Hi guys, had a idea I wanted to discuss: 

Problem 1:

I'm sure you've all had the situation where the lead AI collapses with internal rebels late game and you find their cities full of commons quarters. You win almost by default.

Looking at the game history the problem frequently appears to be them having too many cities, getting into negative influence and not being able to recover because they don't know how to liberate cities and/or pillage city centers. 

Problem 2: 

Currently, era transition is done when it's most efficient for picking cultures, era stars and EQ construction - it's a very gamey decision. There's no disruption that empires historically experienced around the time of era changes.  

I came up with the following, which could be implemented as a mod if people think it's an interesting idea:

Part 1. Every time you progress to the next era, you are forced to liberate cities down to your current city cap, most recent cities are liberated first - this represents your empire going through a period of regression and makes era transition a more risky and therefore memorable part of the game. 

1a. This will leave a number of well developed independent cities that another player could acquire during your period of weakness

1b. It is inherently anti-snowball

1c. It saves the AI from themselves 

Part 2 (optional). Every time you progress to a new era, influence is reset to zero (both positive and negative, or just negative)  

2a. This is primarily to save the AI from themselves, but also allows for the player to deliberately overextend in a rampage of conquest in one era (e.g. to eliminate an AI), then recover.

Part 3 (optional). Every time you progress to the next era, all civics are reset and costs refunded, representing the fact that each culture had unique values