Empire Authorities could realy use an overhaul, especialy with Nomads and absolute ethics on the way. Curious what others think?

tl;dr Currently Empire type, ethics and authority are all kinda mixed together. It's unituative and limits design space.

First of take gestalts out of the ethics wheel. Individual vs Gestalt should be a property of your species not your govermental ethics and so should be chosen there. The middle of the wheel if it must exist should be something like "Syncretism" if the devs realy want a middle.

The authority section has become a mess. It's dealing with multiple things at once. It's also a big part of why Authoritarian vs egalitarian and Spirtualist vs Materialist are so increibly janky. They interact with other systems in ways that make certain flavour integral to a thing that should be abstract.

Having Nomadic be a Yes or No toggle shows us the answer though.

Sufferage, The hidden ethics pair

Yes we already have a secret 5th ethic pair! It's just tied up in the authority section and wrapped up in only one set of flavor. Autocratic vs Democratic, flavour wise it's about how much political participation your empire has, Mechanicaly this should be Factions vs Council. It will need absolutes to match the others, so a quick draft.

Autocratic

1. Moderate Autocratic: Simlar current Oligarchic, Minority rule but a large minority, only elite strata have political power, they form factions and such.
2. Fanatic Autocratic: Political power limited to leaders, none to pops, Factions are no longer a way to generate resources.
3. Absolute Autocratic: Only the Empire leader has any politcal power. Factions are basicly vestigal, the council is ridiculously strong to compensate. one of them will become the next leader.

Democratic

1. Moderate democratic: Requires near enough full sufferage, disenranchising non citizens is still allowed, disenfranching civilians is allowed) Factions are much more important than the council for buffs and social manas (unity, infulence edicts fund)
2. Fanatic democratic: like Democratic is now, Every pop in your empire is enfranchised. Even residents, even indentured servants. Factions are much more important than the council
3. Absolute democratic: Anyone subject to our will has a say in it, even the pops of our subject empires get political power (Mechancialy subjects can join factions and vote in elections) Council is a almost vestigal mechanic, it's all about factions for resorces and buffs.

If you put no points into either you get, Specalist and ellite citizens having politcal power. Think most democracies pre universal suferage. This also requires one extra ethic point to play with, which is fun opens up all manner of new combinations.

This would leave Authoritarain vs Egalitarian free to be the Socio economic axis. Also finaly allows some of the combinations we can't currently do. Think Comunist dictatorship or slaveholding democracy.

Authority types

With our attitude to sufferage moved out of here, This section becomes a set of binary toggles about how our state works. Totaly independant from our ethics. These could be added to and remain quite self contained to relevant DLCs. Obiously some would lock out some origins. taking too may at once would narrow your pool of civics.

• Nomadic Yes or no: Self explanitory, detemines if we live on planets or arkships.

• Corporate Yes or no: Already exists but currently can't play well with certian things. This way it can. Why can't my corporation have powerful shareholders or the other way and have an all powerful CEO. Heck Why can't my hive mind be a Sole Trader?

• Monarchy yes or no: Where Imperial lives. Repaces leader elctions with a line of sucession a. Now we can have Imperial rule, Constituional monarchy, private corporations, Khanate nomads ect. A the same time it allows proper tyrants (elected dictators).

• Theocracy Yes or no: This would finaly untangle the problem with spiritualists being religion coded. Allow things like machine cults or worshiping an AI overmind. There is an ideology/relgion DLC on the way so this could work with that. Temples woud be come churches, robot assembles would become tech priests ect. Faction leader would be our own flavour of space Pope subject to some falvour of "higher power". Heck this would be cute RP paired with Scion. Also compatible with Gestalts.

There could then easily be a bunch more in future that don't turn the other systems into a tangle. This set up could also potentialy help future attempts to tidy up orgins.

Had to get this out of my head, the tangle has been bugging me for literaly years. The nomad toggle and absolute ethics finaly made it click.