here's a question about it: How would you have these cities rebel? Just a single city making its own splinter nation? That wouldn't make it very strong... and to make it so other cities would join, and create a real revolution, provinces might be needed. The province system which I speak of would allow civil wars, in fact, was thought up by me partly to allow civil wars more interestingly, as well as intra-civ relations. This would also give new nuances to government, trade, and allow units to have [home city/states] which, while still payed for the same way as in Civ 3, would allow units to join their provinces if something... er... happens [rebellion, refusal to fight, etc]