It is no accident that this game can encourage selfish play. It was deliberately designed to do that. You can play this game on many levels. One level is as a sort of morality play. A very perceptive article in the old "Whispers" ponted out that the Free can only win if they act "good", good to each other and behave honorably. Why do you think the DS win about 2/3 rds of the games?
Selfishness is destructive. Destructive to the person and to all around him. You see this happen time and again in this game. Of course, every now and then a rare bit of selfishness will work.
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I believe you will be shown wrong. Back in the old days of VPs, many many
players mostly ignored them. It only took a couple people per game that
didn't ignore them to screw the game for the rest. A key nation would be
taken by a player that wanted max VPs, and he'd do nothing but nation build
all game.Then, you'd be forced to launch a late game character war agains this arse,
in hopes of doscouraging more of this kind of play. Neutrals would declare
late in the game, as a way of maximizing their VPs and joining a late game
character war.There were even many games where character wars were launched against good
team players by a select few that wanted to maximize their chance of winning
late in the game.Not caring about VPs in no way isolated you from the negative effects of
having a ranking system.
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