Malleable borders

With the switch between cultural assimilation and land purchases, the borders are now essentially fixed between varying powers and civilisations. However, these borders cannot change without the use of a Great Artist or a war that results in one or more cities being annexed/puppeted/razed, the former being a sometimes poor use of a GA and the latter sometimes being undesirable. Perhaps a new system of territorial ownership and territorial control could be implemented? For instance, a tile would be given a coordinate or a name, the coordinate being assigned and the name being automatic or input, and during negotiations a player could offer gold per turn or lump sum for a particular tile from another player. While this may or may not be realistic, it happened quite often during the imperialist era, wherein European powers essentially paid unfortunate African and Asian states small amounts of money as "lease" for territory, such as leasing the port city of Qingdao for one hundred years. Not to mention, of course, seizing of port cities and extraction of concessions.

Otherwise, during a war a player that advances deep into enemy territory would "occupy" tiles, rendering them unproductive for the owner civilisation and making capturing of cities easier due to the lack of workable tiles. Starving cities would suffer from a defence malus or some other effect that can be detailed at a later date, and the diplomatic AI would recognise such an occurrence and offer a few tiles on the map that would be shown if the cursor hovers over the tile names in a strategic map view-style. Occupied tiles would generate partisans or rebels every so often for the owning civilisation so long as the civilisation in question maintains a positive happiness rating, thus creating the incentive to end wars quickly lest the invasion force be bogged down in a quagmire of resistance. Lastly, occupied tiles can eventually be directly annexed by the occupying civilisation if n turns have passed, thus representing the forceful signing of an unequal treaty or what have you.

Ideas?

 

The idea is interesting and not unrealistic at all, although giving away tiles should be something that you mostly do during peace negotiations. Occupying tiles and getting limited yields from them would also be interesting but requires tracking multiple kinds of ownership

If they are in a position to realistically demand tiles, they are in a position that would allow them to take the tiles by force anyways - I don't see this as a big problem

 

I don't think the AI would ever sell a tile... it doesn't even sell resources nor techs... then techs can't be sold anyways...

 

I think Fixed borders are an improvement. "malleability" can come in through changing Cities form one civ to another.

 

I am fond of this idea. Consider that the AI may also ask for tiles from you. You might ask of a tile of theirs "what do you want for this?" and they might respond with a tile or two of yours. The AI would try and obtain resources it was lacking, and form natural choke points where appropriate.