The best example I seen to my opinion was great people in civilization 4. Heroes sounds nice. From my viewpoint mercenaries were supposed to do this, but being able to move my leaders to different fleets sounds nice.
As far as a living breathing galaxy ie distant worlds. I think larsenex was talking about. It ould be nice to see airliners coming and going to and fro planet, but just one request could you have some different color, or something, so I could distinguish them different from other ships. There needs to be an option to shut this off for those who would not like this. Personally I would leave this on. Are you talking about ground battles. Here it is inferior to two which needed improvement over that.
Toying with an idea of private sectors. This may be decided by kinds of goverment, or ideologies. With ideologies you could add each tech together to decide which on you use most. You could add points in each one to decide which you choose the most. You could have a seperate improvement list for the private sector picking unimproveed tiles to work with random, or needed buildings. from a seperate list, or the same as the player, but privately controlled. Maybe even building ships for themselves. Ie uncontrolled scout ships which will still reveal unexplored tiles. Since it is private the player has no control on it, or pays maintenence. This could also be done with private constructures, and survey vessels. Have a seperate private tech tree research based on above criteria. This would only bepartial randomization, and has nonthing to do with player involvement. Only the private sector.
