The key is to find a balance in that longevity of play has its perks, but new players are never left out in an uncompetitive position.

To do this, we first look at the size of the senate. If you as a player have a faction of 10 people, this may look like a huge advantage against a newbie. However, your 10 of 300 is a voting block of roughly 3%.

The second thing we did was to make an increasing negative factor in your attempt success rate as your SI grows. Therefore, it's easier for a new player to grow a faction than a preexisting player. Discussion here may be on possibly tightening up the % chances further or placing a flat out cap on the number of senators you can carry.

The third thing, and what I think is the best option of all, is that there are in game resolutions to the abuse of power. If one player has a high SI and looks to gain too much influence, he can't hold out against a host of other players that look to pick his faction apart. If in attempting to add yet another member to your group you suffer 5 other players looking to recruit from your base, you are going to get knocked down to size. This is the element that we missed in Imperium of players having the ability to directly cut down another player's influence.

The fourth thing has been ruled out. But even though I vowed not to bring it up again, I'll do it. The element of money was another measure I originally thought would be the glue to a faction. With your limited income, if you allocated your resources to your members to keep them satisfied with your leadership, eventually you would run out of funds if you tried to stretch it too far.

Let me know your thoughts. It will be easy enough to reprogram the % success rates or place faction influence caps within the game.

-Mark