Inspired by the recent post about how Civ is super liberal, I’ve been thinking about how you would de-lib it. Here’s a couple of my ideas:

• Technology arises based on conditions, rather than an abstract “science” stat. Have a lot of domesticable animals nearby and a need for food? You may develop animal husbandry. Have a lot of coal, and mature metallurgy? You may develop coal power. You could also structure other aspects about your civ in this way - focusing on herding tends to make your civ nomadic, focusing on farming tends to make your civ sedentary, etc.
• Build class struggle explicitly into the game. At first your civ is tribes or clans, with everyone basically in the same economic class - but once you develop certain social technologies, this changes. “Land enclosure” will create a landlord class, then “slavery” “peasantry” “serfdom” etc become available which decrease the number of landlords and increase the amount of economic inequality in your civ, but also centralizes power letting you raise larger armies and things like that.