I’m strongly against the inclusion of a necessary “gimmicks” for new civs - the lack of players for the African and Native civs shows that high-micro gimmicks work against civ playability, not for. Both civs require high input and micro on the player’s side to manage Influence and the Plaza.
On the other hand, the Asian civs have too little input - a healthy balance somewhere between the effort that Influence requires and the lack of input that Export requires would be a good place to look for.
That’s why I gave the idea that Tortuamerica civs gain three subfactions - One based on wood, one based on food, and one based on coin. Each subfaction gains “Furs” (name is a placeholder for now) as they collect the natural variant of their primary resource and has a method for indefinitely producing said natural resource.
The Eastern Woodlands natives would gain the Too’te Lodge (or similar), a defensive building that produces trees over time.
The Prairie natives would gain the Buffalo Pound that produces bison throughout a game.
The PNW natives would gain… I’m not entirely sure, the gold variant needs a lot of work and thought that I haven’t put into them yet.
But the general idea is to give them a fourth resource they need to balance alongside their normal resources that allows them to “trade” for upgrades and units that they wouldn’t normally have on their own. It would require more micro than Export, but less than Influence, and it would give the Tortuamerican civs a solid identity to lean into that emphasizes the trade networks that ran criss-cross North America.
(And at a later point, maybe the introduction of a fourth, harder-to-play subfaction based on the Desert natives, like the Navajo, Apache, and Hopi, that gains Furs from all three natural resources and has to card/upgrade/age up in specific ways to increase their Fur income from specific natural resources.)
However you put it, the Plaza is clearly not engaging, and the clear lack of care into the Native civs makes them less interesting to play overall when compared to other civs. Why would a new player want to play a civ that has minimal effort put into it when the Euro civs give new skins and named units all over the place?