I have a complicated relationship with sim autonomy, but mostly I think anything is fine as long as there is a toggle or slider so individual players can decide how much "the thing" impacts their games. I desperately want story progression added back in - which is why I think I am largely okay with some of the ideas you've listed or similar sorts of things - but I also don't want it put into place if it's going to ruin things for other simmers. If anything remotely close to this (or even just standard story progression we had in the past) is added in, it absolutely needs to have a series of controls to allow simmers to dictate the impact it has on their game. By all means, add more improvements and challenges, but do not force it on everyone. I think there's a good discussion to have around this kind of stuff, but I only want the team to make big strides toward stuff like this if they are going to do it in a way that doesn't ruin the game for others.
