When you say strategic, the first thing i hear is "move units over a map to pew-pew other units." so likely you'll end up in another genre if you don't want that.

How about every planet in your empire has it's own characteristics, that you have to balance out?
- the species living on it can give bonus to internal security and reaction-speed to your orders

also the loyalty-changes are bigger/faster for some species.

- the type of planet enables mining of certain materials

- the atmosphere will determine which species can potentially live there

- the governor will gives speed to development of new....umm, let 's say factories for now

planets have certain needs to keep functioning properly(usually this is called happiness or morale, but it should be something more then just the sum of satisfied needs vs. unsatisfied needs; for example a present army would give more internal security, better chance on stopping a revolt if it happens, but not pre-emptively stopping a revolt,
they will also decrease morale on the planet if there are not enough brothels available, and off course they'll have some (other) kind of upkeep-cost)

and they need resources for that that need to be transported and consumed.

Now let's say there are space-pirates that you have to deal with, but they're too strong to just wipe out.

A player needs to get resources past them without being intercepted(cloaked freighter, pay the pirates off, take a different route, just let a planet perform less for a while?)

and sometimes the pirates will bond together making a big fleet and attempt to pillage a planet.
(I recommend against a success/fail approach and just assume that pirates will always deal some damage to the sociological structures of a planet,
but how much would depend on defenses and such)

Notice how there are still fighting units moving around(pirates) but the player controls the counters(resources, governors, certain laws) to them.

As a side-note, in MOO2, i often had my fleet protecting whichever star-system was still under development, since the other star-systems were usually capable of defending themselves, it was actually not very strategic that way imo, but for the game you want such a strategy might be what you want with your fleet
(aka they're just at one place defending/building there so you can expand in the long-term, while the actual fighting/interacting/strategy happens in the rest of the empire)

I was thinking, maybe I should approach it from a different angle. Instead of a full mechanic, let's start with the "game space", a kind of "board" that represents the world we are changing/affecting.

Types of "game space" in strategies (that I know of):

- the most popular (4x games) is map and units moving over it and fighting

- city builders have an empty landscape where you build a city

- old Dictator (ZX-Spectrum) had factions, these had two stats: power and loyalty to you; and all you were doing was affecting these factions (so the ones that hate you stay weak and the strong one are happy and unlike to rebel). Yes, no map of any kind

- slots for buildings (or to be more precise you have all buildigns from the start and you upgrade these/build more, but without the constrain of a map) are sometimes used in simpler flash games

So, the question, what game space should a game that have "internal struggle of an empire" should have? At the moment I can see two, one more or less traditional planets, second some cards with factions and you shaping these. I think maybe even both can be used at the same time...

Anyway, I don't want to impose (at this moment), so what *you* think?

When you say strategic, the first thing i hear is "move units over a map to pew-pew other units." so likely you'll end up in another genre if you don't want that.

BTW, watch this, it's interesting (I vote that's a strategy game):

and if you like it there is more

Having watched episodes of table top games on geek and sundry for dark ages of Camelot and pandemic. It sounds like you might be after the kind of game where its more about trying not to lose then winning. To that end I'm imaging a sort representational map board that has the different power bases on it. There would be an area marked as the border, circle in the center that represents a the senate another that represents known space and uncharted sectors another for the capital, etc..

Each turns is divided into 3 phases.

Phase 1 - spend mega credits

Phase 2 - sow seeds of destruction

Phase 3 - Resolve an event.

During phase 2 you sow the seeds of destruction which make the game harder and events more unpredictable. You could add another ship the alien armada, increase corruption among the senate, sacrifice a a life point from a family member or any of a number of bad things. Increasing the size of the alien armada doesn't do anything directly but eventually the alien invasion event will occur and when it does you had better be ready for it they will wipe out your empire. Increasing corruption in the senate gradually makes things harder some events will have nastier consequence and at different levels it triggers a power loss. When it hits 6 everything goes up in price by 1 when it hits 12 you are removed from power. If your family all die from life loss or events you also lose. The player struggles with the bad things going on around them trying to pursue one of a few paths to victory and resolving an array of different events each turn.

Events might be:

Alien invasion

New Planet Discovered

An Important Marriage

A new cult emerges

you get the idea

If someone makes a game they should have their facts straight.

Haha because this is something that breaks my immersion in a fictional game world, it's accuracy when considering social contract theory. I remember the last time I played a game and thought why is the governing body of this city letting me just kill this hooker and take this floating money and only sending one blood thirsty cop to drive me off the road and kill me?

