[Cyrien]

I remember some old Nintendo game that had something very like some of these suggestions happen.

Genghis Khan game or some thing... to long ago to remember... but I still very clearly remember the game and what happened.

I was playing as the Chinese and had successfully conquered all of the world cept for western Europe and England. I was just about to launch my final crushing blows to take out all the final opponents. Somewhere way back deep in my empire (Korea was first I think) one of my provinces revolts and breaks away. No problem I think. I had planned for revolts like this having had some earlier on (all provinces had more than one borer with another so I just made all of them have equal number of troops thus if one revolts the neighbors all invade and overwhelm the troops that would have been there that had revolted). I prepared to send in troops from the neighboring provinces and I take out the revolters. Next turn another one revolts. I take him down. Then another. Over and over it happens. Eventually my forces in the interior are exhausted and wiped out and poorly trained with fresh recruits. I am forced to send half my European invasion force into the interior to take control. Well the europeans attacked and though they lost they wiped out massive amounts of my troops. I no longer had enough to defend my borders and keep the wanton destruction in the interior from spreading out of control. To make a long story short (to late?) I wound up with India. From all the world of Asia and North Africa and Eastern Europe to India by itself.

Now if I remember correctly the effect that made this possible was that in this game you had a ruler and little peons. You as the ruler never had to worry about revolts in the provinces you ruled over directly. But you had an efficiency rating and the more you ruled directly the less efficient it was and the more you lost. Eventually it wasn't possible to effectively rule everything yourself. You were forced to delelate to the peons. Each one had a loyalty rating and other simple Ratings. You start with the loyals and move down. However eventually your ruler dies! Old age. An heir is there... but young and inexperienced with lower scores and untried. The loyalty of many of your governor peons drops cause it's a new ruler. Eventually revolts break out and it's hard to hold on.

This was a great gaming experience... this was around early 90's and I still quite clearly remember that part of the game. I don't remember the rest of it or the details or the name of the game even. But I remember what happened in that one. It was great going from almost conquering the world to nothing. It also pretty accuratly modeled what happened to real empires in ancient times that got too large.

Now imagine what happens if you take some of these ideas and bring em on over to SE4. For starters revolts. These happen in SE. But not on a large enough scale. Ooo... a planet revolted. Ok fleet wipe it out and build a new colonizer for it. Or alternatly have a troop ship in each system with troops on board waiting for it to happen. What needs to be there is not just planetary revolts. But the chance for system wide revolts and multi system wide revolts as well. With SE4 have it based on happiness or some such in each system. Each percentage down is a chance for revolt. If a single planet in a system passes the chance spread it around and check each planet in the system. If all planets in the system agree switch EVERYTHING in the system to the new empire, ships, mines, satellites, everything. It would all be under local control and could be locally seized. Maybe crew checks for each ship or fleet or something. I would say no just for simplicity at the moment. Now if all in that system say yes... move to all neighboring systems and run checks there. Repeat. Eventually it runs down and ends but by that time you can have anywhere a single planet to a few planets to a single system to a few systems all having revolted.

Now as an add on if the whole system doesn't agree then it doesn't move on to the next system. But those planets in that system that agree still revolt and form their own nation with a percentage of everything in the system equal to the percentage of planets in that system that revolted. Half the planets revolt then half the ships in the system also switch sides. Half the mine fields go over and half the fighters in space go over.

Setup a system of modifiers. For every planet that agrees add a certain percentage for others to agree to go over as well. Once a few go over it starts to snowball. Then have other modifiers kick in. Say 20% of your empire has just revolted. New checks start to apply for each planet that goes over... negative checks now. If done right such a system could have little revolts pop up in unhappy areas with a chance of spreading. If they get a one or two system the bonus modifiers would probably start bowling over and in the end before the negatives add back up you might have lost in a major revoltion 30-40% of your empire. If your really unlucky more!
You didn't choose what you wanted to keep. You might have lost your best fleet even and some of your best planets. That means it is next to impossible to plan for other than keeping people content.

With that in mind I would suggest changing those peace, agressive, neutral mods some. For peace it seems good cept needing a little more strength. Something like the war weariness in CIV3 would be good. For aggressive have peace weariness. The farther a planet is from a battle the less happy they are (there people didn't get to fight in the battle and thus didn't get any glory etc) thus your border areas in conflict stay happy but your central empire starts to get grumpier. For neutrals a mix. They don't like prolonged war but they also don't like anything much above a basic trade treaty. They can't fight big wars but they also don't get the big time peace treaty bonuses of reasearch intel etc unless they risk unhappy citizens revolting.

Perhaps add a new race characteristic. Loyalty or Units or some such. Range from 50% to 150% and have it modify the chances of revolt if happiness roles fail. Thus a hive society with 150% unity will almost never revolt on any planet but berserker societies in anarchy might do it all the time.

This is long enough now... so that is all... for now.