[jc173]

Couple of ideas, well more like one idea and another comment.
If a non-blood thirsty emires glasses one of its old planets which has rebelled, this should trigger some sort of happiness penalty which if we're basing this civil war idea off of happiness sort of, should increase the chance of other planets to rebel. Granted along with this we need for the AI to remember which planets it used to own and have AI's take appropriate actions based on their play style, ie some empire may just blockade the world, most should try to retake the planet with ground forces, the very aggressive/angry AI's should just bLast the planet into cinders.

I still don't agree with MEE always triggering a delayed rebellion, for non-bloodthirsty empires. The citizens may end up with a serious of sense of righteousness even if it's a peaceful empire, ie we're a peaceful people all we did was expand our colonies, who are they to declare war on us?!? etc. Depending on how wars go sometimes they may engender a sense of nationalism(empirism?) in the general populace, especially if you're winning, which may be the case if you are MEE since you are supposed to be ahead of the other players.

Just my thoughts.