Sorry to criticize Gumbolt, but your idea of no Great People is totally broken.
If you build or capture a wonder, even a NW, you will generate GP, no matter what you do. Obviously we can have a no-wonders-rule, which means that if you capture a city with a WW you must raze it. But such rule will be too much of an handicap for the human, i think.
I never said it would not challenge the player. The only downside is that it may restrict game play too much making a cottage industry the obvious route. Yet GP generation is a game mechanic the mods can trace. All I am suggesting is inventing a game that restricts use of GP in some way.
So you can only produce a certain type of GP. Etc.
@ mabraham - A lot of ideas there but the trouble is you can't monitor them. Eg. I could mine a copper resource and simply pillage it. Unless you intend to remove certain resources from the game completely? The downside here would be if one team fluked a certain resource by chance. You can find resources like gold/silver etc by mining.