[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Combined research/intel projects. This would be especially handy with intel. This way, you can combine intel projects to run them at a lower cost at a single target.

I.e.:

You start a project. After 0.5 years, the target planet's food is poisoned. The next month or two, spies incite rebellious movements to lower the population's happiness. Then, after another few months, you place Puppet Political Parties to make the planet like you better. If that doesn't work, your spies incite rebels to take over the planet and turn it over to you. Then, you redirect the crews of ships and bases in orbit automatically, and then capture them.

You can do this in SEIV, but this requires frequent visits to the Intel screen. I know I said I'm a big fan of micromanagement, and I still am, but I don't want to have to select the same planet from a list of possibly hundreds of worlds. Also, intel acts don't really influence one another; they're separate entities, not an ongoing project. For example, in the above mentioned situation, the poisoning of the planet's food will reduce happiness somewhat and make the citizens somewhat less loyal. This in turn makes inciting rebels easier, since more people will want to help, and this in turn improves the success chance of the entire mission.

This is something you don't have in SEIV.

Btw, how can you be "promoted"? (I.e. from Private to Sergeant etc. all the way up to National Security Advisor.)