[BBegemott]

Originally posted by Geoschmo:
By playing the same number of lower ranked people in 1 v 1 games, he has the same potential gain <...>

That's not true, I think. You don't take into account that the more you win 1 v 1 games, the less increases your rating after each game. That's because of rating difference of players is taken into account (your opponents rating drops down). It will take more games to get the same increment than number of players in one multi-player game. And a single loss increases that number...

Yeh ganging up is a problem, but hasn't it been a problem before Ratings too? High rated players might gangup against lower rated if they feel a threat of early destruction of their empires.

I think SE4 rating System is good as it is.