[Micah]

Well, I don't think I've raised any objections to restricting some nations from the game. Clearly there are balance issues, but there's also a lot of randomness at all levels of dom, most notably in site searching and neighbor selection. At some level you just gotta live with it and roll with the punches, and maybe hope CBM continues to update and balance stuff. I've had my share of crappy nations as well as the good ones, and them's the breaks. Heck, I almost put together a win with EA Atlantis until their horrid research combined with being incessantly attacked caused me to collapse under the size of my empire since I had almost zero mobility. I've put my time in with Eriu and MA Agartha as well.

I guess I'd just prefer to see an early ganging of a power nation that's gobbling up someone and needs to be stopped before they start snowballing, instead of the inevitable top-guy-vs-everyone late game scenario, especially since late in the game teleporting and remote spells are so prevalent, so it becomes possible to truly world-gang someone. Early kills also mean that the strong nation doesn't have the power to throw the game to someone, which in my mind is another good thing.

Artifacts was an excellent example of a game won purely on diplomacy and tenacity...the nations that were ganged up on had literally no chance to survive, and it just seems perverse to me when you're punished so heavily for doing the best. (And LA Atlantis, while underrated, isn't really a power nation and was the first to get ganged on.)