Getting some Crusader Kings vibes. This might just be me but for world-building and scale I think it would still be nice to see how many billions of people are on the planets - even if it is buried in a tooltip somewhere - despite having a more abstracted population figure/growth mechanic (which I am a fan of). 

What I find interesting is the comments about characters not being AI governors or otherwise making decisions. Thinking back to something like Crusader Kings the characters you give power to are often interesting because they have the ability to make their own decisions autonomously.

I suppose my question is….when the characters are just an extension of your will what risk do they really pose to us as a player outside of a rebellion mechanic. Crusader Kings works in this regard because you are a character yourself in the world and can be directly impacted by others, in this instance you are ‘Emperor / President for life’ so the interaction is different. I gather they can rebel but I suppose I want to understand with the power structure in the game what role can they play apart from being personified stat boosts or nerfs.

Will all of the different races have their own population characters of their own species? (If so I imagine you are going to have some busy artists). 

Will different species characters enter your population pools over time or as a human will my population always be human?

Could I potentially poach a character from another species if I like the look of their stats?

Could I potentially attack a population character directly or assassinate via espionage?

Apologies for all the questions! Not expecting answers to every little thing as it is perfectly understandable if this becomes clearer to me as more dev diaries are released. 

Hey Brad, how much of the Political Machine will influence GalCiv4?

Yes; This will add lots of uniquess for what govenors doing what jobs where they are placed and keeping them happy.

If you were in control of a country, the only people you'd be interacting with would be various heads of state, department heads, appointed official, commissioned officers, lobbyists, foreign dignitaries, etc, etc.  When's the last time you saw any government high up (or CEO of an F500 company for that matter) actually interact with "the people" honestly?

This isn't to say anything about the specific people in this picture - it's just to point out how terrifying and weird these interactions actually are.  The ruler of a Galactic Empire would be unlikely to ever even find him/herself in the system as most of the planets under rule, let alone actually interact with any of the denizens..

Just my thought..

I always thought the whatever.whateverbillion population number was fine. It was always the "fill your colony ship/transport with 1 billion of the suckers!" thing that felt weird. What, like they'd fold themselves up really really small to fit on the appropriate ship to colonize/invade another planet, on arrival at the planet in question, magically unfold to normal size?!

I really prefer the idea of just interacting with the number of Citizens that planet has based on it's population. It fits nicely with the "You only really interact with your Core Worlds now" concept. No messing about with "now, what's the best thing to put on the last available tile on this really peachy keen PQ4 planet of mine, CharliealpharomeopapaI? And then all the other PQ4 planets need some love, too. Stuff 'em. Just give me your stuff and shuddup!

I also find it weird to have population abstracted into single people instead of millions, billions or what have you. I love the idea of characters, but I'd like to think more than a handful of people live on my planets. 

I mean, you really have to realize that this really is a default form of governance and social relations. 

For example, an English king really didn't do much interacting with the peasants.  He interacted with the nobles, clergy, etc.  When he interacted with the Scots, he didn't interact with the people either - he (or usually his underlings) interacted with the various leaders of the bazillion clans, etc.  Those nobles, clergy or clan leaders represented the people.

Similarly, the president of the United States doesn't come to your house to ask you what you think about food prices (or whatever), he has a meeting with your congressperson, senator, and maybe state governor.  It's simply just not logistically possible to run a large complex society any other way.

In England also, for example.  If the King wanted a bunch of people to fight in a war, he struck deals with nobles, clan heads, etc who would pledge the people they represented for fighting.  So assigning a citizen/leader/whatever to herd a billion cats into a transport really isn't that crazy an idea.

However! - one idea that could be looked at tho might be to have each leader represent a different number of people.  So instead of every leader simply representing 1 billion people, or whatever.  One of the "leader stats" might be how many people are following said leader.  So Leader #3 might represent 700 million people, but Leader #8 is much more popular and she represents 3.4 billion.  That way the gameplay is abstracted to simply leaders that you must manage, but it's clearly obvious that each leader has a cadre of groupies that they hold in sway - ie, the people they are "leading."  Thus a secondary leader mechanic might be that the number of people each leader represents could change over time - depending upon the vagaries of what's going on in your empire (like if Leader #4 keeps getting his dumbass captured by the enemy, less people think he's worthwhile to follow sort of thing)..

Just my 2 cents.  We'll see how the system plays and how the aesthetic works at some point I suppose..