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[~Q~]

This is admittedly a more food-for-thought suggestion, and is based primarily on my desire to make certain entities more prone towards declaring war on others.
By the fact that we currently have Ethics for the entity, we can assume that attitudes are nearly entirely culturally and not genetically defined in DF.
Ethics effectively determine how 'wrong' something is to a certain race. They can cause wars when an entity finds something is particularly offensive about the ethics of another entity. However, this results in wars that are entirely based on cultural beliefs.
My suggestion is for the cultural expectations of the leaders, as well as the personality and situation of the leaders themselves, to come into play.
Format: [VALUE:X:Y]

Examples:
[VALUE:ALL:LEADER_DEPENDENT] Bases the entire value structure on the personality of the leader. If the leader is impersonating a god, they are restricted to values consistent with this impersonation.

[VALUE:CONQUEST:UNIMPORTANT] There is no onus on the leader to attempt to add to the territories acquired by the entity through conquest.

[VALUE:EXPANSION:IMPORTANT] The leader will direct the entity towards settling new, unpopulated lands. If no normally inhabitable lands are reachable, the leader may attempt to force settlement in less habitable terrain.

[VALUE:TERRITORIALISM:IMPORTANT] The leader is inclined towards protecting their realm with force. Territory overlap is not tolerated, and clear boundaries must be achieved.

[VALUE:WEALTH:PARAMOUNT] The leader is driven towards the accumulation of wealth. This defaults to the exploitation of the environment. If Expansion is important, it will drive the exploitation of new areas. If Conquest is enabled, it will drive the sacking of conquered locations of all their goods and returns the majority of those goods to the conquerer's homelands. If Slavery is tolerated, slaves will be put hard to work in driving the economy.

[VALUE:RELIGION:IMPORTANT] The leader will be inclined to listen to and obey the instructions of the religions with most sway in the entity. This would necessarily require SPHERES to have some kind of impact on entity behaviour.

[NW_Kohaku]

I think this might be overloading a term a little, as when I see VALUE, I start thinking of economic comparative worth.  Perhaps words more like "ideals" or "mores" or "norms".

I like the idea of having these varying values, but I'm a little leery of putting them "in stone" by simply saying that "this is a culture where there is absolute loyalty to the king" period, end of paragraph.  One of the things I've talked about with "loyalty dilemmas" portion of the thread in this link was that there should inherently be conflicts that arise between characters who believe in the ideals of their nation versus the people who are strictly loyal to the leaders of the nation.  When leaders go against the ideals of the nation, who protests, and who demands obedience? 

I'd rather see these as "soft" or "starting point" ideals that can change over time in reaction to in-game events.

[~Q~]

I think this might be overloading a term a little, as when I see VALUE, I start thinking of economic comparative worth.  Perhaps words more like "ideals" or "mores" or "norms".

I like the idea of having these varying values, but I'm a little leery of putting them "in stone" by simply saying that "this is a culture where there is absolute loyalty to the king" period, end of paragraph.  One of the things I've talked about with "loyalty dilemmas" portion of the thread in this link was that there should inherently be conflicts that arise between characters who believe in the ideals of their nation versus the people who are strictly loyal to the leaders of the nation.  When leaders go against the ideals of the nation, who protests, and who demands obedience? 

I'd rather see these as "soft" or "starting point" ideals that can change over time in reaction to in-game events.

I really refer to these as more the societal expectations placed on the leadership. Ethics are already set in stone, these would be much the same.
If you were to make Values vary, then so should Ethics, really. And yes, I agree that leaders who violate the ideals of their nation should be punished in some way, either with regicide, civil war, or less brutal means of replacement.

[NW_Kohaku]

Not always - cults of personality should be capable of ruling a nation, either through deception or force of arms. 

I mean that stuff about ideals changing for the ethics changing, as well.  It would be nice if they were just starting points, and the ethics of nations blurred as they came into contact with other nations, and cultures and races mixed. 

There could also be differences in just the way the cultural history plays out - starvation  the leading cause of death in a culture?  Maybe that whole "cannibalism" thing isn't so bad in extreme situations, after all...

[GreatWyrmGold]

On the other hand, some cultures (such as, possibly, the Greenland Norse) died out due to sticking to their beliefs and not changing (such as, in the aforementioned example, keeping their cows when sheep or goats would be better for not destroying the pastures--although this is understandable when they first got there, the Norse were in Greenland for, IIRC, a few centuries before dying). So, some might change; others would stick to their guns and possibly die out because of it. And, of course, somemight do both, leaving only--for instance--the ones who didn't mind cannibalism alive.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, in one of the Jared Diamond books, he was talking about how in New Guinea, the soil was so poor that only the very low-nutrient forms of wheat could be grown, so  the people got the certain kind of swollen bellies that comes from eating a lot of food but still being malnourished.  The villagers wouldn't mind going out to eat live spiders just to get a little protein in their diet. 

Because they were already used to basically doing what it takes to survive, they very frequently would dip into cannibalism of "enemies" of one form or another, not unlike the way elves eat their kills in this game.