Actually, there's already a couple mechanisms nobody talks about that keep new players alive. I see plenty of new players who don't get blown away immediately. The placement algorithm (at least the latest one, maybe not so much with the old algorithm from a few months ago...) puts new players were they have plenty of room to maneuver. I also leave players who stop playing in the game instead of removing them, so there's generally easy pickings available to the players who want to expand. And yes, I'm going to do more stuff to counterbalance the larger players.
Oh, and I will never provide in-game advantages to paying players, not my style.
Placement gives them room to expand a bit, sure, but they are still often (from my understanding) close enough to big empires so that at least one or two of them can, if he wants, send hundreds of fleets just to take on a nice developped planet. What is to save them from this?
