by lategame
I was responding a bit to both of you, the previous poster had mentioned frequent attacking and you had stated:"I was wondering if you find the game ends even more often in death (something that people already complain about happening too often) now?"
which caused me to assume that you were in a similar situation. At the very least that death was a problem for you. You know what they say about assuming.
I don't believe the game is broken or that it needs to be "fixed", I simply prefer to play with these variants because for me the power cards are the most interesting part. I simply wished to make gathering power cards more viable. Actually, the strategy I was compensating for with this variant was less the strategy of attacking other players and more the strategy of going for quick points rather than more slowly accumulating powers. If someone gets lucky with point rolls they can easily win the game without doing much else, and that's just boring.
As for recommending that you take a turtle strategy, that was half a joke. But if you are in a game where everyone is attacking, it would likely work. In the main game it doesn't work as well to really attempt to accumulate powers because in the meantime someone will runaway on points, not because attacking is such a better strategy.
What I think the higher player count game does better than the lower player games is that it makes it a real gamble to see if you can stay in Tokyo till your next turn. For that gamble you get very well rewarded. You get 2 points guaranteed and you get to attack everyone outside of Tokyo (which further helps you to stay in Tokyo longer because the monsters outside are weaker). In a lower player count game if you enter with full health, you will almost automatically get that benefit. Sure after that you may get forced out, but there's really no gamble in staying in for a full round. It gives the players outside of Tokyo more of an ability to force the person in Tokyo out, which gives them a reason to aim for attack dice. Once again I think it's more fun.