First Place

     If you find yourself in the top position, it is best to make sure you can take that position regardless of what other alliances are put together.  Be willing to give up a significant share of the purse to put yourself out of reach of the competition.  There are far fewer people who have win credits than have most titles.  If you are on top, it is also a good idea to engineer the end of the game between yourself and your allies.  If you can flush out the other alliances, you can ensure the maximum number of points for your alliance, and if you can take everyone by surprise you can sometimes sneak your allies into placing as well.  It is usually best to have all the allegiances sworn to but not accepted until the turn you end the game.  This can keep your real strength hidden.  It is also usually a good idea to be logged into the game in the last hour or so before the final tick runs.  This can allow you to adjust to any last-minute developments.

Reading the Citadel

As the endgame approaches, it is important to figure out what the final point totals will look like.  You need to count both what you will have and what your rivals will have.  Take how many places there are in the game you are in, and add to this how many followers each place can have, thats how many players from the top you should be keeping on eye on (usually around 20).  In general, be conservative in your estimates.  For example, assume that your allies will stay at the same numbers or lose territories, whereas you should assume that your rivals will grow; assume that the second-place player will get the next highest five (or however many are allowed) to swear to them (excluding those who are sworn to you or that you are absolutely positive are sworn to someone else).  If you don't know someone's position, assume that they are going to work with your rivals.  You also need to add in fudge factors for last-minute GrunchGuards or mass cedes.  If you can guarantee taking first in spite of all of that, then apply the same approach to getting your allies into those other spots (2nd, 3rd, so on).  Finally, keep on eye on everyone's Fury totals in the citadel.  If someone has at least 4000 fury (even if it's not one of the top players), you need to be prepared for the game ending that very turn (as black Betweens can be ceded). Also be sure that if the game does not end, and that player no longer has over 4000...that the spell was indeed NOT cast.  If you have a lot of time, it can be useful to scout people's territory to see which BB's they have if you're not sure and check if people will be able to cede the last BB's to their allies/neighbors.

Ceding

One way to get a boost in number of points at the end of the game is to have your followers cede you paths into the interior of their empires.  By constructing a "cede tree" (Macros' term), they can hold onto their T-base but still be able to cede you large numbers of territories right at the end.  If you have a dominant lead in the game, you can also boost your allies by ceding one of them the regions you don't need to try and get them into placing.  Conversely, you need to keep an eye on your rivals in case they are trying to work this tactic against you.

Casting the Final BB's

When you've done your best to ensure as many of the top places as possible for yourself and your allies, it's time to turn your attention to actually ending the game.  In general, you will already have the first 3-4 BB's, so the last two are the most important.  You can collect all the Fury yourself for those two, but it will be fairly obvious that the game is ending.  If you want to try and pull off a surprise, you can have neighboring allies cast one or both of those BB's and cede them to you.  Or, you can cast the 6th BB and then the 5th; this generally works best if you spike your 3rd BB (so that you don't go up in # of BB's in the citadel) and/or have your allies send you 2000 Fury so it looks like you only spent 2000 (although most people are wise to this. Another strategy is to send the endgame fury to someone at the very bottom of the citadel (a shock troop ally for example) and have them end the game, most people only look at the top of the rankings and rarely do people click on the Top Fury button. If you can pull off a surprise ending, you can sometimes catch your rivals off guard and get more top positions than you would be able to get otherwise.

Distributing the Purse

It is generally a good idea to get a sense of how many points your allies expect before the game ends.  This prevents people from feeling cheated; if they feel cheated when they work with you, they are more likely not to work with you again in the future.  It is generally good form to give all of your followers who don't get the religion bonus 1 or 2 points to make up for that.  Anything beyond that will give them an advantage over 90% of the players in that room.  Giving people points sows goodwill for the future; if you can afford to give your followers more than they expect, they will be very likely to help you out again, it is also a very good thing if your followers are expecting less than they may deserve, this allows you to give them more without compromising what you yourself are expecting.  In general, give people points in proportion to how much they have helped you.  If you couldn't have won without someone's help, it's bad form to only give them a few points.  On the other hand, you don't need to give a ton of points to someone who only helped you in the first ten turns, or who's loyalty was uncertain more often than not.  Ultimately its best to not give any bonus to people that specifically ask for a certain amount (or who are only helping you in the late game because you are the highest bidder), unless you want to show these greedy players "the light". It is also a nice gesture if you can help your followers get to the next title, but this is not always feasible.

Placing

     If no one has first place locked up, or if you can get second but not first, then the strategy looks a little different.  Because the purse drop-off is fairly significant between first and second, even larger than second and third, you want to use as few followers as possible to secure your position so that you don't have to split those small purses many ways. Sometimes its better to get a low placement with few followers that split a higher purse more ways (both for you and your followers)  Another tactic is to offer people shares based on position so that you don't have to give someone as many points if you finish second or third as you would if you took first.  Forcing an ending can be a valuable tactic, particularly if you can make it happen before the top player has accepted allegiances.  One way to do that is to cede them BB's if you or your allies are on their borders.  No one can refuse a ceded territory, so this can be an effective way to force an ending (note that ceding is disabled in some games).  If you don't have a dominant command on first place, be wary of players who will switch allegiances at the last minute to try to improve their own situations.  In general, it is best in this position to keep the real endgame scenario close to your chest, and sometimes it's good to put out disinformation (that the game will end sooner or later than it really will) to flush out hidden allegiances.

Lemming Grunch (The Elrad "fake ending")

     One clever maneuver which is hell to pull off (but can kick ass on a grand Scale) is the Lemming Grunch. The concept is fairly tricky, basically is operates of the premise that when people see someone is able to end the game, that they all flush out their allegiances, mass cede, and grunchguard like mad. Most players that think they are playing out their last turn do not plan ahead for the next turn (or at least not as much as they otherwise would). If you can find a way to convince the others in the game of this (Most basic of ways is to simply have 4000, or 6000 fury, which can be accomplished by a temporally pool of resources from allies) then you will find a collection of rivals with their pants down. Some would have squandered the majority of their fury on useless Mountains and Lakes, most would have deployed their armies only the the greatest immediate gain, not planning ahead for the long term, some may have abandoned focus on certain fronts all together, but almost all would find themselves within their respective allegiance circles. All of these ensure that you will dominate the battle field as they recover, probably placing much higher then you would have had you ended the game. Alternatively if you can make it very obvious that you are pulling a Lemming Grunch, you can end the game as a surprise to everyone. Ultimately having enough fury to end the game puts you in a position of power.

Being a Follower

Research

One of the best things you can do to prepare for the endgame is to keep track of who's fighting whom as the game goes along.  Gather intelligence from your allies on whom they are working with, whom they're fighting, whom the people they are fighting are working with, etc.  Also, check out any allegiances in the citadel as the game goes along.  If you know who's been working with whom throughout the game, you are less likely to be misled by disinformation and will have a clearer picture of how the endgame alliances will sort out.

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