[BTS] Population zero cities?

[lindsay40k]

Is it possible to mod cities so that they are empty shells and all population is represented by actual units?

Is it possible to mod buildings so that they are effectively immobile transport units, that sit in a city, generate their graphics on a different layer of the map to non-building units (so they can still be seen from outside the city and don't disappear when a stack is selected), and generate yields when occupied?

Or, I guess, place them on the map, making them behave like Districts in Civ VI...

 

[Nightinggale]

From a technical point of view, I can't really see anything, which will make this impossible to code. However I this is in no way easy to code and will most certainly be a DLL mod.
It should be possible to mod cities in a way that they will not vanish if empty. Founding can then be modded to not add a population. This shouldn't be too hard.

Buildings as units... either hijack the communication between the exe and the DLL and then fake buildings when the exe asks. Alternative make regular units, but add an xml tag, which adds the building in question if the unit is standing on the city plot. The latter might be best and is likely the easiest to implement, though not trivial.