I would like a new release heuristic possibly named "force" with the behavior
that if I run dch -i I get a new changelog entry no matter what.  I have never
found the alternatives to be terribly useful, but that's just me.  Thanks.

thanks

Not just you, I would like to have that option as well. It is very
useful when one wants to build with a different version number on an
unreleased package while preserving the full changelog for reasons.

Greetings
Marc