I'm confused here. Having "three types" for each system of government would be far, far worse for the UI. Think of it in terms of the policy tree: What you're suggesting is that each individual policy is a whole section in itself, instead of being part of a bigger "whole".
No, I don't. You had 8 x 3 types. I said, better to just make it 24 types per se.
But that's what made these features so great - they WEREN'T together. They were istinctly seperate things. You could worry about Religion while ignoring Espionage and vice versa. I think that making them all work in the same way is effectively just doing exactly what Civ 5 did with policies: Restrict choice by the player.
No they weren't. Religion made you a lot of money, it gave culture and happiness and it had an effect with Diplomacy, be it how much other leaders liked you or as a multilateral forum via the Apostolic Palace. Espionage was more separate but it was always a decision how much you want to invest, you couldn't do it in both. Corporations at last were meshed with Ressources and very alike to the present city state-system.
One thing I'm having trouble with is seeing how to alter or create new 'windows', eg. the Policies window. I may need some guidance in the right direction here.
Is that even possible having a new window? It certainly would be nicer than having the Buildings as a stand in for the governments. But is it worth the coding time?
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to the general topic.
So what would the new Governance yield do? Just for changing governments a la you can chose a new one when the bucket is full? Sounds unfun and inflexible...
I'd like to elaborate on the Stability system here. You start at +10 stability and every action you do gives you a permanent minus or bonus. Theocracy f.e. gives you +1 stability/governance per Temple. Trade Routes give you one and Open Borders, Constructing Wonders, certain Buildings (City Hall, Police Station, Court Houses) and so on. Founding Cities lowers the counter, as does losing wars and acquiring new tiles, annexing and puppeting cities and so on. The idea is that expansion makes your empire bigger but you do need a certain infrastructure to control the new Citizens. So it's a continuous struggle for balance. As stated above, Happiness could be the controlling factor for population where excess results in Golden Ages, while Stability is the controlling factor for wide empires and result in revolutions (on the lower end) and also Golden Ages on the higer end.
Now where do Governments come in? They allow you to generate the necessary stability via your playstyle. For Example Monarchy gives you stability per garrison thus helping wide empires (per city effect) but also having synerchy with Honor and Tradition. Imperialism/Colonialism gives you stability per ressource controlled so go on gather those ressources. They would have other effects as well. In the Antiquity, for example this could be [government wonders in "x"]:
Monarchy "Royal Palace"
For empires with problems in happiness and stability. Allows you to expand peacefully or militarily early on. [+1 happiness and stability per garrison, the "Royal Palace" gets additional x stability, gold and experience for units].
Republic "Senate"
For empires with no problems in stability. Rather gives up stability bonuses for enhanced yields [+15% science and +15% gold empire wide, -1 stability per city]
Tribal Council "Field of Mars" (got a better idea?)
à la the Mongols, Huns, Aztecs or any other militaristic society. Gives stability bonuses for pillaging or razing. [+1 stability per 0.5 conquered population, +25% while building units or enhanced barracks]
In the Middle Ages, Theocracy [good for stability and yield x, needs infrastructure], Feudalism [for undeveloped big empires, enhances farms and pastures and so on], Trade Federation/City States Federation à la Venice, Genoa, Hansa, the Dutch, etc. [stability and gold for luxury ressources, worse military]. The Early Modern Age gives you Colonialism/Imperialism [better settlers, overseas colonization and strategic ressources give stability; meant are empires with a Monarch that go all over the world like Portugal, Spain, England, Russia], Bureaucracy [Empires "at home" like the HRE, the Ottomans, Austria-Hungary etc. ; enhanced capital, needs infrastructure for stability] and Liberal Democracy [enhances Growth, Science and Gold, bad in stability]. The Modern Age fills up with Social Democracy [latest government, NOT better than Lib Democracy but gears you to a Culture victory instead of a Science victory with better culture, still bad at stability], Communism [stability for wide empires and good for building up infrastructure and buildings, so that new cities can become viable also in the modern era] and Fascism [Needed for Conquest victory].
So each era should offer you a choice between playing styles or victory conditions.. Huh, got a bit carried away here, sorry.
Last but not least, I'd advocate for the governments being adopted by building National Wonders costing 1 or so few hammers that you can build them in one turn. Government adoption needs to be fast so that you can react. Building them should result in a drop of stability for a few turns if that is possible. Thus peaceful and revolutionary Changes are possible, it just depends on your starting level. An example: There are 6 levels of stability: Very stable, stable, balanced, unstable, very unstable, collapsing. Unstable and below have certain maluses like lower science [lower production and gold is bad as you need those to get out of those levels]. So if you change from Fascism to Liberal Democracy, you drop to unstable and you need to wait 3 turns before the effects of Lib Dem kick in and bring you back up to Balanced.
Governance" yield produced by building, policies, traits, specialists, and so on. Everything you need is in the yield library I created. However, I think the code to display yields on the map terrain is in the game core. It's possible to store the information "tile A has N governance yield"... but I don't think it could be displayed.
culture per 
population tag:
