After Pondering for awhile.....

[aaatoysandmore]

The way food and production are done are really nothing new. I knew I had seen that type of production before whether food is produced or industrial. Master of Magic did it first. You had population icons and you clicked on each one whether it produced food or industrial points. The icon would change shape depending on what you chose and you got the benefits of a square in other ways like a certain amount of mana, gold, trees and other bonus's (defense) to the city squares without having to physically put a citizen in them. So, basically you got all the bonus's of the city when you settled. Good method of economy and play best I ever saw. You weren't restricted by the number of squares a city had to grow you were only restricted by population itself and the amount of time it took to create a population icon. It seemed to take more and more points with each increase in size.

Also those population icons would change based on taxation morale and a certain amount of citizens became disgruntled depending on the tax rate and other corruptions. They wouldn't produce anything. So the more population you had the more disgruntled population became. I always did like that sort of population growth and usage as it made me keep taxes low or deal with less food growth and production.