Boy, I hope I'm not being too presumptuous in creating this topic.
So, there is no guarantee or even plans for an RFC for CiV [RFC-V?], but it's very hard not to play the new game without squinting hard and trying to glimpse an RFC inside it. Besides, it seems to me a lot more constructive to make positive suggestions for improvements (within something resembling an RFC universe) than just criticizing those aspects of CiV you don't like. So even if this thread doesn't lead anywhere, maybe it'll be psychologically healthier.
And if ideas for an RFC-V don't go anywhere, maybe it's worth throwing mod ideas out in general.
I'll open with three ideas, but I'll roll them out piecemeal instead of all at once in one big post or a series of double posts. These are fairly large proposals, because I think it best to start by pondering some of the core concepts in RFC to see how CiV could make a difference to them.
First idea:
Use CiV's "puppet city" mechanic as the basis for collapses in RFC.
Background, if you don't know it: In CiV you do not have to annex a city after you conquer it; you have at a minimum a choice between annexing it outright or turning it into a puppet city. IIRC after my few initial playthroughs, annexation gives you an unhappiness penalty (which requires a courthouse to eliminate) and you bear the full costs associated with having a new city, including expenses and greater culture and happiness totals to accumulate before getting a new Social Policy or Golden Age. If you puppetize it, you continue to draw money, culture, resources, and science from it, but you cannot allocate citizens, and you cannot choose or control what it builds. You have to defend it and improve it yourself, since it does not build units. On the other hand, it is not technically part of your civilization and so there are fewer penalties for taking control of it.
Now, such puppet states are already pretty close to being the independent cities that are created in RFC by a secession. Assuming things are sufficiently moddable, you would only have to make a few tweaks to turn them into near-functional equivalents to secessionist cities. I'd suggest modding them this way: They continue to contribute science and culture to your civilization, but you could not draw money or resources from them, and you could not enter the cities themselves with your unitsif you try you will be bombarded. (Could you enter their surrounding hexes? Maybe, maybe not; much depends on how moddable they are.) You could not allocate their citizens or choose their builds. They would not build units, and if you wanted to see their land improved, you'd have to do it yourself. They would not conduct diplomacy. Any civilization that could get to them could attack them without automatically causing a war with you. (That is, you'd have to be the one to declare war if they attacked one of these puppets.)
Why this implementation, instead of RFC4-style independent cities or city states? Well, for starters, because puppet states are a new mechanic that can be adapted to do the job, leaving genuinely independent cities or city-states available to use in modeling other behavior. I'd also do it this way because it would leave you able to draw culture and science from secessionist cities. Why do I recommend this?
It would be part of a more fine-grained model of historical behavior. Cities that are politically independent of each other can still be part of a common culture. Think of classical Greece: Athens, Sparta, Corinth, and all the rest were politically independent of each other. But they were still part of a common cultural sphere (which is why no one gets upset that in non-scenario Civ games the "Greek" civilization includes all those cities instead of giving each their own unique "civilization.") Modeling secessionist cities as puppet cities lets us capture that kind of distinction, between political unity and cultural unity, and in doing so lets us capture a distinction between cultural collapse and imperial fragmentation. The former is the kind of thing suffered by the western Roman Empire, where the culture itself almost seems to have evaporated and been replaced by a Christianized barbarian/classical mix. The latter is more like what happened to China during those inter-dynastic contending kingdom periods; the civilization is still there, it's just that the constitutional form of its governing entity has become temporarily deranged. It makes sense that the culture and science would continue and might even thrive. The player would enter a political dark age, but not necessarily a cultural one.
But what if we want RFCV to have cultural dark agesthings as bleak and exciting as those total collapses on RFC4, where culture and science dry up because all of our farflung cities have spun off on their own? That's fine, I think we can still have them, because puppet cities are a new mechanic, and presumably we can still use independent cities to model the more horrible kind of breakup. So, let's assume that there are still various categories that go into overall Stabilitythe foreign, the economic, the civics (now Social Policies), etc. Depending upon which indicators have gone pear-shaped you can get the milder political collapse or the starker total collapse. That's as much detail as I'm prepared to offer at the momentboth on how to realize a total collapse and what it would look likebecause for now I just want to note that it seems possible to have at least 2 different kinds of collapse.
