Bigger empire sizes while not bigger at the same time?

[wieder]

How about this?

LT40 now has empire sizes between 22-29. It's possible to have slightly bigger empires if you have certain wonders. however getting 100 cities is probably not possible without anarchy.

We could start with empire sizes 10-15 and then increasing the empire sizes with new technologies being researched. If any player gets tech x, the empire sizes will grow for all the players. With this approach there is however one issue. It's not easy to know if the empire size is now bigger since there are no embassies in the start.

Instead of techs there could be world wonders that would grow the empire sizes for all the players. This would not only benefit the big nations if the empire size would be grown with less unhappy people for all the players and all the cities. Player with lots of cities could get one more city and a player with less cities would get one less unhappy for his/her cities. Of course the effect would not be that great once the Shakespeare's has been built but it would be there.

There could be like 6 wonders each giving everyone 2 more unhappy.

The difference between this setup and LT40 would be the following. You could no longer grab the max number of cities in the start. Instead you could try grabbing land and maybe reserving some spots for future cities but you would have hard time actually building bigger empires too soon.

The governments would still be different and there would be some differences between the govs regarding the number of cities they can handle, but the main focus with govs would be on sociological, economical and other stuff besides empire size.

A big nation building world wonder to increase the number of cities would also help the smaller nations with less cities and maybe with less space to build. It would not help the small nations to get on the same level but just help them not being left too much behind. This should also keep the game competitive for a longer period of time.

[Corbeau]

If the goal is to prevent unrealistic early landgrab, then unhappiness-by-size doesn't help much. It will still be possible to build cities in a way to "reserve" a bigger area and then fill it up later on. If you wnt this, then corruption-by-distance is a much better limiting factor forcing players to shape their empires more naturally and more according to their level of progress.