Hi everyone. I have three suggestions for the rating system.

1. This has been suggested before, I think, but I also thought of it, and I think it would be very good, so I'm suggesting it again. The scale used to map in-game position to ratings movement is too linear - the difference between 6th and 7th is the same as the difference between 1st and 2nd. We should make this non-linear, so that the difference between 1st and 2nd is much more than between 6th and 7th.

2. I quite like the current very volatile rating number, as I think it's a fun number to track while playing. However, one snapshot of this volatile rating is not a very good measure of how good a player is, as it depends so much on their luck in the last couple of games. This means you can't tell how good your opponents are, and some people are getting very frustrated when they're rated low but know they're a better player than that rating suggests. Perhaps we could track a stable rating as well as the volatile one, by averaging the last n (10?) volatile rating scores, or with a regressed average (new stable rating = (old stable rating * 0.9) + (new volatile rating * 0.1)). Without changing anything else, we would then have a number which would be a much better indicator of a player's skill.

3. I like that the ratings aren't winner-takes-all but depend on place, but I think the time you're finally eliminated isn't the best measure of how well you've done in a game. Although the last man standing is clearly the winner, perhaps we could give players points during play, for armies awarded, armies killed, territories held, whatever. Then, the players who didn't win could be ordered according to their scores. This would make it more likely the most active competitor to the eventual winner would place 2nd, and give the winner much less ability to decide which other players should get which ratings.