In the endgame when there's two people left the other plays diplo on you = no strategy and 6 turns of deploying and nothing else. On this map it's already difficult to do anything strategic because of how geometric it is.
I have to agree with X here. The times where the result is something strategic and interesting is nearly non-existent. A two turn diplomacy can do that, but a six turn is way beyond reasonable. Usually it's a matter of the income leader taking the game off the rails for six turns while they push their income advantage, the end. That's not really fun at all.
It's very useful when you have income advantage while the other player has more armies on board and may be closer to the army cap. I've had that both ways already and it does change the odds.
I don't understand why the outstanding games finished automatically like that. I think that is stupid. I just got 2 losses to close out the season and dropped 7 rankings when all those games were basically dead even. In 1 game we hadn't even started fighting yet.
Why can't those games just remain unfinished and delete?
So because he was up by 3 income, I take it that was why he won? If we had one more turn in, I would have broken his middle bonus for sure (or yellow).