V is for Victory (in Vinci)

Wooooo. I held on for the win in our PBEM game of Vinci. Near the end, I went into decline with forts, and everyone left those guys alone the whole rest of the game - scored me 7 points a round. My new civ was medicine (add a new guy each turn) and general (+7 temporary guys each turn). This let me grab up pretty good chunks of points while I waited for the ending. Matthew took it upon himself to wipe me out, and he came close. We were playing the variable ending game and so I was just hanging on hoping for the end roll, otherwise Matthew and Jason were very likely going to pass my by. On the 6th try for end game, we got it. Whew. We had a bit of a discussion about the endgame in Vinci and we've decided that we prefer the faulty, yet original ending. Yes, the endgame as it stands has a kingmaker issue, but at least for this group of players, that's not an issue - we don't tend towards favorites and play to maximize our (or minimize the leader's) scores. The random endpoint ends up just being exactly that - random. At least with the known endpoint, you have to plan your for your last couple of civs. We'd rather have to deal with the kingmaker issue than have a random winner.