Mod ideas that *might* fix the pacing of the game

[BackseatTyrant]

After I read a couple of posts on this forum complaining about Civ6's pacing problems, I've had a couple of ideas bouncing around in my head on how to mod the game.

Spoiler Hubris :

HUBRIS
Ever since R&F came out, I've been a bit disturbed by what determines if a civ heads toward a golden age or a dark age. One would at first expect the era score system to reward civs that take care of their people, and punish civs that ignore them for the sake of empire building. But no, it's actually quite the opposite, you get era points for completing tasks that are considered grandiose, which means that you head into a dark age for being "too passive".

This hypothetical mod intends to fix that, where era score is more determined by the surplus/deficit of amenities, housing and food. For instance, if you have a city build a wonder, but that city has a lack of housing, you would actually lose era points, as the people would see you as a selfish megalomaniac who'd rather build monuments of bragging, than actually do something about the housing crisis.

The mod would probably also adjust the AI behaviour a bit, making them less likely to rush wonders or conquer city states, as they would now more than ever would have an incentive not to.

Spoiler In The Name of Higher Powers :

IN THE NAME OF HIGHER POWERS
I've seen a lot of comments about how players never reach the late game because either they or the AI snatch an easy religious victory during the renaissance. Additionally, I've always found it weird that a civ may only care about the religion they themselves have founded, even though that has mostly not been the case historically. So I cooked up an idea on how to make things a little bit more interesting, so here goes:

• You don't need to found a religion in order to win a religious victory
• By default, only city states may found religions
• You now win the religious victory by converting all cities to a the religion of a city state you're a suzerain of. Converting more cities grants you more envoys towards said city state

These tweaks should make religion a more relevant, if not deciding factor up until the information age and beyond. I mean, it's not like everybody stopped believing in god after the peasants stormed Versailles.

Spoiler The Slow Pace of Progress :

THE SLOW PACE OF PROGRESS
Beelining is something I've always felt was a bit immersion breaking, and that's something I especially notice with Civ6, where the tech tree split has certainly made things more barren. So intend to someday make a mod that intends to do these four things:

1. Flesh out the tech tree
2. Flesh out the civic tree
3. Make the tech tree and civic tree more interconnected
4. Make beelining extremely difficult if not outright impossible

Aside from adding new techs and civics, some measures that'd help with this would be by:

• Requiring one to complete all techs and all civics in an era before progressing to the next one
• Having some techs and civics be requirements of each other. For instance, the civic Social Media would only be available if you've researched the tech The Internet first
• Making the number of research slots a non-static number, so that you'd only start off with one, but more can be added by building specific improvements like universities and museums

I've also thought about the idea of specialized research, where in the late game certain techs and civics may only be discovered using a certain building like a research lab or such, but that may come at a later stage of modding (if ever).

Spoiler Pure Ideology :

PURE IDEOLOGY
This last one has nothing to do with the pacing, and more to do with me having a minor pet peeve with how the game treats the politics of the latter eras. To be quite frank, by the modern era, you don't really choose a government system, you choose a WWII era military pact; the Allies, the Axis, or the Comintern. This hypothetical mod aims to make ideology work in a more generalized and global context by doing these two things primarily:

• Replacing Communism, Democracy and Fascism with Modern Republic, Hybrid Regime and Dictatorship.
• Introducing five ideological factions: Centrists, Totalists, Propertarians, Anarchists and Nationalists. Their main function is to affect loyalty depending on which policies a civilization enforces.

So my general idea for the new governments is this:

• Dictatorships are not really affected by the various ideological factions, but they also inhibit science and culture
• Modern Republics have the reversed situation, where science and culture are boosted but loyalty is heavily affected by how the various ideological factions feel about your actions
• Hybrid Regimes are, as the name would suggest, a mix between the two, with a no negative or positive effect on science or culture, and ideological factions are of a moderate concern

It should be mentioned that once ideologies are introduced, you are more or less forced to choose from one of these government forms, at least until you discover new ones.

So what are ideologies supposed to be, then? Well, they are essentially a percentage of a civ's population that have a global effect on each city's loyalty within said civ, depending on what policies are in action. What ideology is held depends on what districts are being built and improved. Here's an idea of what it might look like:

• Centrists are the default faction and have no strong opinion on any policy whatsoever. In fact they only care about one thing, political stability. So keep the loyalty everywhere from going negative, and they'll remain happy.
• Nationalists (authoritarian capitalists), however do have something to say about policies. They're really into militaristic and religious dominance, and thus support policies that promote such. They do however, get pissed if you enact policies that imply "fostering of degenerates and foreign influences". Their natural habitats are neighbourhoods adjacent to encampments and holy sites.
  
• Totalists (authoritarian socialists) are also fairly pro-military, but not as much as Nationalists. They are mostly interested in their civ producing as much as possible, so their best kept happy by enacting policies boosting city production. Totalist citizens mostly appear in and around industrial zones.
• Anarchists (libertarian socialists) can be seen as the complete opposite of Nationalists, as they strongly oppose pro-military policies and support policies that provides citizens with housing and amenities. Anarchists are most likely to appear in campuses and theatre districts
• Propertarians (libertarian capitalists), only really care about one thing, money. To them, taxation is theft, so in order to keep them content, you should focus on policies that grant them as much profit as possible, while minimizing government spending as much as possible. As one might suspect, Propertarians are most likely to spawn in commercial hubs and neighbourhoods adjacent to commercial hubs.

Now that I think of it, this new mechanic could be used to shake things up a bit in the late game, where an otherwise stable empire is suddenly thrown into turbulence because they unintentionally fostered an ideology that disagrees with the official government doctrines.

I would very much like to know if these ideas are worth implementing. Are they possible at this stage? Would they actually improve gameplay?