An Empire should not be one big homogeneous (did I wrote that well?) entity. Simply look at most of today's huge political, and you will see they are subdivided in Stats, Provinces (Canada!

), departement, and others..
Usually, in Star Trek/Star Wars, empires are subdivided in "sectors", with a capital sector who is the key world.
Now, how could we impliment that in the game? I remember, in Civilization (and AC), the more bases/cities you had, the more corruption/waste were generated, and the distance from your Civ's capital was an important factor.
Now, instead of simply having one "Homeworld" (with the "Civilisation Capital" construction), we could buy some "Sector Capital" (and upgrade from the original "colony settlement"). And select which planets would be dependant from that capital. (That way, you could have the "Home Sector", the "Conquered Yor Sector", etc...)
These options would be implimented when you upgrade your Governement type. After all, it would make no sense in an "imperial" type of governement, but what about in a republic? or democracy?
What would it do, exactly? Simple. Elections would not be empire-wide, but sector-wide. If you favor one sector over the other, the left-alone would be kinda... eer.. "rebellious"? Defections (Either from cultural influence or random events) from your empire would not be in a (sorry to say), unlogical planet-by-planet basis, but on a sector-basis. It's one political entity, if it defects, it defects as a whole.
And defections would be less based on a random factor. After all, the Yor sector you just conquered, could become to think it could go thrive on it's own, if it becomes powerful ennough. The Iconians could "make an offer they would not refuse".
Sectors would become "Minor-races-in-a-major", kind of...
Anyway, it's still a draft idea, open for suggestions. What do you think?
edited to correct a stupid typo