Original Post
I'm thinking of a real-time hack-n-slash RPG (think loosely Diablo 2 style) in which each monster the player killed was one less in the population of that sort of monster, and each monster village the player destroyed was one more place for humans to settle and grow stronger, and one less place for the monsters to produce offspring / weapons / train soldiers / etc. Monsters can take back human settlements too if they are strong enough. Of course, the weaker monsters and monster settlements would need to be near the human's starting location, because the player starts at a low level and would need to fight weaker monsters at first. As time goes on the "monster empire" places more emphasis on the player as a central threat to their safety, sending more and stronger forces to take his home city or defend cities he might attack. As the human empire gets stronger, it becomes richer, better fortified, more populated (and so better defenses), and possibly even better technology or magic. However, this is entirely necessary, because the other empire starts the game with a high growth rate (lots of production / conquering other places). The point would be that every single action you do against the enemy would have its effect on the economics of the game. One goblin blacksmith destroyed is one less goblin sword produced for the enemy empire per (unit of time). One orc village of population 15 destroyed is 1.5 less orcs created for the enemy empire per (unit of time). Even the inner reaches of the "monster empire" are always growing in real time throughout the game, except perhaps when shopping, or the player is sorting through inventory, as the player shouldn't be penalized for taking extra time doing certain organizational things. I like this idea because I like the idea that when you destroy something in the game it actually has an economic effect on your enemy, you can feel what you are doing is affecting the game in a big way. Take out all the ogre villages, and you won't have to worry about those coming back in significant numbers for a while. Taking out your first village of a monster you really hate would feel great. The biggest problem I see with this sort of thing is that it has the potential to quickly become imbalanced either way - you would have to have the monster growth curve closely match the player's growth curve, and if one gets ahead of the other, the distance between the two would accelerate as they got further away. If you just artificially raise the monster curve (give them extra units or villages) if the player starts to get ahead, then the player's success in the past has hurt him - we can't do this if we want to follow our "hack-n-slash economics". Thus, the game will eventually become imbalanced to the point that the player would either die surrounded by hordes of monsters much stronger than himself, or the player would find the "monster empire" was no longer a challenge after a certain point, and he could just ease his way through and kill the "monster emperor", allowing peace to reign at last (winning the game). One potential solution to this is to have the game be episodic, like Diablo 2. That is, one would start a game with a character saved from previous games, and the game would build up the monster empire's size from the selected difficulty level for this session, and the character's strength level (as estimated by experience level and an equipment value evaluator function). If the game gets too imbalanced in either direction, the player can always start afresh with the same character (including experience and equipment gained) in another randomly generated world. What do people think of this idea? Is making it "episodic" necessary, or is another solution better? I don't play any MMORPG's, but my first thought about the idea is that it must be similar to raids / wars in MMORPG's. Has any game done something like this before? Did it turn out to be fun or frustrating?