Ok well after reading over this I think the simplest way to solve the problem of these city states becoming too powerful would be to make the civilization totally crippled, and in fact have it never build anything. Then we can place units of no movement and attack, just a defense type unit in all of the cities. The cities would never get too big as there will be no improvements being done to it and no work being done to the terrain around it, thus them not ever becoming cities at all really just staying as towns, with most not growing at all and some may grow a small amount, but that could be expected for certain fertile regions. The problem of wealth can be solved with setting the maintenance of the units, and we can even over estimate this thus they may lose a few units but eventually it would balance out to them earning barely no money if any at all. We can make a very basic form of government, any ideas for a name is fine, and set that as their starting government and favorite government, thus they will always be on it. Basically something with around the same stats as anarchy except not transitional so they stay in it. Thus no support for units, low worker rate, and so on. We can even make them totally non agressive, allowing larger empires to extor them for their few measly pieces of gold they may have. All of this in effect would cripple this civilization leaving them with a lot of cities and some units to defend but the ability to do nothing else except sit there and watch the world change. One problem that still remains is the trading of world maps. I have no solution to this on the scale I just spoke of except that oh well we know what it looks like anyway. However there is something we can do that would solve that greatly and I think imrpove the game play overall of these city states, as well as the feel and look of the game. We can instead make more of these city state civilizations that are for specific regions of the world, i.e. Asia, Europe, Africa, mid-east, americas (or even n. and s. america). If Conquests allows for many more or unlimited civs then this will work out perfect, but even if it doesn't we can still cut the playable civs down to 25, or 26 depending on how many regions are desired. This way when I'm about to invade a city in southeast Asia, some European dude doesn't pop up and beg my troops to leave him alone. The buildings and architect of the towns will also be for that culture group area, and overall it would be much better looking. This also would be the solution to map trading, as it would only be of the small surrounding area, something that was very likely to have happened anyways with these small towns back in the day. I don't know I think that that would make your idea a very playable and an immensely enjoyable one. Seriously gread idea Minky, in fact just the idea of it is making me want to just go out and make it myself right now..haha as if thatd ever get done....well if there's any holes in what i said or any other problems you can think of go ahead and spit them out..
and most of the things brought up have already been addressed.
