Okay, so here's an idea.  Or rather, here's a set of challenges for gameplay we're all struggling with.

1) We'd like to limit the number of cites, and make them mean something.

2) We don't want to micromanage them, at least not very often.

3) We'd like some flexibility built into the city plan, so we can adjust to differing needs

4) We'd like to exploit the uniqueness of EWOM's city-on-map mechanic for something in addition to defense.

Some good ideas have been floated, like the combining of like tiles (say, 2x2 gardens) into one big tile that gets a bonus to food.  Or putting supporting buildings adjacent to gain bonuses to production, like a granary next to a farm improving the output of the farm.

So, now to the idea.

There are four basic resources cities can currently produce: food, materials, research, and prestige.  Yes, they can also produce ore, crystals, and shards, but those require special tiles, currently.  Suppose you can choose what 4 tiles you'd like to gang together.  Say you put together 2 gardens, a mill, and a pub (don't ask me what that would end up being; I'm guessing it'd be something out of Amish Girls Gone Wild).  Those four tiles would produce 6 food, 1 materials, and 1 prestige separately.  But now, you combine them into a supertile (2x2), and it can only produce 1 of those resources, but it quadruples the rate of production. 

But here's the trick:  You can choose which resource that is, and you can change it down the road.

Lemme 'splain.  No, there is too much.  Lemme sum up.  In our example above, when you create the supertile, you get a menu that asks which resource.  If you choose materials, the supertile generates 4 materials (quadruple the 1 material that the mill was producing).  If you choose food, you get 24 food (quadruple the 6 food that the two gardens were producing).  Same with the prestige, if you choose it, you get 4 prestige.

Now, say at some point in the game, you need the food more than the prestige.  Click on the supertile, and change it.  It will take one turn per level of the city (1 turn at village, 5 turns at city) to change over, during which you're producing nothing, but after that, your city is retooled.  It's faster than demolishing and rebuilding, and minimizes the micromanagement.  Instead of trying to manage all the little tiles, you just click and adjust the supertiles to adjust to your changing needs; it's effectively 1/4 of the micromanagement.

But Winni, you say, I adore micromanagement.  I plan on asking it to marry me next weekend when we're in the kitchen sorting individual grains of rice by texture.  No problem, I say, the old system still works.  Turn off the supertile (that should be instantaneous), demolish what you want, and build back up any way you want. 

But building supertiles offers a way to cut city management down significantly, gives you some flexiblity for city output that's faster than demolish and rebuild, and allows you to make specialist cities that do mean something (4 mills together=16 materials in a supertile, you just can't do anything else with that; you traded your flexibility for high output).  There's also a benefit to keeping a city from growing too big; the smaller the settlement is, the faster they can change their supertiles and adapt to changing conditions.

But Winni, you say, that makes us have meaningful cities, with little micromanagement, yet some flexibility and reward for civic planning, and exploits the uniqueness of the city on map!  That's all four of the problems; you're a genius!  Yes, I say, yes I am.  I wish I'd thought it up out of whole cloth, but the idea stems from specialist economies in Civ4, and the ideas of tile joining and adjacency from these forums.

-fin-

Winni