i think that your cities shouldn't produce armies and the like, or at least not as their primary production. rather, your armies should be based on such factors as the size of your civilization, how much wealth you devote towards your military, the state of technology, and whether or not your civilization is inclined towards war.
also, i don't think that your civilization should be slanted towards one advantage or another; for instance, if you start off as japan, you shouldn't be any more militaristic than, say, india. rather, the degree of your militarism or economic nature should be dictated by what wonders you build, how much of your wealth you devote towards your military, what technologies you investigate, and what form of government and society you choose.
as far as technologies are concerned, there should be a coterie of smaller technologies to investigate, that aren't necessarily all attainable during a game. for instance, tactics could have a variety of sub-technologies, as well as gunpowder. not only would it allow you to customize your civilization, but it would truly create differences in the civilizations. another example would be nuclear power; a civilization could master peaceful nuclear power, and replace fossil fuel burning plants with nuclear ones (think modern day france), while another could strive towards a massive nuclear arsenal (soviet union), though investigating and/or implementing both would likely be prohibitive in terms of time and cost.
a rundown of my version of civ 5 would be that you start the game as a settler, settle down, and begin investigating technologies that pertain to the climates that surround you. for instance, if you're in a landlocked region, you can't investigate seafaring, but you can investigate mining. if you choose to specialize in mining silver and gold over, say, iron, then your civilization could become wealthier, whereas if you chose iron instead, then your civilization's military would become equipped with better weapons. eventually, you could also master all of the mining technologies during the course of the game, as they would become cheaper to investigate.
as a landlocked civilization, i also couldn't even begin to think about building a water-based world wonder. however, the pyramids would probably be a great option.
so now some civilization decides to go to war with me. a different timescale applies towards the war. the game's timeline might be on a 100 year scale, but not the war. the peloponnesian war lasted about 25 years, so that's how long we're talking about a war lasting. in it, everything gets produced as normal, except for when war damage applies. for instance, if some foreign army sacks one of your cities, but then bails, its production is gonna be hurt, and not up to full capacity for quite some time. if you have a city that has a large population, and your troops are pulled heavily from that city, then they get returned once the battle is over, unless the troops are killed; in that case, the city's population and production are hurt for some time.
as far as the timeline is concerned, let people micromanage the game on a scale with a year or even a month as the single unit of time. however, if they choose to do so, then in the beginning of the game, they'll be waiting for a while, because battles may happen on the shorter time scale, but everything else won't. it'll still take a long time to produce, say, pyramids. perhaps cities wouldn't have just one granary, but multiple granaries though having only one or two granaries would control a city's population. and of course a larger city would produce far more stuff, perhaps with simultaneous production queues, though it'd be far more inclined to rebellion and other nasty effects early in the game.
around, say, 0 AD, it should be pretty obvious what type of civilization you're playing. if you've chosen to develop iron mining, smelting, phalanx tactics, and maybe a warrior ethical code, then it should be difficult, if not impossible, to be anything but a warring civilization. if, however, you've chosen to not specialize in anything, then you should be able to subsist as a country like, say, switzerland, but you should also probably be the same size as switzerland as well. the purpose of civilization is to win by growing large and dominating the world, however you choose to do it. perhaps there should be a premium for military domination in the beginning of the game, but not in the end. however, i digress. you should be pushed in the direction of specialization, though not necessarily forced to do so. in fact you should be able to create whatever kind of civilization you want, and the results of your choices shouldn't necessarily be pre-determined. for instance, i'd be very happy if the developers actually didn't know what combination of technology, civics, and religion would fare best.
finally, i'd like to see the game manage itself. if you just sit back and let the game play for you, then it should be like flying a plane; it'll fly itself, though if you're flying towards a mountain, the plane will fly right into it. in other words, you really do need to manage your civilization to some extent, though micromanagement shouldn't necessarily be encouraged (though allowed).
i don't think any of this is impossible or even necessarily out of the question to code (depending on how much coding has already been done), and it would open the game up in many different ways. like i said, i really want a more realistic army production, and for the path of my civilization to NOT be predetermined. let me customize my civ as i see fit, and investigate all sorts of technologies, perhaps even at the same time.
Or perhaps even when you have GOOD relations with him no headdress, when you have mediocre to bad relations and he starts demanding et al, he puts on the headdress and is an ass hehehe.
