Okay, I've made two sort of farreaching suggestions regarding the game's diplomatic system in other threads, and thought it would be a good idea if I collected some of my ideas together as the basis of a proposed expansion pack.

Basically, the expansion pack I'm proposing would add a large amount of functionality to the United Planets, as well as establishing political borders and affecting internal politics.

Political Borders

Basically, I don't like the idea that ships can move entirely freely through other people's space, and especially not the ability to park transports around other people's planets. This is especially true when the AI can tell you to go away or they'll declare war, but you can't say the same to the AI.

At the same time, the influence borders are poor things to use as actual military boundaries, especially as one's influence borders can engulf planets, which would mean that they would be cut off from their owners were influence used as a military border.

One major con to political borders that other civs cannot enter is that situations where two civs own planets in a single star system would become next to impossible, as the establishment of one planet would make the other planets in the system off limits.

On the other hand, if the Terrans choose not to colonise Mars, that doesn't mean that the Arcean Empire or somesuch should be able to swagger into Earth's system and take it without provoking a huge diplomatic incident.

Thus, I would propose this: Introduce a concept of a zone of control. This is an area which a civilization holds legitimate political and/or military control. Only freighters may enter this zone without penalty.

Any other ship which enters a zone of control, and is within sensor range of the zone of control's owner, may be asked to leave. If the request for removal is accepted, the ship is considered to be out of range, and must set an autopiot course out of the other civ's space (if this could be done automatically to the nearest non-offending point, even better). If the party being asked to leave does not wish to, they must declare war.
Establishing a colony or building a starbase within these zones can be considered an act of war, or at the very least can make the other civilization very angry.

Military-, Planetary-, and Starbase-Access Treaties would be introduced to permit certain kinds of ship to operate within one's borders, governing military ships, colony ships, and constructors, respectively. A Trade Embargo would do the same for Freighters.

One year after a planet is Colonised (adjustable for size of the galaxy, if need be), a zone of control is established around the planet, with a radius of ten parsecs (again, potentially adjustable for the size of the galaxy). This would be automatically established around the Capital. Thus, in the first year, any other colony ship that shows up to colonise a planet in a multi planet system will be able to do so, but this system will prevent some empire colonising that worthless class 4 planet smack-bang in the middle of your empire once all the good planets have run out.

Initially, one will be able to extend political borders with Military Starbases, which through a border patrol module can establish a five-parsec radius zone of control at a fairly hefty cost, the intention here being that if you've colonized a planet ousider of the reach of your political borders (i.e. it is more than twenty parsecs from the nearest planet), you can plug the hole in your border with an expensive stopgap.

Much later in the game, new starbase modules will become available for both inluence and military starbases that increase the zone of control, allowing you to lay out a concrete border.

Finally, where two zones of control overlap (for example, planets in a multi-planet system). a demilitarised zone is created, where both can demand that ships leave the zone.

The United Planets

Every year, the United Planets comes and goes with one resolution that frequently is not particularly interesting. I'd like to add more depth to the whole thing, with diplomatic horsetrading and petty bickering and such.

I would propose that each civ should be able to suggest a resolution for the UP to vote on.

Once each race has selected their resolution, all the resolutions are displayed, along with buttons beside each resolution to contact each leader concerning that resolution. Contacting a leader would lead to negotiations regarding that resolution, where the leader might demand credits, goods or technologies for a vote the way you want, or a vote in favour of their resolution or against a resolution aimed at them.

Possible resolutions would be things like economic sanctions against an Empire, turning control of a planet over to the civ making the resolution, ordering a civ to grant the independence of a civ it has conquered, ordering a civ to return planets conquered from others to their original owners, economic sanctions, etc. along with all of the random UP events.

One would be given the option of making a resolution with a dropdown box of the sort "[civ] gives [thing] to [otherciv]", or would be able to select a special resolution to suggest instead. The Special resolution would be randomly chosen from the current list of UP events, but the civ would know which one it was suggesting before choosing to suggest it.

Lastly, some resolutions are easier than others. Civs should be more willing to vote for economic sanctions than they would be to vote to turn over control of a planet to someone else. The demands they make to vote a certain way should reflect this, and some civs should outright refuse to vote for or against certain resolutions. The Drengin wouldn't ever vote in favour of letting a civ they've conquered go free.
Similarly, a civ on the recieving end of a really bad resolution might refuse to comply and just leave the UP, and should be more likely to do it than if it is hit with something minor.

