Hi cliffski,
I’d like to tell you that I really like Democracy and I think your proposed economic improvements to the sequel sound brilliant, but please add more political changes.
I play an excellent free online game that I think might inspire you as to how to do it. It’s called Particracy. Economically, the game doesn’t allow you to do much but politically it’s quite good.
It has proportional representation with various parties and they come and go. Parties can nominate support for other parties’ presidential canditates (which creates an element of diplomatic strategy) and to get any policy changed it has to be voted through parliament, which makes you think about every policy you enact and whether it will garner you support at the next election.
You can see and play the game here: