Wouldn't it be more interesting to have Dark Ages and Civil Wars in CivIII? When you get to the Medieval Ages, you are very powerful from the Ancient knowledges. Also, a big part of American, Russian, Spanish, and French history is Civil wars.
I'm just hoping that Sid is working on Civ5 to take all the best parts of the previous civs into 1.
1. Turn based (Civ4 RTS? wtf?)
2. IMPROVED CORRUPTION-This is part of the reason I still play civ 2, resonable corruption
3. The Religion aspects-I find that kinda intreasting, almost Europia Unviversallis 3 in a way
4. Amazing civs and units
i remember when in civ 2 there were civil wars if the capital of a civ was taken over, is that right yes? a few of their cities became a new country. that was pretty sweet. always loved doing that...
that is if it didn't happen like that then it must have been one of those nights where i couldn't go to sleep because of this lovely lovely game...
As for Dark Ages/losing technology... well the reason why the Roman technology was lost to Europe is that the Roman power structure crumbled and was replaced by the decentralized, ununified barbarians occupied their territory without maintaining their cultural system. To put it in game terms, Rome LOST.