My latest plan is to start players with 5 nobles, and allow them to
work to slowly obtain more, up to a maximum of 12. The first extra
noble could be had with a few turn's work. Successive nobles would
be progressively harder to obtain; most players would probably have
6-8 nobles in their faction. Reaching 12 would most likely take about
two years of RL playing.
> 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).
Look behind most game resources, and you'll see a more fundamental
underlying resource: game time. Since extra nobles give a player
extra game time to invest, they are very valuable, and shrink the
size of the goal space available for the player to explore.
Gee, maybe even 12 is too many.