It is true that people go on suicide if they have low territories and an 8stack and are somewhat frustrated. This is annoying and often changing game completely. Benefiting from such a behavior has nothing to do with skill. What about overweighting big losses of territory. Increasing with the size of loss (absolute or percentile). One land is much likely to be lost in every round. Almost all your territories are not. Would make people play less offensive though.

Rate dice instead of territories to make it more defensive?

Oh wait, that would punish risky attacks such as 2 vs 3. And territories are just better I suppose.

"Rating Adjustment 2: This adjustment ranks you against other players based on your average territory count at the beginning of each turn. When you are knocked out your rank is calculated and an adjustement is made."

I'm wondering how this works exactly, because it is calculated directly when you are knocked out. Is it so that you are simply 'ranked' in terms of averages? Say I'm knocked out the 2nd turn, but I was first in territories at the start of both turns. Then I get ranked 1st for territories, and the ELO formula is applied on that?

Seems like a good idea. The only potential problem that I see is that a strong player might keep a weak one around with 1 or two territories just to hurt the lower guys average so that he loses more points that will end up going to the top player.

I think its not so bad to rate on dices.

I know the argument is, the goal of the game is to get all countries, the dice are only tools.

Well this on way to see it. For me, The goal of the game is to kill all other dices, the countries are merly tools ;)

A suggestion for an alternativ rating system: Make an activity rating which is based on number of fights, number of total and border countries and total amount of dice. Punish inactiv players, reward activ players.

I believe this would be a better method (than the average size rating) to make most games more dynamic. Truces between big players, truces with 3 or more players and sitting players will be punished with this system.

wiz - I disagree!

What has the skill of an player to do with a high rate off attacks???

On the unkimited tables - known for there "kamikaze-style" a skilled player have to shop a very defensiv game-style in the beginning. At least, after he stacked up, he will start to attack the other players. But even in this phase a skilled player will do less attacks then these ugly players....

So could you tell me what the rate of attacks is according to the skill of a player??

In the basic-point I will agree with you - it is not amusing to see the second place goes to a player who was sitting in a corner fpr the whole game.

But for an other point:
The goal is to win the game, to get all territories, or the other players should surrender...
What is the false of an allie between three small players against the biggest player on this table, if each of them don´t have a chance to win alone? It´s the interesting part of every game to see,
-if the smaller players start to attack the other weak players to be not the least (or at least to do nothing and to hope that he is not the first...)
- or if the weaker players see the change in an alliance to beat the strongest player!!!
THESE are the really god games! And I say this also, if I am the strongest player, who lose... But you see the affort of the new scoring system? In this case the strongest player perhaps lose his points for longviety ´cause the 4th place, but he still win a lot of points ´cause dominating the table for a while... (without that he hadn´t been the strongest player!)

wiz - I disagree!

What has the skill of an player to do with a high rate off attacks???

On the unkimited tables - known for there "kamikaze-style" a skilled player have to shop a very defensiv game-style in the beginning. At least, after he stacked up, he will start to attack the other players. But even in this phase a skilled player will do less attacks then these ugly players....

So could you tell me what the rate of attacks is according to the skill of a player??

In the basic-point I will agree with you - it is not amusing to see the second place goes to a player who was sitting in a corner fpr the whole game.

But for an other point:
The goal is to win the game, to get all territories, or the other players should surrender...
What is the false of an allie between three small players against the biggest player on this table, if each of them don´t have a chance to win alone? It´s the interesting part of every game to see,
-if the smaller players start to attack the other weak players to be not the least (or at least to do nothing and to hope that he is not the first...)
- or if the weaker players see the change in an alliance to beat the strongest player!!!
THESE are the really god games! And I say this also, if I am the strongest player, who lose... But you see the affort of the new scoring system? In this case the strongest player perhaps lose his points for longviety ´cause the 4th place, but he still win a lot of points ´cause dominating the table for a while... (without that he hadn´t been the strongest player!)

aixo - I disagree!

In case that 3vs1 alliance wins and is smart, it would let live the first player until the average territories have fallen under the least of them and then taking that player out.

If the alliance isn't smart cause of "i want first"-ness or outcome is to insecure, things could be different. On high ranked tables this is unlikely but happens.