As for the question of what to do with players of high levels? The
simplest is to give them higher level threats. Have armies of orcs
but instead of having them prey on the weakest around, give them a
territorial goal. Perhaps the orcs want Drassa and will kill to get
it! This would require more sophisticated code but it is not
unworkable. The plague idea is both realistic and effective at
cutting down concentrations of people and wealth. Both of these could
be automatically generated by the code if a locations population or
wealth exceeds a certain threshold, perhaps not definitely but, say,
once a city has more than 1000 player controlled men in it, there is a
5% chance per month of plague breaking out or if a city's occupants
have more than 10,000 gold, a wandering band of raiders might have a
10% chance of showing up. Rich could keep these thresholds to
himself, leaving everyone to wonder and they could vary from city to
city. Of course, if Rich ever gets around to implementing ownership
of property and locations and then tightens up the economy a little,
conflicts should generate themselves... :-)
John Morrow - Varian [856]