The idea is to alter the internal politics slightly to make the process of enacting a new law more interesting.


I think there should be two ways to install laws; referendums and executive orders. For referendums, if you are any government type other than a dictatorship/autocracy you have the ability to pass a law as a bill, but it will only be put into place if your senate agrees on enacting it. The more advanced your law is (The higher its upkeep), the more support you will need to be able to pass it. A senate that has a minority of militarists won't pass the Deadly Intent Bill without some serious lobbying.


So the process would be as follows:


1. The player calls a referendum to pass a law

2. The senate will convene in 1-5 turns to decide whether or not to pass it

3. In this waiting period the player can spend Dust/influence to sway representatives into voting favorably for the law

4. The senate assembles and the law is either passed or dropped and the player might have to start all over again


You might be thinking that this is unnecessary since you can just pass laws for free without any consequences. However, the current model for passing laws would be replaced by executive orders. You don't have to deal with any political parties, you just put into place the law that you want, but it will require a fairly large influence fee depending on how advanced the law is. It's basically the same as the current system but it would charge a flat influence "price" to put the law into  place, and many times the fee would be high enough to the point where it is more worth it to go through the process of voting on a law rather than passing an executive order. Dictatorships and autocracies can pass these orders at a cheaper influence cost while for democracies it's more expensive.


The generic laws would be easier to pass, but would have some level of political effect behind them now to show that the player will need to make important choices in order to gain the support to pass them. For example, the conscription bill would be favored by militarists while disapproved of by pacifists. Overall though the generic laws would be much easier to deal with.


This would add more depth to the internal politics of the empire and would add strategic choices for the player to make on how he or she would want to change their political structure. It would also make dictatorships slightly more efficient than other government types, which can make them more desirable. Democracies would be the government type that is most affected by this change because of their three party system and the fact that their executive orders are more expensive. I believe that immersion for the player would increase if they had to deal with a system like this, and it wouldn't be too in-your-face to the point that it takes away from the larger grand strategy.