The vast majority of comments in regards to VP's and the "Individual Win" are negative. "It's a team game" and reminders of the bad old GSI days when allies would pillage allies, supposedly for the highly valued GWC's. But, everywhere I go I keep hearing about "winning". The diatribe against agents and the play-by-play of the Gunboat game both mentioned either winning or placing. Almost every game I've been in in the last 2 years has seen players openly discuss the concept of being the "winner", either neutrals or allegiance players trying to woo my neutral nation.
Gunboat specifically has some of the Individual placing for position - it's not a big part of the game and lots of players ignore it (like they do for normal games on the whole).
So as to come clean with my potential snootiness, I consider VP's to be merely a transitory guage of relative strengths within the game that are only meaningful in the remotest sense of triviality and only rarely make an impact on a serious player's strategy. <snip>I consider it uncouth to even discuss VP's and the concept of an individual "winner".
Most players nowadays seem not too worried by them. With the new GWCs we only reflect a team winning not individual players achievements.
Clint