But why have two different kinds of collapse? Why have the milder one alongside the starker one, I hear you ask. (I'm getting tired of asking your questions for you, but these questions are easy to anticipate and need answering anyway.) Well, first, it's more historically accurate, as I noted above. Second, it takes advantage of CiV's better implementation of culture. In past iterations of the game culture-generation relied on controlling cities. Now you don't have to control cities fully in order to get their culture, which can give players more freedom to maneuver and win: Why do you need to control your cities politically if you're striving for a cultural victory and you can have cultural control without political control? And I don't see anything historically objectionable in having a civilization win a cultural victory even if it is politically fragmented: look at the immense cultural impact of Europe, which (notwithstanding Civ's insistence that the Germans and the Dutch are as culturally distinct as the Chinese and the Zulu) is a common cultural space that hasn't been politically unified in millennia.
To summarize, there would be two ways you could collapse: a political fragmentation as your cities slide into cultural puppet status, and a total collapse as they spin off on their own as independent cities. The former may be acceptable if you are concentrating on a cultural victoryif you're going for a culture-heavy UHV it might even be irrelevant. It might, though, be devastating if your civilization is supposed to be conquering vast new worlds. In other words, here is an opportunity for greater differentiation, both of civilizations in RFC and in game play. An event that might kill one civilization might cause no problems for another. The total collapse, though, would be devastating to all.
Finally, how would you go about rectifying these collapses? Well, the total kind would have to be handled the old-fashioned RFC way, I guess. As for the milder form of fragmentation, there might be two different mechanisms. First, you could do it by conquering the secessionist city or cities. This would not require a declaration of war, since there would be no diplomatic actions. It wouldn't be a cakewalk, necessarily, since the city would bombard you back, of course. Second method: a Social Policy that allows you to simply annex Cultural Puppets when you want to. This would be some kind of confederation/republic SP that allows sovereign states to come together into a political union peacefully, as the American states did in 1787 and the European states have been trying to do. Both conquest and confederation should come with costs, of course, so that political fragmentation is not easily reversed on the spot.
I'll stop here, because if I've made some really gross errors or misassumptions, they should be pointed out before I go on.
So, there is no guarantee or even plans for an RFC for CiV [RFC-V?], but it's very hard not to play the new game without squinting hard and trying to glimpse an RFC inside it. Besides, it seems to me a lot more constructive to make positive suggestions for improvements (within something resembling an RFC universe) than just criticizing those aspects of CiV you don't like. So even if this thread doesn't lead anywhere, maybe it'll be psychologically healthier.
And if ideas for an RFC-V don't go anywhere, maybe it's worth throwing mod ideas out in general.
I'll open with three ideas, but I'll roll them out piecemeal instead of all at once in one big post or a series of double posts. These are fairly large proposals, because I think it best to start by pondering some of the core concepts in RFC to see how CiV could make a difference to them.
First idea:
Use CiV's "puppet city" mechanic as the basis for collapses in RFC.
Background, if you don't know it: In CiV you do not have to annex a city after you conquer it; you have at a minimum a choice between annexing it outright or turning it into a puppet city. IIRC after my few initial playthroughs, annexation gives you an unhappiness penalty (which requires a courthouse to eliminate) and you bear the full costs associated with having a new city, including expenses and greater culture and happiness totals to accumulate before getting a new Social Policy or Golden Age. If you puppetize it, you continue to draw money, culture, resources, and science from it, but you cannot allocate citizens, and you cannot choose or control what it builds. You have to defend it and improve it yourself, since it does not build units. On the other hand, it is not technically part of your civilization and so there are fewer penalties for taking control of it.
Now, such puppet states are already pretty close to being the independent cities that are created in RFC by a secession. Assuming things are sufficiently moddable, you would only have to make a few tweaks to turn them into near-functional equivalents to secessionist cities. I'd suggest modding them this way: They continue to contribute science and culture to your civilization, but you could not draw money or resources from them, and you could not enter the cities themselves with your unitsif you try you will be bombarded. (Could you enter their surrounding hexes? Maybe, maybe not; much depends on how moddable they are.) You could not allocate their citizens or choose their builds. They would not build units, and if you wanted to see their land improved, you'd have to do it yourself. They would not conduct diplomacy. Any civilization that could get to them could attack them without automatically causing a war with you. (That is, you'd have to be the one to declare war if they attacked one of these puppets.)
