lol srry man i just read it again myself and i dont really clarify what im talking about lol but no im not really talking about balance lol

what i mean is i hope that if your civ has or does something crazy the world will address tht.

examples: 

1.say if you made some crazy spartan warriors they should  be a feared opponent to face. they should be seen as a great asset in your army and should be taken into consideration by the A.I whenever your about to have a battle. (also it would be pretty cool if they sometimes came up on a diplomatic conversation lol)

2.if youve developed the most epic and prosperous city in the world, your enemies should want to take it and your friends want to create more efficient trade routes that connect to it. also i added tht you should see adventurers come across the lands to restock like a hero would in an rpg game.

3. maybe your civ has a reputation of using the most advanced technologies or your civ is known to be a primitive feral civ tht lives in a forest

so generally i  just thought it would be cool if your civ had a reputation i.e: you hold key cities, train amazing soldiers or even just be special in someway.

the best way i can relate to this would be to give fable (or fable 2) as an example. in tht game you kill somebody and you hear people start talking about it. an example for this game would be tht you send your most recently trained elite troops into battle and they massacre the other army which gives them a reputation of being great warriors.

one of the reasons why i thought this would be cool is because when i play empire total war, i conquered about 90% of europe, other civs still try to fight me on land with an average army even though i have the best land units and technologies. i think if it were more realistic the A.I would know i have the best head to head armies and try to use guerilla style tactics on me. (i play on hard) 

anyway landisaurus i have complete faith in stardock to create a polished game tht will be well balanced and hopefully have some megaevents tht will force you into a full scale multi nation war lol.

I hope tht clarified my idea a bit better and feel free to criticize,praise, or improve lol

p.s im not familiar with the "just cause" spell lol

well this is the reason why i want this kind of thing in its because there seems there will be a lack of diversity since you can only be fallen or human and choose to align with 5 elements (im fully aware that this game will be easily modable)

but ya you got it right on if you have a bunch of crazy barbarians in a forest they can help export more wood to other civs, it would be sweet (as you said) for the A.I to acknowledge that you are a bunch of crazies living in a forest lol, they should have advantages at fighting in the woods and so you could temporarily ally yourself with them if youre a civilized civ and you want to kill other crazies living in a forest lol. but ya these guys should be expert woodsman economicaly and militarily.

so the reputation wouldnt really make a mechanical difference i just think if the A.I recognized the diversity among the different civs it would make a more colourful world. but if you want to make your race the best militarily in you "local" area since military is the top priority around there or be expert smiths since your towns are close to many mountains you should benefit economically/mechanically and your civ should reflect that cosmetically.

say if your extremely keen on research you should see many of your people taking more time to study and less physically healthy but more open to new ideas. say if you have expert miners and smiths you should see many burly men/women walk around with a shorter life expectancy and stuff.

the thing i would think would make the reputation thing really mechanical was if say your civ was very good militarily and had expert smiths but you lived more in a valley/plains area where there wasnt alot of ore. but you wanted to make the best swords/armor/shields possible and you just made friends with a mountain civ. you could start importing more of their top quality ore as a raw material and get your awsome smiths to break it down into weapons (that would be an ideal situation even though you would prob not have good smiths if you had almsot no mines lol). or you could apply the same thing to the crazies living in the woods if they made awsome bows and arrows or maybe you just need wood to make your city bigger. and thats what i meant when i said the world should be connected lol

and as for holding key cities or fortesses that should obviously benifit you militarily (more defensivley in my opinion) the A.I should identify that it is a key position (only if it is a major key position) and maybe that one aspect will prevent them from attacking you and could come up in a few diplomatic conversations. the crazy spartan unit is obvious as well

but ya thats kind of what i think the reputation thing should do. please feel free to comment

but ya just cause i saw you on the other topic i made, landisaurus, so we dont get confused with the underdog thing i personally think that every civ should have military benifits at fighting in its home territory. i say that just because i said the crazy forest guys should be better forest fighters than most.