Sounds pretty cool, but I'd also agree that it should be more of a DLC thing. I would rather they focus on the things that affect gameplay first.

Immersion comes from liberal doses of gameplay and eye candy and lore and who knows what else.  Yes, you can get immersed in a good game of chess.  It is even better when the pieces wake up and hack at each other with laser swords, or if the pieces all have your opponents face on them.

Agreed!

I also almost want it to be a part of the game, looking out the bridge of a starship would be amazing, but it would be a good DLC.

should make it community driven. Let everybody design their own "look" for their civ, then share em by steamcloud. That way you can get a unique/different view of each planet/civilization instead of a few dozen pre-canned ones. In addition people like to show off, goes well with ship design for people who want to make their truly own civ.

not entirely sure what it could add besides eye candy tho. which for a feature of this size is kinda important or else it's never gonna happen.

I fundamentally agree with econundrum on this. It sounds cool, but for me the opportunity cost is too high. Whatever time and assets would be devoted to developing this I would prefer be spent on a dozen other things. That said, at one point Paul was on a sci-fi game podcast (can't find the link right now) where the hosts were not particular fans of GalCiv II, and their big complaint is that they thought it felt sterile. I don't happen to agree with them, but some small touches like advisers or something might help some people feel more enveloped by universe.

I not only tolerate DLC, I encourage it, at least the way Stardock does it. I don't like when a company completes a game, then pulls a chunk out of it to sell as DLC at release; however, when a company uses DLC to provide continuing support for a game after its release, as Stardock has done with FE/LH, I think its a great thing.

Of course, that's probably a non-issue with something like this, I doubt it would even be available in multiplayer

My idea was for a spore like species editor allowing players to easily create their own race visuals for custom races and allowing them to easily include advisors from your race on all sorts of advisor and information screens but again maybe in the expansions as I admit the up front outlay on assets and programimg would be high.

I liked the cell stage in spore the game quickly went downhill from there especially the phallus creator mode

For the benefit of Erischild amongst others, I have changed my view somewhat on the Eye-candy factor.  To wit, quoting my own "My Feedback" thread :

I was very unimpressed with the planetary combat viewer when you invaded in "Twilight".  If anything needs better visuals and graphics where you're a part of the action, this is it.  I want to be a trooper landing on the planet, making tactical decisions that your troops can carry out, e.g. capturing the Spaceport as well as the Capital city with a Ground-based viewpoint [not quite "Far Cry" but very much along those lines of which I've only seen trailers, a game of just combat RTS/RPG/FPS mixture just isn't my cup of Coffee]. 

And can we please separate the Civilian population from the Military on the invaded planet that you conquer, rather than having to commit mass genocide before you've conquered it.

End-Quote.  Nuff said ?

They'll have full workshop support by release :3

I also found it strange at first, but I like the gameplay consequences. Conquering planets consumes a lot of your population, so you must be really prepared for it if you want to gobble up another empire's planets after wiping out its navy.