I dunno if this has already been suggested, and if it has, oh well.

What if civilizations had to deal with the popularity of their population more? What I mean is, basically the way you control how much your own population loves/hates you is whether how high taxes are set, building improvements/trade goods, and techs.

I think it should be deeper than this. Your actions against other civilizations should affect how your own people think of you. For instance suppose you enjoy attacking and killing weaker civs, but your people belive in a sense of honor. Becasue of your actions, they would think less of you and therefore morale would go down.

Invasion tactics could be implemented this way as well with a attempted genocide of using mass drivers and core detanators would appear that the people's leader is a monster bent on the extermination of everyone else (which I know this is how some of you like to play). In today's world, we would be horrified and disgusted if leaders today used tactics that showed of genocide and it should show in futuristic game like this. In the end it would appear more realistic.

If you still wanted to blow your opponents into pieces, it would be easy to implement the tech Xeno Ethics to correspond with how your people think. Example of this would if that your're evil, your people would encourage evil deeds and the same thing would be considered for choosing good. Choosing good, by the way, should have better benfits than it already does.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that with every action you as a leader chooses to do, the appropraite reaction should be made by the people.

What do you all think?