I have the following views on game length and turns.
Earlier turns has a larger strategic impact in making the foundation of the empire and later turns are more interesering and intense with more cities, units and technologies in place.
1. Term Length should be progressively built up along the lines along eras. but still must be of predictable nature, so we can arrange elections. A purely turn based system makes it impossible for moderators and justices to run legal cases and arrange elections, as the running of those turns may vary. However, making a hybrid between the two of those would make perfectly sense. In fact, everything revolves around technologies, strategic resources and the ability to build special units.
This means that the strategy crafted by one administration effectively ends with the revelation of a new strategic resource, defining Japans chances to expand. So by dividing terms by the revelation of these techs, we would balance the type of strategy followed, allow to have consistent policies through one term based on that tech and resource, and make the administration accountable for their actions. Did they do well or not with the cards and resources they had been given. In order to generate proper time ahead of an election, it should also be a general rule that strategic resource techs are well planned research goals, so that elections are announced when the research path of the tech preceding the resource tech and the resource tech itself are
announced and fixed. This means low flexibility in the conclusive days of the administration and a smooth transition for the next administration to take over not too much of the old policies of the old administration. Yet, there must be deadlines on this development of terms by resource tech, so creating a window of say 25-35 days would suffice, very close to a month but still flexible except for the inclusion of the resource tech deadline of the administration, announced by the tech dept.
Iron Term 1
Saltpeter Term 2 Gunpowder
Coal Term 3 steam
Oil/rubber Term 4 refining
Aluminium/Uranium Term 5 whichever comes first
2. Period of time required to be declared in absentia
1 week
failure to deliver on defined deadlines agreed on by minister
Deputy selections should be minister appointed, like in real life. Especially if the campaign has been known to see some mudslining or very opposite logics of doctrine.
A minister must have the freedom to organize his own dept. Yet, I see that even if Sarevok and Falcon02 would cooperate very well in the Milli dept, that does not apply to all cases. I think the minister should know what additional skills he needs.
In fact, I may even consider running mates in elections for ministries, so people can select a real management team for each ministry.