Original Mechanic?

You should ask yourself. If you are happy with the amplifying effect of 6 cards activating all at once.

How big is THAT impact?

Map out how many times it occurs.
Will it occur during gameplay?

If the track is build up at random. It might occur faster then you think for 50(?) percent of the time.

I rarely have seen this mechanic to be honest.

The trigger effect could be done as orbits. (But some method of advancing or retrograde would be ideal then).

Some orbital triggers could be conjunctions and such (steal from astrology?).

I can see a major result "when the stars are right if you have a captive politician to sacrifice plus a sacred knife and a way to reach the appointed place" sort of thing.

If you want to go the astrology route, I would suggest a fictional set of aspects. Sure, some real astrologer might get be bothered with some simplification you made, but the reason I suggest this is actually for replayability.

Suppose the players are gods with each one trying to tune the world to favor his or her Chosen People (that is, a player will control the actions of one god an associated tribe/nation of Chosen People). There are three distinct phases here: what original resources are available to the Chosen People, what the Chosen People do, and what the gods do.

For simplicity, let's say the initial resources are somehow random. Actions that involve one of the allocated resources has increased effectiveness, but any player can perform any action. For example: The blue player draws "sheltered bay" and "extensive forest."

The Chosen People operate much as you described, setting long-term plans in motion and trying to arrange synergies. Each shift represents one month of time.

The gods operate in a common celestial area, probably a big disk with concentric rings of spaces. The outermost would be for the "signs", which will probably have 12 slots positioned in every third space of a hypothetical 36-slot ring. As you move inward, the rings have fewer slots, with the one for the Sun having 12 natural slots. Perhaps 36, 24, 18, 12 (Sun), 9, 6, 4, and 3.

For a god action, the player gets to place an aspect in an unoccupied space. This could be a "sign" (constellation) in one of the 12 fixed outer positions, or any chosen spot on an unoccupied ring (planet or Sun). Every aspect -- other than the fixed "signs" -- advances one space on its ring each turn.

The arrangement of aspects affects every player that turn. Suppose a god put the "fertility" aspect in one of the outer planetary rings. When that aspect has a favorable conjunction with a "ocean" or "fish" aspect, then anyone fishing that turn will get a bonus. A "wealth" aspect interacting with "mountain" might help mining. Just pick aspects that have relevance to the game's resources.

There can be unfavorable conjunctions as well. According to Wikipedia, things that are lined up, 30-degrees separated or 60-degrees separated are favorable interactions; 90-degrees has the "outer" aspect dominate the "inner" one, and 180-degrees is unfavorable to both.

So the Chosen People are playing an engine-building game while the gods are fiddling with the rules.

Bonus Complication: the god can declare itself to be the God of [Aspect]. Not sure how this would actually work, perhaps a permanent favorable bonus to that Chosen People only. The aspect token would be placed on the player's board.

Extra Bonus Complication: The Moon would operate with an orbital period of 1. If the Moon has an aspect, the Chosen People can time their actions so that the Moon is at any desired angle. This can let them game the favorable conjunctions, but can create some unfavorable ones as well. A player considering assigning an aspect to the Moon needs to keep in mind that every Chosen People will be able to time it on their turn.

The simple version (but still including gods) would be just placing aspects as constellations and have a generic Sun move around that track. The aspect in line with the Sun has the biggest bonus, two or four spaces in either direction has a minor bonus, three or six spaces in either direction has a penalty.

The whole thing with multiple planets could be an expansion.

I was imagining that the gods draft aspect tokens using a mechanic parallel to how the people draft their actions/buildings. The division between god actions and people actions need not be absolute... you could always use an American Gods justification that gods are manifestations of the people's needs/wants/aspirations. Need something humming along every four turns? Associate its aspect with something of period 4.

Edit:
My undertsanding of game play is

0. Players draw initial resources or pick pre-built factions with assigned resources.

Each turn:
1. Advance the aspect(s) in play. For the simple version, this would be the Sun. Technically this should happen in step 6, but doing it first simplifies short-term planning.
2. Each player drafts one aspect tile. Order/initiative/etc. however you envisioned it for the initial draft (maybe each player draws a new tile into the pool, giving later players some shot at good tiles).
3. Players place their aspect tiles. Again, I don't know how you're handling order.
4. Each player drafts one action/building tile. Order mechanic as similar as possible to the "god" order mechanic, though the outcome might be explicitly independent/reverse of the "god" order.
5. Players place their action/building tiles.
6. Perform the tile shift for each player and resolve actions. The yields will be modified up by resources and up-or-down by aspects.