Property, governing, power and the ruse of authority. Call it all what you will(monarchy, empire, corporations, government, civilization, etc) and feel free to complicate it as much as you like with modern law, but the fact is we're all slaves to the notion of ownership and fooled by the idea of power. It's all just socialization from childhood that helps to keep this broken thing we call civilization going with it's anti-economizing "economic system". When in reality any programmer worth their salt, willing and able could build a better resource tracking, accounting and allocation structure along side automated production and distribution systems better then any capitalism focused governing body, globalized market exchange economy could ever hope to match. Providing more goods and services more economically to everyone on this planet, educating more people, advancing technology faster and more efficiently and offering better health care all the while better sustaining this finite world and its fragile structure. Tangent rant complete! On to more important matters then saving the world from itself.

how exactly such mechanic should work

Depends on the scope of the game but you could limit the entire game to a single(throne) room or expand as much as to explore a sandbox across multiple kingdoms. Depending on how many visual assets you feel you can get done along side the code and their use in displaying the plight of the kingdom. I was thinking of something like Fable III combined with more social/choose your own adventure gameplay. NPCs(peasants, nobles, military, spies, etc) bringing the issues of the kingdom before the king, using a back end economic system that enables the player to exercise economic foresight and upkeep the kingdom. A conflict map to display the armies and known enemies of the kingdom and a council table to seek insight from "experts". Challenges could include the uprising of most if not all of the kingdom(uprising nobles), a foreign threat, a none human threat(monsters or pests), expanding the kingdom or any combination of those or other plights of a civil population. Win conditions could include military might, economic prowess(buying allegiance), emotional manipulation (kidnapping, torture, winning the heart, winning the mind, etc), death of a single powerful foe, death of an idea or again a combination of these or any other strategies to win and hold the hearts/minds of the populace. To boot mechanics to keep your character happy, healthy and to protect your legacy could be a nice addition as well.

I was thinking about throne room centric game as well but... I have one big problem with it. No emergent gameplay. All these events (pertitions you need to deal with in your throne room) need to be scripted. It will most likely turn into a sort of an adventure instead of strategy. No/very low replayability.

The similar problem is with Shadows over Camelot kind of mechanic. Few events that will run out quickly (it works for boardgames since these are relatively low number of turns games, I think). But more into direction of Pandemic (spread of generic "chaos cubes" across a map) might work.

Overall, I'm starting to think that while combat units on a map are not obligatory, some sort of map is.

One game I play every now and again is Don't starve a game in which the designers release a free content update about once a month, you could do the same for your game.

Do you have an end game in mind for this? Or is is build for ever?

If the game is more about short to mid length sessions (1-4 hours) then you could have 1 main plot and several sub plots that play out with the board setup with different parts each time the player then wins by completing the main plot. You could then start with say a dozen plots and say dozen sub plots and then add more over time.

Short repayable games that are different each time open up are whole lot of possibilities for an empire strategy game.

The problem I always saw with those kinds of systems, the ones where you're preventing bad things in stead of working towards good things, is that players tend to have goals that involve growth. To be clear, I mean the player themselves will usually have those, whether or not the systems involve it.

Whether it's power, strength, resources, there's something you want to acquire, to add to yourself, and when you're trying to organize or manage discontent, it's more an obstacle on your way towards that goal. So successfully getting your ducks in a row and getting your country/party/whatever on side just feels like getting back to the status quo.

It's not impossible, but making that fun inherently is an uphill battle.

The game could be about gaining wealth and power for your family, the imperial family grows over time

(well, if you piss off the population assasinations and/or riots might change that)

and as player/emperor you try to put its members into places of power in the empire.

Usually this will gain you a slightly more loyal servant, yet much more incompetent compared to the "right man for the job,"

who was also available(choosable for the player) to take on the job.

The purpose of this may be so that the next emperor, after a long and bloody powerstruggle, will come from the old emperor's family as well.

This would be quite realistic but make it a "survival-game" which most players don't like.(as the Moldy Cow pointed out)
Make it too easy and it is a sim-game.

Another purpose might be that the imperial family has the ability to recognize "the enemy infiltrators" and destroy them,
and the goal would be to destroy "the enemy infiltrators" or remove them from power.
These "enemy infiltrators" may be anything ranging from spies from another empire to vampires spreading over the population to another rival family.

I don't know don't starve has sold around over 300,000 pre-orders and it is essentially a game about how long can you survive.

Another indie game I have is Reus which lets the player play 30 minute, 1 hour, or 2 hour games and you control 4 giants trying to develop a barren world and create prosperous town by placing resources on the map and help them develop. But at the same time if they develop too quickly they turn greedy and start attacking other towns and even your giants. Its all about balance between the towns and trying to help them develop and deciding which abilies your giants will gain based on the towns your choose too develop. In a single game you can only get as subset of powers. If you want to build diamond mines then your can't fill your oceans with wales. If you want wild boar then maybe you don't get peach trees.

That said empowering the player to choose how they develop their empire and stack the deck against themselves can't be a bad thing.

where is crushing the rebellion of your ungrateful subjects? Where is the coup of your treacherous admirals? And where is the posion in your food put in by your supposed to be loyal courtiers?

The game could be about gaining wealth and power for your family, the imperial family grows over time

(well, if you piss off the population assasinations and/or riots might change that)

So, you realise you are basically describing Crusader Kings 2, right? (Ok, it doesn't have admirals per se, but it does have disloyal generals.) I feel like I must be missing something everyone else saw, because it seems like "CK2" should have been the first post in the thread.