Here's one speculative scenario which, to me at least, is as likely if not moreso than whatever you're suggesting, Builer.
Shafer/Firaxis wanted to make city placement less challenging; they didn't like that players were enticed to calculate long-term tile yields, or that some players with more intelligence or greater experience were better at it than others, or something. I mean, when they're putting maintenance on roads to limit road-spam because they consider road-spam as "ugly," any explanation for a change is plausible.
In order to facilitate this, they reduce tile yields, and increased the number of tiles available to the city. This made relative total city yields more homogenous, which reduced the importances of local yields in relation to city placement. If not for select terrain restrictions on a handful of buildings, there would be theoritically next to no difference between end-game city outputs based on placement.
In the end, we're left with blander cities, not because it somehow facilitates 1UPT, but because it facilitates Shafer/Firaxis'
stated goal of "increasing accessiblity." I bold that because we have actual quotes stating that this was something they were trying to achieve; I've seen no quotes anywhere suggesting that Shafer/Firaxis even knew to balance any aspect of the game around 1UPT, only speculation.
Meanwhile, if their goal was to reduce unit spam, why do it by nerfing tile and tile improvement yields? That seems like a backwards way of going around it, when they could directly approach the problem through unit maintenance. Why introduce a readily accessible gold-purchase option? That seems completely counter-productive to the suggested goal.
I understand that some players, indeed some players whose opinions on Civ I generally believe implicitly, find a loosely logical connection between many of the changes present in CiV and 1UPT. They sound more like Michael Moore than the long-standing and well-respected community members I've known them to be. Personally, I prefer to consider the simplest solution.
Balance? I don't believe any serious attempt was made at playtesting or balancing the game
at all. The lack of experienced management is evident throughout the game, and in this era of gaming I don't doubt in the least that someone at 2K or Take2 told Shafer to release as soon as they saw a playable demo.
My proof that there was no balance, and certianly no balance around 1UPT; gold-rushing units completely undermines any argument that they tried to limit the number of units in order to facilitate 1UPT.
1UPT is the reason that "most" of the rest of the game, including building times and tile yields, is the house of cards that it is.
"'Most' of the rest of the game" is the way it is because of poor leadership. Blaming it on 1UPT is just looking for a scapegoat. We already have a scapegoat; he left the company after tanking its flagship product.
I'm very much amused that you can't figure out that if they had wanted, they COULD have adjusted build times to account the extra workable tiles and their production to come up with reasonable production times for units. Yet they didn't? Why? 1UPT. The map would be more of a traffic jam than it already is.
Or build times are adjusted to the availability of production modifiers based on era, and the ridiculous ezmode gold-purchase option available constantly and throughout the game.
If you'd care to give me something more substantial than empty gesturing, I'd be happy to read and discuss it. What I do see is speculation without even the courtesy of labeling it as such.
