Cities Ceding From Your Empire

[UltraSonix]

This is a permutation of my colonisation idea - maybe under some forms of government, outlying cities (especially ones on a different island far away) would sometimes declare independence and you have the option of declaring war of them. If you win the war you get back the towns under your control, but if you lose (ie decide to sign a peace treaty), then the cities form a new civ with all your techs, a bit of money, etc. If you decide to let them become independent then they'll still form a new civ but'll then repect your civ a lot in the future, and form a sort of an alliance that's called something like a "Commonwealth". Civs which are in a Commonwealth with you are far more inclined to fight with you, share techs etc. Declaring war on a Commonwealth member would incur a sever reputation hit.

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...

[Grier]

I think this should be tied in with the rise and fall of empires idea, which i think is one that Firaxis are considering.

[Stuff2]

There is a reason why distant colonies declare independence. My theory is that people don't want decisions to be made by other people that are not relly informed about the conditions. I think that one of the reasons why the roman empire fell is beacouse the romans tried to control too much from Rome, not trusting that good decisions could be made on a local level. I think that my province - political units idea (with some adjustments and improvements) can incorporate the colonisation idea. As I see it, colonies are just newfounded distant provinces and nothing else. As any other province they have a mind of their own that you have to either surpress or satisfy. The distance makes them more unhappy, (beacouse the decisions are made by "fools that don't know anything about us"). That's why a distant province is more eager to get some freedom from you than a close province.
Every province will be compared to the province where you have the capitol. If a province has much more poverty or much less factories or whatever they will ofcourse dislike your leadership.