My personal dislike is the land and city development aspect, although this has been with us from the original Civ.
I'd prefer some of the following:
* the area from which the city can draw resources (a concept to replace the city's 'radius'), be dependent on the available transport capacity and routes. E.g. squares next to the city can be worked at the start, then with The Wheel you can use squares within two tiles of the city, but only on which you've a road, etc... With Sailing, can work all sea-side squares within five tiles of the city on which you've built a harbour (new improvement type), and all nearby river-side squares (which highlights the importance of rivers for early civilizations).
* The city growth rate be dependent on happiness, infrastructure, availability of jobs or trade connections or something other than raw food supply. Availability of food could be a strong happiness modifier, I guess, thereby strictly limiting the ultimate size, particularly early on.
* The upkeep or maintenance cost should not be dependent on the number of cities, but on actual infrastructure (which would nominally be proportional to population in some way).
* Industries within a city should not operate in a mutually-exclusive way. I don't think that my dock should lie idle while a marketplace is built. I like the Colonization way of doing this, where it's your population (and where you tell them to work) which allows multiple industries to operate simultaneously.
Basically, I would like a system which feels more realistic. Early on, more small villages closer together. Later on, fewer, larger cities. You don't develop every village into a city like it is now. The really big cities can draw resources from quite some distance.
Perhaps that'd be too much an empire-building simulation game. If anyone has any suggestions for games that are like this...?
Too bad I don't have the skills to attempt such a modification for Civ.
Cheers,
A.