After some experience in a couple games I find that the first couple players that jump out ahead in the neptunium race tend to get overtaken later in the game pretty easily. This leads to naturally some bitterness but it also introduces the idea of the "kingmaker." The thought of, "Well if I can't win, I'll do whatever I can to make this guy win."

This can lead to gifting of mines, specialists, drillers etc.
Now to me, there is no such thing as 2nd or 3rd place. I feel like the presentation of that gives users hope that maybe I can at least get second place. But When you're mining Neptunium to build an aparatus to take over the planet, at the end of the day, that includes mowing over 2nd place. Seems like it's an all or nothing game.

Is this the case in your games? Would it benefit the game to display that all the others have lost and there was only one victor? Or is it still left in the hands of the diplomat who convinced the other player to help him win?

It does seem that anybody going for neptunium early does seem to get caught in the end in most games. However, in a game that finished yesterday (with the new reduced 150 neptunium goal) the winner was the person that built the first mine in a very tight finish. He probably wouldn't have held onto the lead but somehow managed to convince someone to gift him a mine in the last 12 hours and that kept him ahead.

I do agree that the ability to king-make in the late stages of a game can be annoying if unfounded, but then I guess you need to ask yourself why they didn't pick you and maybe you could change your tactics next time to include talking to more players and making allies.

Maybe a rankings system is needed to make people fight for every last position even once winning is off the cards.There's generally a big difference in rankings loss between 9th & 10th in game so this would encourage people to keep fighting.

I've seen it go both ways, but more often then not the person with the early NP lead doesn't win.

I don't think the timing of the first mine has much to do with the final outcome, other then if it was too early, the larger issue is that players skill not specifically the mine.

Obviously creating a mine early makes you a target. However, diplomacy plays such a huge role in the game, there is literally no tactical situation that can't be compensated or overcome by diplomacy.

For the most part it's hard to judge externally if the timing of another players mine was good or not until the dust settles. At worst it's a litmus test against your own plan and may herald the need for a change in tactics.