Reworked ideologies, pops and politics:
- Make every pop in one of your citizens an actual citizen with opinions, with a life and without thoughts, for example: "this pop works the rice farm". He's a farmer, is a rural person who lives quite isolated and has conservative ideas. He wants agrarians to be supported (or his farm to be supported). He likes his farm to be improved (non-improved tiles generate unhappinness when being worked on). The way your civilization is improved or worked on, will eventually determine what kind of empire sociologically will. If you have many farms in your empires, your cities / empire might be conservative. If you have in almost every city an industrial district, you'll have a huge social movement (or be at risk of socialism or even communism if your citizens are unhappy with the progress of implementation of social rights). If you have a lot of commercial districts (and harbors), you'll have a lot of liberals or have more capitalists (which want to stimulate the economy). If you have a lot of encampments you'll have a lot of pops who are nationalists. If you have a lot of holy districts you'll have a lot of social conservative citizens. Theater squares and Campuses could increase the rate of new ideas spreading throughout your empire. Cities inside your government might depending on how you distribute your districts or tiles you work on, even hold a grudge towards the center parts of your empire, like if your capital has a lot of districts, and your outer cities have like an encampment or holy district, your empire might become very polarized (and unstable). Of course, citizens can't work districts, but those districts will apply to all pops in a certain city the district is active for (but also to a slighter extent the cities throughout your entire empire, and esp. if it's the nature of your district (a certain building in an entertainment complex having an effect to all pops 6 tiles away, or industrial districts with one of magnus bonuses (vertical integration). The possibilities are endless.
- Make political parties something that's a real thing when your converting to a third tier ideology (or around 1750, but optional), with several ideologies: liberalism, anarchism, conservatism, fascism, nationalism, socialism, communism, ecologism who all have or might have demands of you, while you need to satisfy them or you risk them making unhappy, but they could also force you to deal with foreign civilizations differently, or use policy cards you would otherwise not use, or demand you to use more international trade routes (or more domestic: internationalism vs protectionism). Make those ideologies have benefits (advantages) and disadvantages, even for the controversial ones: fascism having benefits for domination victory or militarist approaches.
- Elections would determine who is in power and you need to work together with party of power, but when picking policy cards, congress (or the pops) would have to vote on them if you implement them in a democracy. In a dictatorship, you have the control of what policy cards to choose from, but only a select amount of policy cards is available, depending on your ideology.
Civil & labor rights mechanics, implementation of slavery
- When the game progresses, populations will have more demands, and will demand you to change some laws. This could happen if you have a lot of industrial districts (with labourers), or also when you have a lot of theatres, campuses or international trade routes to civilizations where those ideas also have spread (not only religion spreads, but ideology could spread as well). Both civil rights and labour rights will spread. If you don't satisfy them, uprisings could occur, changing your ideology system or policy cards without you agreeing with it too. Implementation of civil rights could spread your tourism. Migration could be affected by your policy decisions.
More dynamic empires: vassalisation, semi-independent colonies, empires in a dynamic state
- It's maybe more an idea to rework in civ 7, but the next expansion could have some basic (and not complex mechanics) but oriented on making civilizations more dynamic. Add vazzals and add colonies that are semi-independent to yours, and you will have to continue to satisfy them or keep them loyal too or they could break apart and become a free colony. Rework free colonies / free cities. They could join a different empire, but they could also become an independent city-state or civilization (and create generic colonial names for it).
Reduce micromanagement late-game
Such a mechanic (as stated above) might also reduce micro-management in super large empires (which is annoying late game if you have literally 30 cities). It would be good if you could decide for yourself how much control you want to keep over your empire. The central part should always be under your control. Maybe the map should not only be divided in continents but in superregions that could contain multiple continents. But some centralization vs decentralization mechanic could be nice, similar to sectors in Stellaris where you could decide what a sector should focus on (food, production, science, culture, gold, faith and ...). Another idea is that those sectors work autonomically for you but that you could intervene whenever you need too.
Migration mechanic
Could be affected by loyalty, by international trade, by ideology, by housing and amenity (lack of housing -> people move to different empires, and vice versa, lack of amenity -> people move to a different empire where amenities are widely available).
Diseases, pandemics and health crisises:
Implement in a similar way as natural disasters when done (which was done fantastically)
Economic victory and corporations
And ideology (capitalism, liberalism) could also play a huge role with this. Has so much potential.
8 civs + 1 leader
Just make sure to add Maya, Babylon and Ethiopia, potentially Portugal.
Other ideas are Muisca (or Colombia), maybe Vietnam or Burma, a new Native American civ and maybe a Balkan country like Bulgaria or Romania, maybe Austria, Italy, Ireland, Gauls.
