DCWoody has a good point.

7th 6th and 5th should jave equal shares.

There are (at least) two other threads where people are talking about the same issue. Now Ryan is posting his ideas here, so I guess we should move here.

The other threads:
http://kdice.com/ideas/ideas/44757601
http://kdice.com/discussion/topics/44757585

First: Being able to flag for any place you currently hold or lower actually is even better then just adding a surrender flag to current flag rule.

In fact, it is perfect! I sometimes find myself in 2nd or 3rd when I want to get a realistic 4th. I don't wanna go out as 6th or 7th so i put up my flag (2nd) and specify that I will reflag later. This is not ideal since some will only look at the provocative 2nd flag and attack it and I might get to 5th before I have a chance to readjust my flag.

Now if people could directly flag to the position they feel is fair for them, all this overflagging would be eliminated. Now nobody can hide behind the fact the actually flagged higher then what I hope for. Again, it looks perfect (well actually no, I already see 10's of extra loopholes already but nvm... it's closer to perfection than current system)

Secondly: giving equal point shares to 5,6 and 7 might actually help out a lot too to limit all those dwarf battles (2 guys with 2 lands deseperately trying to finish in front of the other) or all those "let try to outlive blue here and cost everybody dom points" frustrations. People in 5 to 7th will flag and surrender much quicker if point difference is gone.

What if rank was computer by number of dice instead of number of territories?
Seems like that would solve many of these problems.

Ryan, that idea seems sound, as long as the higher tables remain as close to possible as zero sum, we all know what happens when points become to easy to gain ;-)

Increasing the reward for 1st an decreasing the reward for 2nd seems like a good idea and will encourage some players to be more agressive. In turn with trying to increase aggrssiveness possibly increasing the dom earlier would be nice so if you gert unlucky early but played right and had good size, maybe even the badge for a couple rounds, but flame out you have some solace in that you can steal some of the dom. This also has the added benefit of reducing the reward for people that played to slow as they will have no dom.

I like Ryan's idea of changing the point distributions. --the numbers are a little weird ;)

I also think his idea of flagging for lower positions is better than the surrender flag.

Said that, I must add that there are two things I dislike and do not seem to be taken into account by the suggested changes:
(a) Allowing early flaggers (ninja flaggers?) adds very little twists to the game and a lot of unnecessary verbal aggressions. If early flagging is to be considered fair play, no changes should be made. Otherwise, it would be nicer if the game automatically enforces a rule that specifically prohibits it.

(b) The current flagging system does not directly affect the point share. It seems to me that flags were intended to be specifically a tool to facilitate verbal negotiations among players and a way to surrender for the player in last position. As such, it does not encourage dice aggressiveness. A peaceful world happens to me more balanced :(. Do we want kdice to be that kind of world? ;)

My proposal (to discourage flagging):
I think that if you flag you are giving up your pursuit for a position. And it should not be just words. You could pay with points.
How? If a player flags, the maximum amount of points he/she can get could be fixed at the moment that the person flags. That number could be some function of their number of dice rather than position. The points the that the player gave up could go to the players that did not flag. I believe a system like this would also discourage early flagging, unofficial rules over who has the right to get a position and players willing to enforce those made-up rules.

Thank you,

me again

If you flag and are obviously short on the ability to hold what you've claimed, I feel no compunction about ignoreing that flag.