Here is another idea: I find that in some games, I barely have the forces to capture any particular city. I know that I can't defend it and I'm going to lose it soon, so I end up razing the city instead. I then end up going around razing cities and annihilating populations this way. Historically, though, this does not generally occur; civilians tend to flee, becoming refuges. Or alternatively, the conqueror deports the conquered back to his cities. I wonder if you could implement this somehow? Perhaps when a city is razed, refuges appear, each one holding one population (there need not be as many refuges as the initial city population, as certainly some of the population dies in the conquest). Also, the deportation is either going to be costly, or deadly for some refuges, or both, so some kind of upkeep should be used. When adding a refuge to your city, it likely should increase unhealthiness and unhappiness beyond the normal population growth. Also, maybe something could be included with the U.N., since this practice was outlawed by the Fourth Geneva Convention. Another possibility would be with immigration policy, where countries with no borders or open borders would gain population from a neighbor's war. This could either increase or decrease happiness, depending on the relations between the nations. Similarly, countries with closed or secure borders could be happy (to not have the problem of refuges) or upset about not helping, depending again on relations between the nations. More simply, it could depend on whether the two nations have the same religion or not. Finally, another related concept is internal forced deportations. Maybe you could have a city lose a population to create a refuge, which can then increase the population of another of your cities. The Soviet Union did this. Obviously, it would seem easy to abuse and create an all-powerful capital, so some balancing mechanism, most likely unhappiness (who wants to be forced to live somewhere else?) for the city of departure and maybe also the city of arrival. In war time, it may make sense to abandon a weak city and have the residents (in addition to the soldiers stationed there) flee to another city before a foreign army strikes. The abandoned city would have enormous unhappiness, of course, but it is better than losing 20+ population. Also, in this case, I don't think the city the residents flee to should get increased unhappiness (above the norm), but I don't know how easy it would be to code the difference between fleeing certain death or capture and the arbitrary whims of the ruler. Maybe the ability to rearrange populations in this way should be civic dependent, since it is certainly not allowed in a democracy, but may be permissible under despotism/monarchy/fascism?