In a new edition, I think it would work well to have a base game which has the Wisdom and Warfare combat cards and government cards as standard. The Errata-ed Civlization sheets could do with a proper printing too.

A thought I had was, do the plastic Gold and Trade trackers need to be attached to the Civilization sheets? With 16 different Civilizations, this means 16 trackers when you only really need 6. 5 is the maximum number of players, and of course Japan's science costs a different amount. They could print the Civilization sheets separately and save on costs.

Another thought is, the fiddly markers which show how developed your military is (you know, the things on the market board which you turn over when a Tech upgrades your military) could be replaced with a simple coloured counter. You start off with your colour counters on the 5 Hammer squares, and when a tech upgrades your military more it to the 7 Hammer square and so on. Similarly, do we need a counter for each Leader on the Culture Track? Why not just have a coloured counter? Again, you'd only need 5 counters instead of the 16 we have now.

Also, I would give each deck a Spaceflight Card. Since tech plays are supposed to be secret until everyone has revealed, just having one card between all the players makes that tricky. Also, I like to play the "Multiple Victories" variant, where you don't win until you have 2 (or sometimes more) victories in place.

I want military to be a little less abstracted, and at some point I want city states and religion.

City-states and religion are both in Wisdom & Warfare. Some Village tokens reveal a City-State icon which are one-square settlements which if you garrison an army in will give your capital a strength boost plus another bonus. Religion is handled as a social policy, so you can either have no religion, Natural Religion (which speeds up lone army figures) or Organized Religion (+1 gold and gives you greater choice of Great People). Would be cool to have named religion specifically handled though: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism etc.

I dunno about making the military less abstracted. Having the Unit Cards which specify the contents of the army, and army figures which (along with city tiles) specify the *location* of the army means that Military can be a part of the game without completely taking over the game. If each player had dozens of plastic military sculptures in the shape of soldiers, boats, planes, tanks etc then the game would not only be way more expensive, the movement phase would take way longer with ludicrous amounts of micro-management needed to play the game properly.

The city states in there are nice start, but I want something more. And as for religion, having religion social policies doesn't really cut it for me. I want religion to be a whole mechanic like in Gods and Kings.

Actually, what I'd really want is an iOS version of the board game and the expansions. With the art work that fantasy flight uses, my god. It would be beautiful.

Hexagonal maps!!

This is the main thing that ticked me with the board game.

I know it was made before Civ 5 came out, but, being a major player of Civ 5, it really annoys me that the board game has squares instead of hexes.

Also, I agree that there should be a more Civ-loyal military system, with individual units instead of 'armies'.

Personally I think the expansions smoothed out a lot of the problems of the original game. I do agree with OP that the trade and coin wheels could be done better. It would be easier to pack away as well.

The small military tokens could definitely use some improvements as well. We don't place them in the market place since they're hard to read for everyone from there. Instead we usually have them lined next to the player's starting tile because that's usually where you're looking when the numbers interest you.

We use colored dice for the culture track. They're useful for determining the start player as well.

In a new version I would love to see non-military tactics to play a bigger role. Almost 70% of the games we play are won by culture and the rest 30% by military. Culture is the fastest non-military path and it's a great backup for military. And military victories can occur just to stop someone from reaching cultural victory...if there's someone who's military is not up to speed.

We've houseruled the 2nd culture track spots to cost 1 more culture and the 3rd culture track spots to cost 2 more culture. It's more balanced but still the fastest way. It's kinda annoying that every single game turns the same way. Hoarding military power and culture along the way. Technology seems less efficient there for raising military might than the actual military power from just great people, investments and structures. One Great General is like a free level 2 unit in your army. More peaceful and economical ways to win would be welcome. The current problem is that you can build a science engine but you probably can't keep your military efficient at the same time.

And while I know it's difficult the game should be somewhat balanced from the get-go. Now, some nations are silly powerful while others are just pathetic. Civilization is definitely the game we have made the most houserules for and they're usually to nerf the randomness of the game effects like relics. In some cases we've buffed some great people like the guy that lets you look at every hut and village token in game and possessed by people. We made the choice for the player. He can keep the guard and always look at people's tokens or he can just discard it.

Also I'd like some way for the value of trade go down and hammers go up. Because at the moment, trade is king. You can get a free unit when you train an army so that costs 4 hammers. You can easily get there. So sacrificing production in order to get more trade is always worth it since it's needed for tech and advancing in the culture track. And that makes the map tiles highly variable. Map tiles that give lots of hammers are thought to be useless while map tiles that give a lot of trade but maybe not as much hammers are thought to be good.

It was my understanding that the Economic victory was the fastest, but then I've never used any of the expansions.