Ok this is something I noticed and I wonder does it happen in other people's games too. In the initial stages of a game (especially with manual deployment at the start) if a player gets a good position on the map and becomes clearly the dominant player that other players will avoid them and attack other smaller players. This then leads to tit-for-tat where the smaller players weaken each other while the dominant player just gets stronger.
If there are smart weaker players they will arrange a truce but usually it's too late. Any ideas how I can avoid this or is it just the nature of the game and the only way to deal is either become the dominant player initially or get preemeptive truces?