Why this implementation, instead of RFC4-style independent cities or city states? Well, for starters, because puppet states are a new mechanic that can be adapted to do the job, leaving genuinely independent cities or city-states available to use in modeling other behavior. I'd also do it this way because it would leave you able to draw culture and science from secessionist cities. Why do I recommend this?
It would be part of a more fine-grained model of historical behavior. Cities that are politically independent of each other can still be part of a common culture. Think of classical Greece: Athens, Sparta, Corinth, and all the rest were politically independent of each other. But they were still part of a common cultural sphere (which is why no one gets upset that in non-scenario Civ games the "Greek" civilization includes all those cities instead of giving each their own unique "civilization.") Modeling secessionist cities as puppet cities lets us capture that kind of distinction, between political unity and cultural unity, and in doing so lets us capture a distinction between cultural collapse and imperial fragmentation. The former is the kind of thing suffered by the western Roman Empire, where the culture itself almost seems to have evaporated and been replaced by a Christianized barbarian/classical mix. The latter is more like what happened to China during those inter-dynastic contending kingdom periods; the civilization is still there, it's just that the constitutional form of its governing entity has become temporarily deranged. It makes sense that the culture and science would continue and might even thrive. The player would enter a political dark age, but not necessarily a cultural one.
But what if we want RFCV to have cultural dark agesthings as bleak and exciting as those total collapses on RFC4, where culture and science dry up because all of our farflung cities have spun off on their own? That's fine, I think we can still have them, because puppet cities are a new mechanic, and presumably we can still use independent cities to model the more horrible kind of breakup. So, let's assume that there are still various categories that go into overall Stabilitythe foreign, the economic, the civics (now Social Policies), etc. Depending upon which indicators have gone pear-shaped you can get the milder political collapse or the starker total collapse. That's as much detail as I'm prepared to offer at the momentboth on how to realize a total collapse and what it would look likebecause for now I just want to note that it seems possible to have at least 2 different kinds of collapse.
But why have two different kinds of collapse? Why have the milder one alongside the starker one, I hear you ask. (I'm getting tired of asking your questions for you, but these questions are easy to anticipate and need answering anyway.) Well, first, it's more historically accurate, as I noted above. Second, it takes advantage of CiV's better implementation of culture. In past iterations of the game culture-generation relied on controlling cities. Now you don't have to control cities fully in order to get their culture, which can give players more freedom to maneuver and win: Why do you need to control your cities politically if you're striving for a cultural victory and you can have cultural control without political control? And I don't see anything historically objectionable in having a civilization win a cultural victory even if it is politically fragmented: look at the immense cultural impact of Europe, which (notwithstanding Civ's insistence that the Germans and the Dutch are as culturally distinct as the Chinese and the Zulu) is a common cultural space that hasn't been politically unified in millennia.
To summarize, there would be two ways you could collapse: a political fragmentation as your cities slide into cultural puppet status, and a total collapse as they spin off on their own as independent cities. The former may be acceptable if you are concentrating on a cultural victoryif you're going for a culture-heavy UHV it might even be irrelevant. It might, though, be devastating if your civilization is supposed to be conquering vast new worlds. In other words, here is an opportunity for greater differentiation, both of civilizations in RFC and in game play. An event that might kill one civilization might cause no problems for another. The total collapse, though, would be devastating to all.
Finally, how would you go about rectifying these collapses? Well, the total kind would have to be handled the old-fashioned RFC way, I guess. As for the milder form of fragmentation, there might be two different mechanisms. First, you could do it by conquering the secessionist city or cities. This would not require a declaration of war, since there would be no diplomatic actions. It wouldn't be a cakewalk, necessarily, since the city would bombard you back, of course. Second method: a Social Policy that allows you to simply annex Cultural Puppets when you want to. This would be some kind of confederation/republic SP that allows sovereign states to come together into a political union peacefully, as the American states did in 1787 and the European states have been trying to do. Both conquest and confederation should come with costs, of course, so that political fragmentation is not easily reversed on the spot.
I'll stop here, because if I've made some really gross errors or misassumptions, they should be pointed out before I go on.
Still, it's probably better to have it all in one place.
-expansion priorities. That will, first of all, encourage more realistic borders (especially if it, apart from yields, will be able to influence which tiles AI will automatically 
