Rather than take that away completely, is there some mechanism by
which that can be made more difficult? For discussion's sake, suppose
that adding new nobles to your faction took 1 NP each for the first 5
added, 2 NPs each for the next 5, 4 NPs each for the next 5 and so on.
This limit would apply whether nobles were added through CREATE or by
capture from another player.
Something like this (it seems to me) would limit the problem of
"floodfill" factions without totally removing that motivation from the
game.
In fact, I'd still like to see some underlying resource that was used
to limit development in a variety of areas (nobles, skills, magic,
etc.) so that concentrating in one area (lots of nobles) would
necessarily mean limits in other areas (few skills). I think the fact
that there is no interdependency between the various advancement areas
in Olympia is a big problem.
-- Scott T.