Athenian Olives

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

This topic is near and dear to my heart since it defined Athenian identity.  Namely, I refer to olives and how they could be represented.  If this has already been implemented in some form since I last played, my apologies.

Olive technology or bonus: Simply by having a technology or bonus that makes Athenian farmers produce metal alongside food would be one easy step in representing their use.  It does, however, perhaps leave some to be desired in giving interesting choices.  

Trade technology: Olives were important primarily for facilitating trade, and having perhaps two technologies that represent that would be nice since it could also introduce a way of depicting black and red figure ware as the technology names, a nice nod to their prolific pottery.  

Unique farm: much like Age of Empires 3, there could be a farm that produces only metal.  Since this would probably require a new farm asset, it is perhaps the least most desirable option.

I am well aware that the farm related bonuses would feel redundant when Athens already has a mining bonus.  One way of solving that would be to make the mining bonus only unique to Themistocles.  Although the mine does seem to have been known prior to his day, he was the one who harnessed it for the production of triremes.
 

[Seleucids]

Interesting idea! 

We can have a tech that allows Athenian farmers to produce 1 metal every 10 seconds.

In addition, we can give Athenians a metal extractor building, which works identically to a field but produces metal instead of food when you assign workers onto it. This allows Athenians to consume metal even when they have run out of natural mines. 

These metal boosts enables the Athenian player to make large quantities of merc jav inf which takes advantage of Iphicrates bonus. Additionally, it allows them to counter champion cav with City Guards.

[Gurken Khan]

Another idea I had was making olive ~fields that can cling to mountains; on maps like Hellas it can be difficult to place regular fields. In addition we could make them work a bit different as you suggested.