Hephaistos has some great ideas here.
Dell, the examples i used in my post may use RPG terminology, but its just terminology, not a suggestion to make Civ into a RPG. I am trying to relate the concepts in my mind into an understable concept on this forum.
Some mechanics of the game will HAVE to change in order for it molded into an online persistant world.
I am open to the concept of reseting it every 3 months as Hephaistos suggested, and the idea of being 1 city in a civ and controlled the functions of that 1 city for the betterment of the Civ as a whole is pretty appealing too. Depending on how good you are with managing that city, you could open different avenues by which to play different playstyles. A builder would be able to make an econimically strong city that contributes money to other cities in the Civ that are better warmongers, or, towards researching that next tech the civ needs to get ahead in the game. A warmonger could even personally control the units his/her city has contributed to the civ... possibly having local militia controlled by the city-owner, and units required to be sent to the captial to be controlled by the federal armed forces. Maybe the leader of the civ as a whole (clan leader) would be voted on every 10 or 20 or more turns, and the winner of the election will handle foriegn policy, federal army, national research and trade and such. Wars would need a majority vote, all city-owning players would kinda be like senators and vote yes or no. If at war and you capture a city, the current civ leader can give control of that city to someone, or himself, or, the guy who was conquered also becomes part of the invaders team, but, in a vassal type situation, not a full fledged member or the conquering civ, or this might even depend on the governemnt type of the attacker and winner as well. the possibilities are rather abundant.
