Longturn.net

How about this;
Of the 20 players, 15 start as a team (Empire) and 5 as independents (Rebels).
Any time a player gets eliminated, they get restarted as an independent player with a few units on ships and techs that everyone has. (But maybe no non team diplomacy or ability to trade with each other?)
No independent player can win by themselves, they have to keep attacking the empire until they pick off a player to join them as a restarter.
If the empire has 2 or more members when the turn limit is reached, the empire wins by holding out against the endless rebellion for long enough.
If the empire is reduced to one player, then a turn counter starts and everyone else must eliminate the last empire player in x turns. In which case rebels win.

Had another crazy, not very relevant idea... but Ill add it anyway.

How about adding dangerous weather at sea?
Im thinking an AI (Barbarians) and give them a bunch of 'Storm' units. These are essentially 'ships', which cant be killed and look like clouds, that can only move slowly on deep ocean and do bombard damage to whatever they run into.
Damage level could be set to be severe for early ships but not much problem for later units.

Achtung Stukas!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MoUs8ZlbK0

Yeah, good to divide into;
Fighter - Only air attack including missiles, bombers and fighter bombers, does not protect ground units, unreachable by ground units.
Fighter bomber - Limited/poor air attack, is reachable by ground units (So you cant use it to just block tiles while also attacking, but maybe with defence bonus), does normal attacks not bombard, ignores walls and forts.
Bomber - Heavy bombard attack only. unreachable by ground units.

This would avoid the situation where your enemy is attacking you with masses of fighters and you cant do anything about it until you also get fighters...

For forts full of units, thats why there needs to be bombard attack unit, to wear down multiple units before they can be taken out individually by conventional attacks.

By Vectrons sturdy trousers, you are right!

Its way too powerful as it is. I am used to having to compensate for poor research when using Tribal+Pyramids gov for high production, but with Fundamentalism you also get insanely rich at the same time. Its the extra trade per tile that does it..
I think it would only be fair if none of the happiness improvements worked and there where also lower empire size limits to cause more unhappiness. Then the fact you have to use a lot of your trade for luxuries would balance things out.

I was enjoying this game despite a slow start...
Personally I would be ok with just restarting with the same rules/setup.
Redistribute the currently active players into new equal teams.

Another suggestion.. I like the archer as an infantry bombard unit in LT44, but it is weak and there are no later equivalents until flight.
So maybe make alpine troops into snipers? There are already riflemen, partisans, cavalry and marines in that period which do defence or attack just as well as alpines.
Sniper unit could be able to keep the movement over all terrain, do bombard attacks to weaken enemies and withdraw, then maybe even be only visible from adjacent tiles like subs so they are hard to find behind enemy lines.

Something to bear in mind..  some people might be using some form of linux on ARM devices, for example I have previously used Linux Deploy to to play freeciv on a rooted smartphone and tablet and at the moment Im experimenting with Debian Noroot (Because I have a work phone).
On all the various options I have tried it is extremely difficult to 'make' stuff from source that will compile properly on ARM linux, so you have to rely on installing freeciv via package manager. Ive not seen an ARM linux version with freeciv 2.6, most still have 2.4...

Not a reason not to do it though, Im sure im in the minority with this kind of stuff...

Just to add to whats been said already;
More capital defence - No.. if you dont locate and defend your capital well enough its your own fault.
No Civil war - Agree. Theres no place for AIs in longturn and no way to do it without AIs.. unless cities are just divided between neighboring players.
no auto palace. - Yes this would be a great alternative penalty for losing your capital. I suggest that the palace should have a base happiness bonus for all cities, so if you lose it you will get unrest everywhere until you build another, so simulating the effects of civil war/revolution without actually splitting players. So it not a knock out blow if you take a players capital but they will be weakened.

Major wonders favour players who are already winning..  The player with the largest production will be able to build them first and then get even more of a boost. This widens the gap between 'winning' and 'losing' players and makes it even harder to keep up and have a chance.

Personally I like things that level the playing field and allow smaller players to have a chance if they strategically work together. Rather than getting hopelessly left behind by a couple of advanced players and not being able to do anything when they roll over them with bombers and tanks..

Im ok with that, because after all both teams have the same rules to work with, but I can see how pooled research might cause problems.

Suppose most of your team are on a continent and you are the only one on a island. If everyone else thinks ships are a very low priority then you are screwed. Also with differences between players who want to be more militaristic or more focussed on long term development, someone is not going to have the tech they need for their prefered strategy.

Option 4 would be my choice for team game. Everyone can research what they think is important, but the whole team benefits when it is shared (Especially if diplomacy is enabled from the start for the whole team).

On the subject of 'dead weight' players.. Maybe it would be good to remove penalty on gold exchange for team games? Smaller players cant add much to research, because they will always be behind, but they could transfer gold to main researchers (So they can raise their research rate and lower tax) or to players in front line combat.

Not Monotheism?
The ancient greeks and romans where pretty good at astronomy and very religiously tolerant of many polytheistic and philosophical beliefs. (Except the Spartans, but I think they are more Tribal..)
Fundamentalists arrived with the old testament Jews and Christians...
Same for the phoneicians, egyptians etc. until Mohammed got his fundamentalists together to conquer N africa.
Monotheistic Medieval Europe was peak fundamentalist..

Look forward to trying it though.maybe an improved Despotism (Shit economy high growth?), so that it is an option with pyramids, would be nice.

Flagship looks good!
I thought we where going to get some artillery units with bombard capabilities this game, or was that LT42?