Thanks for all the replies again!

My turns actually automatically progress. I have both fast turns and long turns running at the same time. The fast turns are for small things like warfare and the long turns are for bigger things like city and trade updates. This way I try to achieve a slightly more real-time experience for warfare. That's why in this game I think some early things to with the armies like claiming area's and skirmishes would work well.

What if you made the early portion of the game a nomadic phase?

Don't tie the civilizations to cities initially but give them nomadic units that explore, harvest resources, and make contact with other civilizations. They can establish small settlements near resources and once you acquire enough tech and resources then you can establish your first city. Building a city should be a a major undertaking. It could be done in stages by upgrading settlements or all at once if you find an ideal location.

That's one thing I always found lacking in CIV. You have to build a city on your first turn otherwise it counts against you and the map seed in the latest one ensures you have a mix of resources near your starting point. But there is no initial exploration or growth from nomadic people into an empire. Building your first city should be an major accomplishment it should be placed in a strategic location either at a cross road of trade routes, or with access to large amounts of valuable resources and of course it should be on a river. Since almost all major cities are either on the coast or on a river.

Nice idea but I fear this would be too drastic of a change at this point.

if i read this thread fragments i feel like would like to play civ1 again, that was a good game :U

I actually quite like the idea of being able to claim territory, without the being-able-to-mine part. This would surely create tension from the beginning of the game and cause some small early game skirmishes.

Hmm, my suggestion(the mining-part, i only added the claiming/building some kind of defense as a logical consequence) is more orientated on the newer player i think,

the claiming part may make the game more difficult, which is good for hard-core gamers i guess, but i would focus it on the mid-game(we all start the game as newbies ;) )

So hidden world exploration element and some kind of thing (hut) you find that may or may not have something nice/bad in it

You mean like the ruins in Civilization? But if you pick it up something bad can happen as well? I think this would lead to a lot of frustration as it's entirely luck based.

the one thing I found most fun in the Civ games was the exploring and then trying to get the stuff you found back intact or doing an expanding search as you 'discovered' more units.

So hidden world exploration element and some kind of thing (hut) you find that may or may not have something nice/bad in it

Age of Wonders did this very well, might be worth checking out.

(i believe the last part was a standalone "expansion" of AoW:3 called AoW: Shadow Magic, may be worth checking out)

What if you made the early portion of the game a nomadic phase?

Don't tie the civilizations to cities initially but give them nomadic units that explore, harvest resources, and make contact with other civilizations. They can establish small settlements near resources and once you acquire enough tech and resources then you can establish your first city. Building a city should be a a major undertaking. It could be done in stages by upgrading settlements or all at once if you find an ideal location.

That's one thing I always found lacking in CIV. You have to build a city on your first turn otherwise it counts against you and the map seed in the latest one ensures you have a mix of resources near your starting point. But there is no initial exploration or growth from nomadic people into an empire. Building your first city should be an major accomplishment it should be placed in a strategic location either at a cross road of trade routes, or with access to large amounts of valuable resources and of course it should be on a river. Since almost all major cities are either on the coast or on a river.

This sounds interesting, making things more flexible, in Civ founding a city is a very simplistic mechanic, you're basically building a clolonist which is a moving city which can be placed somewhere and will grow depending primararily on the nearest tile composition, the more realistic approach imho would be closer to what Technogoat suggested and rather than making city building just a matter of building and moving a unit, it could be done in steps and feel like a real undertaking, starting from a nomad settlement and slowly growing into a metropolis.

To implement things like that so they wouldnt end up as gimmicks that sound nice on paper but don't add any depth, imho some evolution in the design must occur, probably by implementing sandbox elements and cutting out abstract rulesests in favor of intuitive/realistic mechanics, for example population can be handled more realistically by dividing it into "general population" and manpower which can be allocated to do different tasks, like in "Lord of the realms", the "general population" growth could be done like in "Banished" more simplified even, also ability to build anywhere on the map as long as you can bring resources and sustain manpower without any artificial limitations and so on, basically copying and adapting ideas from everywhere as well as real life.