However, the military aspect of these games simply cannot be ignored, simply because conquest and defense against barbarians (whether it's the Romans or the Chinese) is an irrefutable fact of the times.
I propose a solution that ought to please both gamers who prefer to concentrate on city building and those who like to mis things up some.
My proposal harks back all the way to the classic Caesar2.
In that one, battles were fought outside of the city in a separate screen altogether.
My proposal is that this be brought back. With the provision that players can select to have the battles automatically fought or to lead their troops into battle 'personally'.
This however, only works on a few conditions.
a) To have the battle successfully concluded by choosing the 'auto' option, one has got to have forces well superior to the enemy. If one chooses to lead troops into battle, the enemy must not be too 'intelligent' so that one can win the battle with less resources.
b) Of course, to toss in some variety, the enmey might manouver better in some battles, and of course, on 'auto' mode, it is still possible to lose battles even when one outnumbers the enemy substantially (this should not happen too often of course). As it is possible to lose battles even when one personally leads them, especially if one's no good at issuing battle commands. c) the upkeep of a military force should be prohibitvely expensive, Of course, this has always been the case historically up till present day. The Song dynasty used to much prefer bribing enemies to crushing them because the cost of bribes was far less than the cost of maintaining a strong military. So this shoud be applied to reward players who choose to fight battles themselves. As for players who don't, well, they just gotta make even more money to pay for the upkeep of a sizeable military. Personally I like the whole idea of expensive military upkeep the best because it is an accurate refelction of history, which frankly is one of the greatest reasons why many of us are here in the first place.