No doubt Republic vs. Emperor will make it in, and in a video I saw that it seemed like they wanted it to be a choice; "do you defend the Republic, or become Emperor?". It would be really cool if that choice did make it in, with their being separate branches of units for each one. Say, Rome at it's start has its generic units, and then when you have the choice, you can split off to the Emperor tree and receive new specialty units, or the Republic tree and receive new units for that - unique to your choice.

I also like the idea of provinces, with each province having several conquerable territories like we know right now, but under management by the province border as a whole to reduce the whole micro-management. Very good idea. I hope it doesn't get to minimal though, like in Empire, where France and Spain was just one big territory. I'd actually like to see something like France or Spain in Empire as the province, but more like Medieval where there were several territories inside. I also wonder how that whole idea will work - does it only become a province after you capture all the territories required? Are each particular regions you conquered their own territory until you conquer them all to form the province? Might have a big affect on diplomacy if you have half of a province owned by someone else, they sue for peace or whatever, and the whole territory becomes theirs again, regardless of how much you held of it.