to work in a system where players can have their wheel but also balance it better.
QUESTION: but do you not run the risk of upsetting the large majority only small % using wheel) of your base. ** This statement ASSumes you are contemplating putting the wheel into your new system which is prob wrong. I say this because it looks like you ‘over compensating’ the proposed new system to make room for wheel and thus after we (majority) adjusted to not using it, will be compelled to do so.
I am Ok with wheel removal and reasons, while govs still need work the focus system really eliminated my “need” for the wheel, and I bet that’s true for the majority of wheel lovers who actually gave it an honest try.
The long-term goal is for the game to support multiple economic models.
In the original design for GalCiv III, you would only have had the economic wheel as long as you had the default form of government. Then you would be able to go down the government tech tree towards Galactic Federation, Galactic Tyrant or Galactic Republic at which point the wheel would be replaced with a different system entirely.
When we axed those other forms of government, we realized we didn't have anything for per-planet control so we just threw in the wheel there too without thinking through what the impact would be.
We realized, soon after 1.0, that the wheel on a per planet basis didn't work out because a) it's a lot of micro management and 
it was ridiculously OP'd. So even update after we planned to take it out and replace it with something else but each update we kept having to delay that.
Now, what we will be doing is that wheel lovers will in 1.41 (this week) get a prefs.ini change that will let them have their wheel back so they can exploit the game mechanics all they want. In 1.5, the wheel (global or otherwise) will change such that the more you push the economics in a given direction, the more push-back you get from the citizenry. The planetary wheel will become a racial trait called "Command Economy".
In the future, there will be different forms of government that will introduce players to different economic systems. Some with sliders, some with no controls at all, some with lists of subsidies, some with other types of controls each with a give or take to them.
