Androrc the Orc
Emperor
Yes, I thought of this as well cause the cool Civics feature doesn't come in until the end of the game. But, then again you are not really a "Self Governing" nation yet and only until you declare independence do you write up a constitution.
AFAIK because of the distance, colonial governors had some autonomy. I think it would be interesting too if it became a new king demand - for example, making you choose between a tax raise or the king imposing a certain civic upon you.
But, then again for future mods and such I thought it would be cool to have like Statesmen able to Research new Governing Pholosophys or Techs and such.
That's a pretty interesting idea. You could use the BellsStored as a cost for such research as well as normal YIELD_IDEAS, which would expand the use of bells. In case you choose to do so, I recommend changing doBells() in CvPlayer so that the king increasing units in the REF doesn't deplete the BellsStored, but rather depletes a second variable that is also dependent on bell rate.
And about the AI, I'll make it so that to start with they just randomly gain a Tech. Then I will add actual AI that starts to do Research and the Speed is based on Difficulty levels. Then I want to add the abililty to trade techs.
You could just set a loop and then the AI will research the first tech that fulfills the requirements you set in canDoCivics() in CvPlayer for techs. AFAIK the AI would eventually start setting people as inventors even without any special modifications.
If any of you guys want to help out with this project with coding or art that would be good. Just let me know and we can figure out what needs to be done.
I could help with the coding.