[jutetrea]

Interesting topic - I think it would get the most bang for the buck out of having a (hypothetical) full field of players. If you're option is to bid the maximum for your "best" build is overtaken by someone else you drop down to your "next-best" build and so on till you land. How much do you spend "NOT" to take a bad nation?

Some players view a basic nation as better irregardless of pretender and may keep just enough points for scales, or just enough for an early SC pretender they know will fade late game.

Maybe this would work out with some sort of mod that actually rewarded players for taking generally considered "worse" nations - maybe a 80/20 or 90/10 split. Actually give extra points to those willing to take MA agartha.