...
i however am not a noob, and id like for more skilled players, which means noobs learning...
and means skilled players learning diplomacy... most of which are simply unwilling or too noobish!
I've only had flat denials. From kbroken's lame excuse: "9 won't work on a 10 player map". To your "Ive been in one game and... will never do it again." To flat out NO's. The extra planets don't end up all next to one player! They are spread out evenly. Come on. After 1500 games, you'd think he'd know better (& be better).
Yeah, it is stupid to team with everyone. You only team with someone you can trust, and you demand complete diplomacy.
I also can't stand when people refuse to captain, and then complain about the teams. But I sympathize with captains, because you have to know everyone, or get stuck with that one bad pick - which usually makes or breaks a team. How is it possible to know everyone with so many smurfs? PUGs are broken. Smurfing isn't going to go away (is it Dirty?).
The game is called Diplomacy, isn't it? Like Cykur, I suspect weird stuff will happen, but I'd like to give it a try. I know from experience that true locked FFA's of 4 people (or more) take absolutely forever to resolve. But I've had OK experiences with 3 person FFAs, therefore I think 3 teams can work.
(BTW, sorry about the cloned post, it must have been an editing glitch, coz I didn't hit the post button twice).