A local gamer strongly resisted Air Baron, claiming it took forever. But we played 6 players in the typical 90 minutes. (w/ advanced rules). Most players followed what I call the 'typical' strategy.
- Get a single hub in several spokes (to earn the $3 bonus when that spoke is drawn). Usually get ones that are valuable (to have more of your money invested), but save a few bucks for next turn.
- Once you've got a reasonable base, try to control a hub. Some prepatory moves (jumbos, foreign spokes) may help if you plan on doing this via a fare war.
- Now that you have market share (and income) start attacking adjacent hubs.
Let's call this strategy "Expansive" since it spreads out quickly.
The old group would start attacking players who split up in phase 1. (They call it wimpy play). So they attack! I'm not sure on the details ... but this strikes me as a non-stable strategy, on the other hand, it poisons the environment.
If we assume five opponents who will attack people who split up ("Punishers") then an Expansive player is doomed. He expands, and then punishers attack. Even if they fail often, and cost themselves dearly, odds are that one of them will knock me out. And while they incur a large cost (paying twice as much for ~60% shot at kicking out the expander), the expander losses the whole investment as well. So in a spoke valued Y, several punishers lose 2Y (paying and failing), one looses 2Y (paying and succeeding) but has potential future income. And the expander loses all that future income. [I'm making a lot of simplifications].
Now, this clearly does suck the amount of money out of the system. In a game with all punishers, they'll start grouped out (for safety and too avoid triggering punishment) and so will earn money at a slower rate, and increase market share quickly. That will toss in the 'event' chits into the bag, and those suck money out of the game too. 9 Hours seems excessive, but I could imagine three.
But put one "Mellow Defender" into the mix. Mellow won't provoke an attack (like the expander), but won't attack him either (unless it's genuinely a good play). In essence, he'll let the punishers deal with him. Given that the punishers overpay (to punish), he should win more than his fair share. Other players notice, and switch from Punishers to Mellow. If there's only a single punisher, he'll rarely win.
This doesn't help the poor expanders, who were driven extinct (in that play group) long ago. Ah, group think and evolution. To complicate things, Punishers may retaliate against the 'parasitic' mellow player. Evolution worries about free-riders.