As per my older post, My idea entails generating gold prom population.

I personaly find it unnatural to have big cities and having only merchant buildings producing gold. those peasants sure eat my food!

The idea is to make houses give a standard fixed gold income 0.5g or 1g per turn, scaling it apropriately with other housing types. This way even AI housing will produce gold.

I understand that this is indirect, and that the housing can be empty. However you do spend food even for empty houses, and you need food income to buid new. I don't know if that's enough to balance it, but it is worth a try I believe. Ultimately we can change the AI priority to also built extra housing. If anything else that would lead to bigger cities existing on the games we play, and perhaps solve other AI problems.

Your comments?

Anyone yet looked up on how to mod city buildings?