Ideas for the "Rich get richer" problem

[Malorn]

One of the Reddit questions I had asked was:

How do you plan on addressing the "rich get richer" problem where as an empire gains more territory and resources, they gain more power over the other empires?

Higby's response

this is a tough problem to solve.

Perhaps we, the illustrious PSU community, can assist with some ideas to help address this hard problem.

Part of the reason this is a tough problem is because solving it could render motivation to take territory useless. For example, if we had a welfare system it might not motivate people to take territory, or if we penalized large territory ownership it might motivate an empire to not take too much territory in order to optimize resource gain.

So how can we both reward players for conquest while simultaneously handicapping them so it is still possible for the conquered empires to strike back and regain territory?

What do you think could be done to help solve this problem?