+1

This really isn't the kind of game for that kind of thing. You would want something with a bigger focus on espionage and internal politics, things this game completely lacks. Crusader kings is the one that comes to mind that could be the closest thing

Basically a tall playstyle faction with focus on vassalizing? It's I neat archetype, and you can kinda play like this in aow4

They sort of did this with the Umbral Choir from ES2 but it would take some thought to make it work for EL2 since there are no spying or subversion mechanics as of right now

in a sense the draken took over there rivals by political power. so if they won a race over it is the draken being the one in charge . but that was EL 1

There is a game called The Last Federation that I used to play a lot. That game's entire gameplay is basically that concept. Instead of playing as one of the empires in the game you play as a neutral person that manipulates all the other empires from the shadows by various actions that you can take. The end goal is to find a way to create a peaceful empire for, if possible, all the factions but if you cannot manage to do that you will settle for a middle ground and cxreate the federation of a few empires while making sure the other empires get destroyed.
The goal is to get enough diplomatical leverage that you can convince them that a federation would be the best idea. There are many cool ideas like you cannot do research yourself, you have to steal it from factions but each tech you own can be given to other factions or that you can assassinate leaders if they prove to be uncooperative.