I hope Martin looks at the kibitz thread once they’re out/are invited.
I think they played quite well early on given the complicated situation at the start of the game.
I don’t think this is necessarily the best stance in a Diplo game
but then again, before signing myself up I also considered how much time it would take up submitting a move every day and also having to negotiate with 3-4+ players, coordinate moves etc. I’m imagining it can be quite taxing on the players including Martin.
I also feel a little bad because I was looking forward to a group (in this case Martin’s group) getting captured by teamwork in one move, just because things like that hadn’t really happened too much in the previous game or this game before now (although it’s hard to remember all the moves, I could be misremembering a bit).
I think there’s lots of games that quickly
stop being fun once you start to lose but aren’t immediately out, the classic example being Monopoly. You can be almost broke for a good few turns and just waiting on a bad dice roll to eventually clean you out. I guess this can be similar since there’s no real mechanic to give you entry back into the game once you’re in a bad position. Sure in theory you could negotiate with some players to try this or that, or stay alive a bit longer, or in another variant hope to play kingmaker, but that might be enjoyable for everyone that would be interested initially in taking part.
I don’t have a solution obviously, but hopefully Martin comes to kibitz garden to say hi and we can say congrats and they might consider giving another variant a go another time 