If religion could be used to represent another concept in EB, I think that that would be fabulous, but what would you do with it?

One possibility that I think could be very exciting is to use 'religion' to represent ethnic demographics. That is, you could have 'religions' of Hellene, Roman, Carthaginian, Celtic, Persian, etc. Each city would have a starting breakdown of ethnicities that could be subsequently affected by the buildings built by the controlling faction. When a city is conquered by a faction, if its ethnic composition is hostile to the conqueror then there would be more unrest, more revolts, lower income etc. It could also have an impact on the troops available to be trained.

This would make the building of colonies and the settlement of veterans in conquered territories a major component in strategy, which I don't think that it is now. That is, not only could you get a 5% public order bonus from building a colony, you also get an 'conversion' bonus that would eventually change the demographic makeup of the city, making a larger garrison less necessary.

This idea is not intended to replace the current 'ethnicities' that are part of the traits system, but to complement and extend it to have more impact on game play.

I think that something along these lines could have a mjor impact in the later stages of a game, when the first surge of conquest turns into consolidation and integration of a large empire. I find this (in RTW) dull, tedious and not terribly difficult. Having to deal with a multi-ethnic heterogenous population could be a whole new and exciing challenge.

Needless to say it would be a hell of a lot of work for the EB team. I wish I knew how to work on it myself.