I would love to see different government types play differently rather than just being different bonuses. I like the idea of a senate that would have ratify your laws or declare war. I think the trick is that these governments would need to offer tangible benefits to offset the loss of player control. Otherwise, I feel like players would never choose them if they perceive it to be better to have total control. And it could be frustrating for the player if they want do an action and the senate stops it. It would feel like the player is not being allowed to play the strategy they want. Perhaps higher happiness leading to less revolts, better economy research, culture and industry could also be benefits of democracy government to offset the lack of military control. This would make democracy good at peaceful play. I think civ2 did this where it was hard to wage war in democracy but it was great for peaceful play. I also think that some policy cards should be government specific. That could also be a benefit if you needed a certain government in order to have a certain really good policy card. Perhaps each government could have unique policy cards just for them. And in democracy, the senate colud vote to pass a law (policy card) that would be a like a free card that does not count towards your total.
I am trying to figure a still gamey system that allow the players to keep control of the direction of their civ but through actions related to the development and needs of your population. Then at least for me the key is to give a more significative role to the
population (citizens/denizens). So like CIV already have specialists slots, all your population would have three identitatian parameters;
Class (social caste)
Heritage (ethnocultural) and
Belief (religion) those three variables could represent most kinds of political struggles that justify and provide flavor to whatever form of society the player develops.
Now talking specifically about government elements,
"who hold the power" is one of the key elements that gives you three options, Autocracy/Oligarchy/Democracy. Each of these options have their own mechanic so for example:
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Autocracy, the player can do a decree every certain fixed number of turns. These
decrees are powerfull bonus for a specific topic but only one can be in effect at once, have downsides in other aspect and when enacted it causes an empire wide happiness/loyalty malus.
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Oligarchy, depending what combination of "
source of legitimacy" and ideologies you have, certain kinds of citizens would be assigned as elites, this could be for example the clerics for Theocracy, the warriors for Monarchy, the traders for Capitalism, etc. Then the elites classes would have
pacts, their own set of bonuses that can be unlocked from the level of happiness/loyalty, the happier their are more and better bonuses they provide. But to secure this you could need to invest in favors and privileges that would mean spend yields and affect others kinds of citizens.
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Democracy, here we also have events certain number of turns, but these are
elections. When an election is held every kind of citizen whose average happiness/loyalty is at least X positive level would provide their own special bonus. Here the individual bonuses are more modest but we must note that are way more identitarian groups, so if we achieve to ballance the interests of our whole population we would boost every aspect of our empire.
Then we have three models, one more direct and specialized but also limited and risky, other that need you to invest more in few privileged groups, and the other that need you to be fair with your whole population to gain more bonuses. Going in more details, there would be minor civic/ideologies that are like policy wildcards, many of these have effects that help your to increase the happiness/loyalty of diverse groups then being good options to achieve the Democracy bonuses, examples are: Pluralism, Humanism, Activism, Suffragism, Abolitionism, Egalitarianism, Secularism, Syncretism, Pacifism, etc.
