Barbarians should remain nuisances/threats I think and should never become benefits to a civilization. Changing them to Fanatics in the middle ages, Luddites in the industrial era and Terrorists in the modern era work for me. They represent the world's populations who just refuse to accept civilization as a benefit to mankind.
Immigrants/Emigrants on the other hand are much different and I would also love to see them be incorporated in Civ 4. I had some ideas on their activity in another thread and would like to rehash those:
The basis for this idea stems from an arbitrary judgment of the 'living condition' in a given country. This is already tracked/trackable now and visible in the civ status screen where you can see your country's rating of population, land area, literacy, disease rate, military service, family size, etc. Other factors should be included in this.. national pride (largest city compared to other nations, is the civ growing or shrinking recently, compared to others), culture level, science level, war weariness, and government type (some gov's are more 'free' than others, which are more repressive). Atrocities might be another factor for the negative. Add all these together and call it the living condition.
Now citizens of country A, seeing better living in country B might leave their home city, automatically form a settler/refugee (controlled by the universal AI) and begin to physically travel to a better life. Country A might not be happy with that after all, there goes their best and brightest! They could choose to capture/enslave the discontents with military units and reeducate them back into society, but the citizen(s) might remain forever 'drones' as in SMAC. permanently content or unhappy but Never a happy citizen again. They could alternately destroy the settler, creating an 'atrocity' point among other countries. Or, they could just let the bastards go, hey love it or leave it! Perhaps every settler that leaves Country A would raise A's 'living condition' slightly to represent the notion that if people Are unhappy then at least they can head towards a better life since they are free to do so. Country B is going to have a blessing and a curse when those settlers reach her shores. (assume settler creates it's own sea transport/refugee boat if necessary) The settler will head towards the nearest city in Country B with excess food and automatically join the population. Country B has the same options A had, in reverse: Let the immigration happen, kill the illegal immigrant (atrocity point), or evict it from the land. (upon eviction, wanderer would look for the next best civ and travel there). If the migration is successful, the first effect is Country B's 'living condition' lowering slightly. Then for X turns the new immigrant will be a drain on the host city's resources and not an effective producer. The raising/lowering living conditions in Country A and B by migration are to help balance the flood of refugees so that they do not become a nightmare.
Now here's the kicker..
New Great Wonder, Statue of Liberty (ha, you saw this coming). Requirements: Democracy, at least 3 immigrants to your civilization from another civilization or civilizations have been assimilated successfully. Effects: automatic Instant assimilation of further immigrants. Culture + 3 per turn/ + 5 for each immigrant assimilated. *Increases immigration rate* Never expires.
New Great Wonder, Berlin Wall. Requirements: Fascism or Communism, at least 2 emigrants have left your country's borders. Effects: automatic prevention of the emigration process; citizens never leave your cities voluntarily. Culture - 1 per turn, turns one unhappy citizen in every city to content. Increase in worker productivity, and/or decrease in corruption under both Fascism and Communism, but increases war weariness under Democracy and Republic. Expires with construction of SDI or just the research of Integrated Defense.
Under the topic 'New Civ Traits' I mentioned a few new specialists that would be civ type specific. If a migration system like the one above were put into place, any civ could change one of it's citizens in a city to a specialist that the nationality of that citizen could have made in its own land. Example: if England is Expansionistic/Commercial, then an English expatriot in an American city could be changed from a resource gatherer to either an 'Adventurer/Archaelogist' specialist or a 'Banker' specialist and would give the benefits of those types to the American city. This would also work for captured workers or hired labor (workers traded between nations).
-Elgalad
