"Hey guys, want to play this game called kdice? It's a multiplayer version of Dice Wars with same gameplay except your score is rewarded for quitting early."

With ante I would quit over half my games of Dice Wars instead of winning them all.

Another example I saw yesterday was sinth asking someone to flag when there was four players left. Buddy in first separated them all down to four territories and could've milked them for more ante but chose not to for some reason. It seems you have to play with friends to not get screwed by this. I see there is an autoflag if you're at -15, but how do you tell who gets knocked out first by this?

In theory, winning a convincing 1st place is *bad* because if you don't trick your opponents into thinking they can do better, they'll flag early. That's not a fun strategy.

The main two drawbacks I see of ante (they're small, but I don't know any benefits):
1. Instead of strategy that makes the best of a bad situation in a fun, suspenseful, random game; you quit. (Battles get reduced to boring 1vs1 at a time until everyone has flagged?)
2. It's more complicated than not having ante

In poker, it'd be like going all in with pocket Queens, and getting all your money back if you quit when the flop shows Ace or King. Anyone can do that. With ante, anyone can hope for the payoff of a risky attack and minimize their losses if it goes badly. There's no strategy left in thinking about if 4vs5 is good idea, just do it and flag when it fails.
There was a couple other minor cons that I'll reply with if I remember them while playing.

There's less skill in knowing when to flag than using strategy, you're taking away skill points and rewarding them to people who exploit bad players, just like in poker, that's not fun.

Without ante people shall still flag. Player in 3rd can say, "I'll flag if you kill off 4th." Game ends fast, everyone gets the place they deserve.

The only reason there's less 8vs8 is everyone's racing to pick off neutral/kamikaze lands. Then they quit immediately when there's a clear winner. I like 8vs8 when there's at least 3 people all going for 1st, and even 2 players is fun because there are so many people who are bad at 8vs8 (because they always flag and never played Dice Wars).

----

This is incoherent and uninformed but would still like to know the improvements ante brings and where I'm wrong. Haven't seen any topics discussing ante except that "you don't get punished as much for getting last" which can easily be accomplished without ante.