I have been thinking about specialists as I often do. The thought came across my mind about an emperor. Originally I wanted it to be promoted from a king but I eventually figured out a way to balance the added benefits. I eventually figured that a queen promotion would be interesting. Here is what I came up with.

Empress - Chariot Rider

Promoted from queen

Can hire a specialist every 48 hours. All factories produce an additional 5 drillers per production cycle and all subs travel at x3 their normal speed. If you lose control of your empress you are eliminated from the game.

You trade the advantage of specialists for an increased driller capacity. I think this is a somewhat thematic specialist. Empires would conquer a lot of land but thier leaders were often hard to trust. Any thoughts?

Interesting specialist idea.

I think this may have to be nerfed. It's basically a global smuggler (also disregarding type of outpost) and global foreman(-1) together. And if a player's Empress is on a factory, its basically untakeable except by the pirate/nav/assassin (or martyr) combo because of the sheer amount of possible drillers (coupled with minister of energy this would be insane) it could use to defend itself.

True. Remember that she would not be able to hire the minister of energy quickly. I would probably tone back the power a bit and/or have her unable to hire specialists period. I could also have it say that you can only promote her in the first 8 hours. You would only get 1 specialist and then few/none for the rest of the game. With a bit of tweaking I could probably make it a bit better.