>>258221>For example, if playing as a democracy and conquering a region filled with authoritarians I'd like to see the "congress" of the new planets and sectors reflect that, of playing an authoritative or imperial government can allow you to stack the local governments with loyal factions or recall their political assembly rights all togetherThe faction system does something like this, doesn't it? Those auth pops don't convert to dem pops. They stick around and if they don't convert, they found an Auth party in your factions screen. There's not depth to it beyond pandering to their beliefs. The only way to prevent this is to build Deep Space Black Sites.
But considering improvements, I would definitely add a lot more roleplaying. I would use the archaeologist mechanics to create political storylines. These storylines would be triggered by events and conditions in the game.
For example, if you're a Democracy with an Auth party and a Dem party and you just finished a terrible war with aliens, a storyline would occur were the Auth party would demand a stronger central government to prevent another horrible loss. Events in the storyline would include food shortages, terror attacks, economic slumps. The purpose of these storylines would be to allow the player to roleplay their choice of government.
This roleplaying would add a lot more depth to each branch of government ethics (Military, Xenophobe, Auth, etc...).
There would be generic storylines, which can happen to any faction, and there would be storylines unique to each branch. A Xenophobe gov and a Xenophile gov would each react differently to a storyline about incoming Xeno refugees.
As for the characters, the governors would factor into these political storylines the way scientists factor into archaeologist storylines - the higher the level the faster the progression through the storyline. They would gain or lose traits depending upon the choices you make in these storylines.