That mechanic sounds good, though I'm not familiar with those particular games, which means I don't know how they work in practice.

If you are going with the god actions and people actions, it would help to have the mechanics as similar as possible... with any differences clearly justified within the context of your theme.

The tile positions seem to represent opportunities to economize on certain projects at certain times. This concept of better or worse timing is handled abstractly, but it represents things like building a dam in the winter when the water conveniently stops flowing over your worksite.

I don't see any reason why this couldn't work for aspects as well. Some things are cosmically simpler when done at the right moment. The question is, how does this differ from the action/building draft?

If the gods have "mana" then it might make a decent resource, though there'd have to be some reason to have mana and want to spend it on other things. Maybe mana powers general-purpose miracles like allowing the Chosen People to reroll dice. Trying to take a shortcut to an aspect Before Its Time could plausibly tie up mana in the environment, and others could extract it later.

Another option is to use normal resources, where the Chosen People had to make expensive rituals and sacrifices to enable their god to manipulate the aspect. Here it's less clear that someone should be able to come along later and extract those resources.

"How did the Green Nation warriors get horses? They have no ranches!"
"Yeah, weird. Looks like about three dozen horses. And we just sacrificed three dozen horses to our goddess to bless the harvest..."

Though we are talking about gods here. If everything the did made sense, they wouldn't be gods!

That said, if resources to acquire aspects get destroyed (unavailable to other players), then I guess the cost should be higher.

You could be the project manager, juggling the different needs of a city. Housing, factories, food production, entertainment; you have a lot to work with. You can make this a really elegant game. Honestly, tiles, slot board, and maybe one other component (population cubes?), that is all you need. For me, I like managing very different aspects (actions) that all collaborate together. Maybe there could be 7 major needs in a city: Jobs, Leisure, Security, Health, Belief, Technology, and Attractions. Those can pretty much determine just about anything you'd find in a city. Each one of these you could attempt to "specialize" in, trying to promote your city and gain the most population/reputation. The buildings could be the tiles and each tile would show you what points you acquire analogous to the 6 major needs. These points show you how the building has attracted populations.

So for example, a Shoe Factory tile would give you 2 Jobs point, 1 Attraction, and 1 Leisure point. The shoe factory might be a slot 3 tile, not an extremely illustrious building, but not terribly useless. Essentially the points are the amount of people (populations) that have come to your city because of that building. Now we have the Space Station building which is a 6 slot (takes longer to build). Could have 1 Job point, 2 Belief, 1 Security, 4 Technology. Now these points would be placed on your slot board (the bottom will be where you put your tiles, the top will be where your points go to each city need). Each need would give you the ability to do an action by "spending" your population points. Job points increase money for building buildings, Entertainment points increase population points, Security points make sure few negative effects make it into your slots from other cities, Health points allow you to regain used or hurt populations, Belief points upgrade your population or actions, Technology points gain you more powerful buildings.

The only thing that doesn't make great sense is the fact that you would be building these buildings, over and over again. Easy fix. The first time a tile goes through the slots, you must pay a building cost. Once you do this, you will continue to gain the benefits of that building. So when you place a building tile down for the first time, you would put a building marker on the tile to represent that it hasn't been built yet. Again, you can do A LOT with what I have just laid out here. This is just a sketch.

Buildings could also have special abilities noted by symbols. Example: Fast Food Restaurant [slot 2]; 1 Job point, 1 Health point, 1 Attraction point; Health Risk symbol (every time you activate this building, decrease a Health population point) and Efficiency symbol (if this building is executed with at least one other building, gain +2 Job points). So placing a Fast Food Restaurant is great for Job points, but it will force you to manage your Health points a little more aggressively and for a 2 slot building you get quite a few points in a variety of different needs.

So essentially your turn would be REALLY simple: Move tiles down one slot, execute slot zero buildings (building first time buildings and gain points for buildings), and use population points for purchasing/executing further actions.

I really enjoyed coming up with ideas. Excited to see what you do.

Are you envisioning something colonial, medieval, ancient, primitive? Perhaps a historical setting about new civilizations on Mars that engage in 5-on-5 skirmishes ;-)

No worries about ditching the gods, it was just an extension of the suggestion to use fictional astrology (as opposed to Aries, Leo, Scorpio, etc.).

I might try to use something like the synthetic astrology we discussed if I ever revive an almost twenty-year-old idea I had for a fantasy-genre board game. In that case, the aspects would likely get assigned to commemorate legendary actions (sort of a replacement for those achievement badges you see in videogames nowadays).