How playing as one civilization across all eras could be implemented

[Dys0nSphere]

Either through mods or a future update, there's a fair number of people who would like to play as one civilization throughout all three eras, for a variety of reasons. For me personally, I like the way the game plays, but being able to maintain a singular, consistent identity for my empire across all ages is something I loved in previous games and would like to experience in Civ VII too. Here's one way I believe it could be implemented:

At game setup, each player selects a civilization to be their permanent identity (for the purposes of theming, city naming, music, etc.). This choice is purely cosmetic. Players are still prompted to select antiquity, exploration, and modern civs at the beginning and throughout the game just as they normally would. But instead of replacing the identity of their civ, the empire simply gains the chosen civ's abilities, unique units/buildings. etc.​

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For example, I could select Spain as the civilization whose identity I want to keep. In the Antiquity Era I'd be Spain with Greek Influences. In the Exploration Era, Spain with Spanish Influences (the redundancy could be omitted if both civ identity and influence match). In the Modern Era, Spain with French Influences.​

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Having the ability to set a custom civilization name would be a good idea to include, as there is no civilization named "China" or "India" in the game, but could be achieved by picking Qing or Mayura respectively and changing the name manually.​

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Off the top of my head, there's one mechanic that would be disrupted by this proposed system, which is the choice to move your capital at the start of the era. This could be remedied by designating another city as the capital, but keeping the city names the same.​

While I have never tried modding before, I do have a background in programming and this could serve as a neat project to explore in the future- assuming a mod or update doesn't address it by then. In the meantime, what are some other approaches to allowing players to play as one civilization across all eras?