How would we place an equal amount of emphasis on combat and capturing?
I like using points in play count towards the victory condition of most gold/points.
I think it can be as simple as “if you destroy the other person’s entire fleet, you win regardless of players’ gold count.”
It makes a lot of sense, and some players I’ve played with in the past assumed or wanted there to be a “simulation” at the end of the game where the remaining fleet automatically got all the remaining gold in play.
However, I think it would lead to a lot of power strategies where people would try to kill the other player as fast as possible. Fleets using ships like the San Cristobal and HMS Grand Temple can be very effective against good gold fleets, to the point where the “meta” could devolve into somewhat boring deathmatch play unless you always ran a version of the UPS strategy with Captain Jack Sparrow just to survive the onslaught.