Government

Throughout the game, various political parties will come into existence. With various demands and requests. Numerous actions will influence their power and support. The higher the power of a faction, the greater their potential to help or cause harm. The greater their support, the more likely they are to help rather than cause harm. Power levels can also cause change the options available to a government regardless of the support. Such as a pacifist party with enough power preventing a government from declaring war without a very good cause, even if they are currently in major support of you.

The parties system draws inspiration form Endless Space 2's senate, Stellaris'es factions and Europa Universalis'es factions.

Governments communicate through diplomatic channels. These channels come in a variety of forms, from an established embassy to person connections between leaders. Diplomatic channels are the "resource" used to prevent abuse of diplomacy without gutting it of it's complexity and strength. When making a diplomatic offer, a diplomatic channel is chosen and the diplomatic channel is often put on cooldown. Different channels have different strength and weaknesses. They have limitations on what actions can be used with them and some of them may unlock additional actions. As well as some flavor that dictates how well each action works through that channel. Diplomatic channels can also be consumed in other ways. Such as ongoing trade deals may use a diplomatic channel. Though I want to reserve this to more complex trade deals. Using diplomatic channels also makes diplomacy a tradable commodity. So a civilization can trade access to another civilization by trading away a diplomatic channel. Using a diplomatic channel does not consume a diplomatic channel, just busies it. The only way you lose the channel is if the thing providing it is lost. Such as you stop being within communication range or an embassy is destroyed. While most diplomatic channels are specific to a civilization, I think there should be a few generic diplomate characters that can be used as a diplomatic channel to any other civilization, but at some sort of delay compared to the others. So far it makes more sense for most diplomatic channels to be one way. So if you have an embassy in another civilization you get a diplomatic channel, but they have to build their own embassy to get one. Though I imagine an embassy built on your planet would allow you to deploy diplomats faster to that civilization. And some channels, like personal connections between players, are two way. I'll have to decide whether this is broken up into a channel on both sides, or if one player using it busies it for both.

For embassies specifically I like the idea of a civilization building an embassy on their planet for the other civilization to use. This prevents someone from building a bunch of channels and abusing them because you build the channel for the other civ and they have to like you enough to build a channel back/use the one you've built. It also means if someone is hostile toward you, you can't just spam them into happiness because they can close their embassies and force you to manually have to send diplomats to engage. Especially important in war as instead of some arbitrary period of turns that you can't communicate, instead that limit is how long it takes to establish a new channel.

Possible channels: Dedicated coms to civs in com range, spies for backroom offers, embassies built for another civ, access via a third party civ, royal marriages if royalty exists, characters with diplomatic skill, personal connections between characters, space stations? I feel like this falls under embassies since building can be built on certain stations

Policies:

Freedom of Information: Makes raw data passively convert to science in the relevant field to simulate civilians using the data. It also increases the likelihood of raw data naturally creating ideas within their respective fields. The downside is that it makes scientific espionage against you easier. And it makes your scientific discoveries naturally spread to neighbors more easily.