I feel like you are not only completely missing my point, but taking this argument in a totally hyperbolic direction.
No one is saying the Greeks or Phoenicians did not have a major impact on history. But you yourself haven't pointed out once in your entire rant an accomplishment that was uniquely Athenian or Tyrian. It was a Greek or Phoenician landmark. Historically we do not attribute as much to individual Greek or Phoenician city states as we do to Italian city states. And that's not because we are minimizing anyone; it's merely that the difference in political structure and individual impact was that stark.
In fact I would argue it is best to represent Italy in this way compared to Greece and Phoenicia. Because Greece and Phoenicia collectively were superpowers. "Italy," if and when it existed, was almost always exceptionally weak, in no small part due to its political disunity. Certainly the parts were worth more than the sum of the parts.
My apologies: our last posts apparently 'crossed' last night. I had not realized that your argument was based on the Political control and influence of the individual Italian city states, while I was arguing largely the cultural, scientific, and economic impact of the Phoenician and Greek city states.
Again, my apologies for mis-understanding your points.
However, that doesn't make the argument for a Greek/Phoenician 'city state' mechanism any less valid. The Italian states, even Genoa and Venice combined, did no major colonization: they formed trading posts, took over existing cities and towns, and extended Influence, but there were and are no 'Italian' city foundations outside of Italy. On the other hand, the Greek and Phoenician cities (NOT Greece and Phoenicia, which never existed as cohesive ancient/classical polities) founded cities all over the Black Sea, Mediterranean, and Spanish Atlantic coasts. Virtually none of these cities were politically tied to the cities that founded them, but all were tied to the cultural, religious, economic (trade) sphere of influence of the 'home' Civ.
Which simply means to show both the potential of individual cities being major political and economic powers (Italian cities in the Renaissance Era) and being major founders of new semi-independent cities but with far-reaching economic, cultural and (possibly religious influences (Classical Greek and Phoenician cities), we are probably going to need two different, or one modified, mechanism for a 'City State' type Civ.
Furthermore, I doubt now that the resulting Cities will resemble precisely the existing City States in the game: I would rather suspect they will be a 'bridge' between Civ and City State, in that they remain politically (militarily?) independent but can build Districts and possibly Wonders and share cultural scientific, and possibly religious influence.
I would like to point out that in fact, Athens did 'mirror' Genoa and Venice in having effective control over many other city foundations around the Aegean Sea just as Genoa controlled the Tyrrhenian Sea and Venice the Adriatic, and all three had extensive trade networks extending across the Mediterranean and Black Seas (Athens got a lot of her basic food supply from Greek Colonies on the Black Sea coast, even though Athens had not founded most of them). A case could probably be made that Carthage extended similar control over Numidia and Iberia, but I'm not familiar enough with the forms of 'political' control Carthage had in those areas to say for certain. What is certain, is that Carthage extended economic influence almost exclusively in those areas and recruited large parts of her military forces from both areas.
That means that all three groups: ancient Greece and Phoenicia, renaissance Italy, could produce individual cities with a far-reaching economic, military, and political influence, BUT in every case, they did not have the resources to maintain political influence for long against a cohesive political state: Athens along with all the other Greek city states fell to Macedonia, and Francis I and France went through the Italian peninsula like a knife through butter in the 1490s (admittedly, with the advantage of the first modern 'siege train' of artillery to vaporize city wall defenses - the parallel is almost exact since Alexander's father, Phillip, had the first 'modern' Siege Train of catapults and engines seen in Greece).
So, for game purposes, we'd have to include some kind of probably-less-than-historical mechanism to turn the City into a Civ at some point - incorporating other cities into the 'home' city as Rome did and the Phoenician, Italian, and Greek cities singularly failed to do, in order to have a viable in-game Civ.
And yes, I'm well aware that almost the same effect could be obtained, as now with Civ VI's Greece, by having Alternate Leaders/capitals within a 'regular' Civ, but that fails to show the 'unique' structure of the independent but related cities in the classical Greek, Phoenician and later Italian polities - or, for another example, the myriad semi-independent German cities and city-states that remained in existence until Napoleon snapped them all up and 'restructured' them after 1806.
This has been an interesting discussion, and thank you for it, but in less than 24 hours we'll get to see what the Firaxites have actually done, and then we can start expressing our admiration/consternation/condemnation of that. . .
