I second this notion... wanted it in from day 1 of GC1, actually. Personally, Id like to see more involvement with the UP...

Let me do some wheeling and dealing with the other races to "guide" them into the proper vote...

It would also be nice as part of a percentage of your ovrall espionage efforts to get hints about the upcoming topic for voting on.The higher number of spying points would give you a higher percentage of accuracy on the topic.That way you could work on a strategy to gain more influence if the topic was more in line with helping or hurting others strategies.

It would be nice to be able to propose bills ... but I imagine the AI needed for the computer to do the same would be substantial.

Another thing that would be almost as good, is that the turn before the meeting you can see what the proposal is. Then in the diplomacy screen you can ask other races which way they are leaning. They can lie, tell you, or just tell you its none of your business. You can also be able to bribe them into voting the way you want - of course when the time to vote comes, they can stab you in the back. Of course they can also wheel and deal for your vote, and you can stab them in the back as well ... with a major relation downgrade of course.

As it stands the council is just a slightly different random event.

I also propose that there be an option when starting a game on how frequently the council votes. Once ever 3 years, two years, 1 year, 6 months and threee months.

Dano

An alternative to submitting a proposal directly would be to vote on the question to be asked at the next meeting (maybe at the last UP meeting, maybe a few weeks before). This gives influence without eliminating the randomness.

I particularly like the idea of knowing the proposal to be put forward (independent of voting on the proposal). You could lobby for particular votes or negotiate influence for voting a particular way. Cheaper than all-out buying "influence", presumably, unless a civilization felt strongly about something. My personal opinion would be that it would also be more realistic.

Some of the proposals deal more with random events (planet suddenly becomes good, for example). Some of them, such as good planet, could be delayed okay (it's already somewhat artificial that it only happens at UP week). However, I haven't gone down the entire list to make sure it is realistic.

This would be a very nice improvement, but probably not as easy to implement as it may seem. The rules about who proposes the issue to be dealt with and what the choices are need to be thought out well.

It seems like at least giving you a heads up on what was going to be submitted would be pretty easy to add as an update. Only one step beyond that would be to get your friends to tell you how they were going to vote. So Proposition X is going before the UP in 4 weeks. You call up your buddies, the Yor Collective, and see how they were going to vote. Then you are more likely to get the result you want (say Proposition X was a tax on starbases outside the owner's influence; you want to see a tax, but you don't have the votes to get it on your own, but with the Yor vote, you can get any tax rate you want, so knowing how they will vote is critical). I don't think this is all that hard to add since the AI is going to know how it will vote so it is simply telling you in advance if you are sufficiently friendly with them.