Capturing gems:
I generally like the idea of plundering capitols, but it was decided against in the early days of dom-ppp. There are several reasons to this. Micromanagement is one. Interconnection of labs another. You could say that all gems are transported to the metaphysical lab of everywhere after all is lost, to keep the realism
Also treasuries are interconnected. The micromanagement heavy and realistic solution is of course to separate the economy. One city, one lab. One city one economy. Transport all your gold by cart or with your armies. Keep the salary chest with your soldiers. Risk loosing it when attacked. Baggage trains with supplies. There is no end to the economic and logistical implications of this system. I like it a lot, but it would make dominions an entirely different game. So we skipped the logistics (it's bad enough that gems are moved around
) and the effect is that there is no particular effect of plundering a lab or capitol.
A nice solution to this, which I personally like, but also has been decided against, is an autoplunder, so that armies automatically plunder every province, and especially fortress, they capture. Reduce the population by half or more and get some quick gold and merry, unstarving soldiers. I think most players detest this idea, since most players in my experience dislike the downward spiral of dominions
.
Only being able to recruit your own national troops is one of the basic tenets that dominions is built around. When dom-ppp was initially designed we had played a couple of games in which a few players came to be all possible nations at the same time. Take VGA-planets where you were lucky if you could capture an enemy ship an copy it. Soon the fleet of the Evil Empire was made up of Death Stars towed by privateer ships. Same thing in other PBEM games where your army soon turned into rainbow armies of the elite units from every nation. Not much fun either.
To avoid 3 players sitting and farting in their capitols, use VP, preferrably cumulative, one in each capitol and one extra. This way you can't afford sitting around if you are not the leading nation.