by LordTengil
First of all, we do not use the alliance rules, as we feel they bring about too static diplomacy, and we usually blat 4-6 players.So, in our group the winning strategy is often to fight the least with other players. There have been several threads about fighting or not fighting before, so let's jsut say that the winning players often gravitate towards not fighting other payers until the last one or two rounds.
This works beacsue thay can fill up with good reputation tiles just by battling ancients. Part of the incentive to fight in a multiplayer game is the reputation tiles, but if you already have good reputation tiles by killing ancients, that incentive disappears. More so, the good reputation tiles will probably have gone from the ancient killing in the beginning. To summarize it, you'd often be better of having everyone else do bitter fighting with each other and you not.
I was thinking of a variant where you do not gain reputation from ancient ships, only by participating in the battle, effectively only giving you one tile to draw when fighting ancients. Has anyone tried this? Ideas? Thoughts?