I would like to see GalCiv II adopt a research system similar to what exists in Hearts of Iron 2. In HOI 2, each country has a stable of companies that can be tasked to work on a research topic. For example, the USA would have IBM, General Motors, etc. Each company has unique characteristics (and a unique cost per turn) that enable it to perform research well in certain areas and not so well in other areas. When a country wants to do research, it looks at the available companies and selects the best suited (in terms of research skills, budget required, etc). Depending upon the resources available, each country can hire 1 to 5 companies.
Since each country has a unique set of companies, each country is geared to research into a particular area. Research in other areas would be sub-optimal. For example, applying this to GalCiv II, the Dregnin empire would have companies that excel in Military research areas, but would take a much longer time to research in Social areas.
In addition, since a company can only research 1 topic a time, a player that wants to do multiple reseach into 1 area, would have to use suboptimal companies to work on the topics in that research area