Politics

I propose to revamp the politics system, which might make this impractical except for Gal Civ 3 (though since I have no idea of how much work is involved vs. how much work is reasonable for an expansion pack, for all I know everything I've suggested so far is impractical).

The first thing which I would like to change is the voting system. I think that each progressive system of government should change the way in which people vote, as follows:

Imperial - No Voting
Republic - Two Party System
Democracy - Four Party System
Federation - Multi Party System

To outline what this means, at the start of the game, the game would select one party to be the opposition, and two other parties to be Third Parties. When the civ becomes a Republic, most citizens will vote either for the main party or the opposition party, and the third parties might win one or two seats. Once the civ is a democracy, this changes into a Four Party System, where most citizens vote for the main party, the opposition, or the two third parties. In a federation, citizens just vote according to the normal mechanisms.

I would propose changing the political parties slightly so that each of them has their platfrom tied to a primary and secondary ideology, one of the four victory types. Their bonuses would change to reflect this.

Militarist (conquest / alliance) -- HP, Soldiering, Diplomacy
Industrialist (conquest / influence) -- Military Production, Social Production
Federalist (alliance / technology) -- Economics, Diplomacy, Research
Populists (alliance / influence) -- Diplomacy, Morale, Influence
Technologist (technology / conquest) -- Research, Espionage, Weapons
Universalist (technology / alliance) -- influence, Luck, Population, Research
Pacifist (influence / technology) -- Social Production, Diplomacy
Mercantilists (influence / conquest) -- Trade, Trade Routes, Military Production

With this implemented, a system for coalition government could be added. It would work as follows:

When you select your political party at the start of the game, your party's polar opposite is selected as the opposition. If the Militarists were selected as the main party, the opposition would be the Pacifists, as these two parties do not share a victory condition aim (where there are two such parties, such as for the Federalists vs. the Mercantilists & Industrialists, one opposition party is chosen).

The two third parties would be selected according to compatible ideologies, one sharing the major ideology of the main party, and one sharing the major ideology of the opposition. For the Militarists, this is the Industrialists, Technologists and Mercantilists, who all have the Conquest ideology; for the Pacifists, this is the Industrialists, Populists and Mercantilists, who all share the Influence ideology, there is overlap here, but any two can still be chosen.

If the government wins only a plurality of votes, it must create a coalition. When a coalition is created, the government loses half of the bonuses given by the main party and gains half of the bonuses of the coalition party if the coalition is two way, two thirds of its bonuses and one third each of its coalition partners if it is three way, etc. etc.

Each week, there is a percentage chance that the coalition will break down, and that an opposition coalition will take power, stripping you of your bonuses and implementing the largest opposition party's bonuses as penalties. Initially, you coalition is very stable, with a 0% chance of collapsing, but this increases as your government goes on.

Through the term of the coalition government, random events occur where your coalition partner tries to get you to implement their policies. Instead of a good/neutral/evil choice, you get an accept/compromise/block choice. If you accept your partner's proposal, they gain more influence in government, and you get a small increase in the bonuses that stem from their party, however, as your party loses influence, you lose some more of the bonuses your party grants you, and these losses are greater than the bonuses you recieve. If you compromise, no change occurs to your bonuses, but the chance of the coalition breaking down each week increases by 1 percentage point. If you block their proposal, you lose some of the bonuses granted to you by that party, but regain some of those granted by your own, and the bonuses you regain are greater than the bonuses you lose. However, the chance of the coaliion breaking down each week increases by 5 percentage points.

Thus, selecting the blocking option might seem the better initial choice, but you can pay for it if your coalition breaks down and you incure penalties of the opposition party, while on the other hand letting your partner push you around can lead to having a poor man's version of your coalition member, instead of the party you chose at the beginning.

This idea would go hand in hand with making morale much harder to keep up, and causing it to tend more naturally towards 50%, in order to make tight elections more likely. Alternatively, one could simply make happy people still willing to vote for other patries, such that 70% morale might translate to just 45% at the polls, as happy people might think they could be even happier under another government.


And that's the extent of my ideas for an expansion for now. Most of it is probably impossible to implement for anything short of Gal Civ 3, but what the hell, I felt like getting my ideas out there, and I think they would improve the game massively if implemented. They would be gamechanging additions, but I feel I've covered things well enough that they wouldn't be gamebreaking, and would make Galciv 2 more fun than the large amount it already is.