Raiders

There should be raiders. I think it would be fun if they were two types: land raiders (start on land and build more distinct horsemen/warriors) and sea raiders (start next to the sea not a lake and build more distinct boats). Raiders start to spawn with some units and a outpost in an low food area when half of the players have founded an outpost. Raiders objective are to raid cities of players (also of other raiders) to steal food and to bring it back to their outpost. A raid takes (maybe 10 or more/less) turns and if you can't kill all of their units, they go away with a certain amound of food (the amount is decided by the amount of food in the borders of the city). If they succeed your raided city will lose a certain amount of population. When they succeed they go back to their outpost with the food and raise the population of the outpost. Everytime the population of an outpost grows it builds more units. When an outpost of the raiders has (maybe 3 or 5) population it becomes a city and the raiders could now capture your cities. But the raiders become more diplmoatic this means you could now offer peace, trade... The raiders would not chose a culture so they would not be able to build any emblimatic districts, but they would have some unique bonusses/units and start a distinct religion. Raiders should be more agressive (and less thoughtful during battles) than players.