and Civ3. When there is a contestation of political frontier, there is war.
A border war, but not a full scale war, unless the dispute is seemingly more important than about one tile.
Culture should also go with techs. In real life you do't suddenly get a blueprint for a factory and understand it to give someone else blue-prints for other stuff, they come in, live for a few years and direct yourguys to understand the stuff.
So, you could, for a fee, send a technological specialist unit, or something, to another Civilization, settle him, and allow him to show the ways of a certain technology, over a few turns.
Absorbed cultures can attempt to revolt. RAWR!
Finally, I still have my post of the Three Borders and how are they governed...
Military Borders: Fear
Cultural Borders: Lifestyle
Political Borders: Respect
How would military borders differ from political borders, and how would respect be determined? And is lifestyle just a mix of happiness and health?
