Suggestions:
Look into the "menoian" (something spelled like that) civilization, because scientists think that the ruins they found off the coast of greek lands was the lost city of atlantis. Look into a show called Lost Worlds, watch the first episode if you can find it, that was the one on atlantis. I would say atlantis would be a civ, philisophical and industrious id say.
Second suggestion, look into the fall from heaven mods and take the hero "upgrade" from there, basically a hero gets 1 xp each turn, not much higher up but early on its awesome. Possiblely make heroes as great person, similiar to great generals, allow them to add themselves to a city to train others, or allow them to walk around and fight things, get bonuses versus mythic creatures, 75% or 100%.
Third, you might want to add something akin to a tribal village, like ruins or "adventure" or something like that (call it an "Epic" maybe?). Place them around the map randomly, a small number of them, and make up a list of upgrades that you can randomly get from these adventures, and experience as one of the random things.
Just a couple of suggestions, im not sure exactly how much work that these would take you, im no modder, but there things that would make the game more interesting.
