You know, most players in this kind of community play a game like PnW for the community not for mechanics. If the community disappears, i'd highly encourage those kind of players to use the opportunity to try new things out.
If the problem is fairness, why not require to make bots at a certain point freely avaiable to the public? Prohibiting bots only makes sense when you can make money of them?
Else I do not see why we should prohibit game enhancers.
No. The only reason why soldiers can be spamed, is due to a lack of organisation of lower city count nations.
Manpower can for sure be an interesting mechanic to stop eternal war, but the soldiers are ok for the current system.