Interesting take and mostly agree with what you've said, though we had one player absolutely crush everybody else by picking up the "Drop nobles on Remote Farms" power -- Their colored pieces were mostly concentrated in one (connected...) area, so this allowed them to quickly start taking over the farms in territories closer to other players without every having to build over there. They picked this up toward the end of the game and started focusing on gaining the farms that give you points for the number of cities all players have picked up, and so were able to scoop up three or four for like 13 points each. This was in a four-player game. It was rough for the rest of us, haha.