First I'll start with some easier suggestions.
I showed my friend this game a while ago and he had some good ideas. The first is a change government option. Pretty simple, just allows you to change the government even after the Empire is created. Another Idea that branched from this one is an uprise feature. This would only be for the major rebellions, but it would change the government type instead of making a new empire.
The next idea is a fixed empire scale. I know we can do custom, but I hate when random empires pop up just because an empire died in my custom games. Just an Idea.
Long Term:
My friend came up with a really good point: What the heck are ships doing on the earth maps such as Europe and Earth? I thought you could retexture the ships from the game and make armies, tanks, legions, etc. on the Earth maps.
Thanks for considering! (;