Sounds like you want to turn this game into Brave New World. I disagree with almost everything except #1. I'm not sure why they went away from aggressive and passive civs. As it is, any civ at any time can declare war on you. There are no good guys or "bad" guys. Makes me wonder if they did this for politically correct reasons and didn't want to offend any groups of people. It's just strange having leaders like Shaka and Genghis be nice guys, and they usually are in my games. #1 I completely agree with.
I have my hunches about political correctness in this game, and I feel it's why they won't make certain leaders like Shaka aggressive. I also feel it's why American and England suck in this game.
#2 just isn't realistic from a historical point of view. Wars were very lucrative for everyone all the way up until WW1 and WW2, it was only then it became too economically draining to wage offensive war. Empires like Rome and many other benefited greatly from war, it didn't hurt them at all. War should only become punishing in the atomic era in my honest opinion. Even in the atomic and information eras, you should still be able to wage war if you have objectives you can quickly attain, but long drawn out wars should be very punishing both on offense and defense.
I hated #3 in BNW. It forced me to play the game peacefully. Once I had an embargo on me and my economy was falling apart and units disbanding. War was just too punishing in that game, which made playing the warmongering civs less fun. I felt like the game was telling me to play a certain way, but why give us warmongering civs if you don't want us to use them? Pass on this one.
#4 I'm okay with after a certain point (the atomic age I mentioned a couple paragraphs up).