I was browsing throught the Civs and i noticed the Texas civ, so i thought to myself well why not have a Civ based around the great city of New York?
anyone that knows or lives in or around NYC will know how New York is home to a vast number of cultures and subcultures and is home to roughly 20 million people in the area in and around New York (the city proper has about 9 million), and in this area alone has enough people to warrent its own civ since we arent New Englanders, and dont really deal much with anything west of the Hudson and South of the George Washington Bridge. We are almost an island of people in this crazy country, which i state in the most indearing of ways. So again i think a Civ based on New York City would be grand.
New York is home to hundreds of museums, biggest financal districts, and (in manhattan at least) the most simple and organized lay out. this link pretty much lays it out
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_york_city
cultural - with hundreds of museums, culture spanning from the Harlem Rennisance to the birth of Hip Hop, and areas in the city that create their own subcuture such as St. Marks, Union Sq, and Upper West Side. (plus a bunch of wonders from the game have a home in NYC. The UN, Statue of Liberty, Broadway, Wall Street, West Point)
financal - home to Wall Street and Commerce for the United States, and it is damn expensive to live here. A studio the size of a small jail cell is like $400,000 and if you get into 1 bed room apartments the cheapest you get is one million. NYC is so expensive that there are exclusive places that even 20+ million cant get you in for a 1 bedroom.
organized - one of the simplest and best structured cities i can think of (its a grid) and some of the safests and cleanest years of NYCs history owes itself to the great organization of the NYPD and FDNY and so forth
for a leader you can pick anyone from the list of famous NYC mayors.
DeWitt Clinton
Fiorello H. LaGuardia
Boss Tweed (sorta as a joke)
Rudolph W. Giuliani
Michael R. Bloomberg
The UU is tricky but something about New Yorkers is that they are tough and good money on us if you are you going to mess with us. so maybe give a slight defensive bonus to some gunpowder unit since NYC arent aggressive as much as protective and retalitory. but as long as it doesnt unbalance gameplay with overly strong units like in other custom civs
For the cities its actually really simple. although New York is a city, it is easily cut into about 50 or so areas. like you can have the capital be City Hall, and then have the cities be places like "Midtown", "Gramercy Park", "SoHo", "NoHo", "Lower East Side", "Upper West Side", "Williamsburg", and so on. its really quite easy for me as i know all the ins and outs of NY but i dont expect too many other people to know the parts of NY.
but for all of this i am more than willing to help in anyway possible and i totally understand if you dont want to waste you time doing this for me. but if you do i thank you greatly and the many many New Yorkers that play civ will do so as well.