Are the developers allergic to "Internal Politics" and "Ground Invasion"?

[Eladrin]

Internal Politics wouldn't be an appropriate theme for a small DLC. It'd need to be a Major Expansion.

We currently have no plans for a release focusing on Ground Combat.

 

[Eladrin]

What about centering it around the presently static 'empire size' mechanic?

I would imagine that ideally, yielding power to your factions in semi-autonomous regions should decrease your overall effective empire size.

That's actually a 1.x feature which exists in the game today -- pops do have modifiers about being recently conquered or recently enslaved.

I think it's unfortunate that we lost the separatist factions and general crankiness of xenophobic pops being forced to toil under an evil oppressor. (Where the evil oppressor is actually a Xenophile Egalitarian, but they're aliens.)

Generally, my "not promising anything, just brainstorming" thoughts are:

1. We have to be careful with how we approach these sorts of things, since some loss of control is necessary to make internal politics impactful and interesting. That has to be entertaining and fun though, not "hey we added a lot of pain to empire management".
2. Internal and external politics are intrinsically linked.
3. Points 1 and 2 make this a gargantuan feature, which means it would probably have to be planned out carefully and built in phases.