With the new Paragons DLC out from what I can tell Gestalt councils are essentially a fixed set of leaders that level up slowly. (Full disclosure, I haven't had a chance to play with it yet, so I might be entirely wrong about this)
This isn't the most involved mechanic, so I've thought up a slightly different one.
Gestalts would have a unique capacity called Focus, which starts between 5 or 10. It can be increased by tech, traditions, unique capital buildings etc, but is also increased by the number of pops in the empire.
Focus can be assigned to Nodes on the council to increase each nodes effects, essentially replacing levels. Focus reassignment would either be for free or require Unity similarly to government reform.
Investing focus into nodes would scale their effects, but also unlock new effects at specific thresholds as a replacement for leaders getting new skills, compounding the advantages for concentrating into a specific node.
Finally, Gestalt civics would create new nodes for the hivemind to invest focus into, because the fact that they don't and every Gestalt has the same set of nodes is a missed opportunity that hopefully the Custodian team already has on their agenda.
This isn't the most involved mechanic, so I've thought up a slightly different one.
Gestalts would have a unique capacity called Focus, which starts between 5 or 10. It can be increased by tech, traditions, unique capital buildings etc, but is also increased by the number of pops in the empire.
Focus can be assigned to Nodes on the council to increase each nodes effects, essentially replacing levels. Focus reassignment would either be for free or require Unity similarly to government reform.
Investing focus into nodes would scale their effects, but also unlock new effects at specific thresholds as a replacement for leaders getting new skills, compounding the advantages for concentrating into a specific node.
Finally, Gestalt civics would create new nodes for the hivemind to invest focus into, because the fact that they don't and every Gestalt has the same set of nodes is a missed opportunity that hopefully the Custodian team already has on their agenda.