Hey Yair, I would highly suggest reading the Brian Tomasik articles under Lukas Gloor's comment on this. But you may also be interested in articles discussing '[Logic of the Larder](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/topics/logic-of-the-larder)'. Initially when used would suggest cases of farmed animal welfare being directly positive, the farmed animals have a life better than not worth living. However, with time it has also been used to discuss that farmed animal land-use is counter-factually positive for animals on-net.
From a quick glimpse over these, seems like most aren't willing to make such a drastic gameplay change as fully changing the second half :( I think BGG often falls into this trap of not willing to suggest bolder changes.
Two people touch upon variants with changes second stage:
- [Galaxy Trucker should be simply a racing game](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1129279/galaxy-trucker-should-be-simply-racing-game)*
- [Cooperative Variant for Younger Kids](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1932053/cooperative-variant-younger-kids)
*Assuming from name only and replies. Unfortunately original post is gone and web.archive is down right now.
There are also a couple of games who explicitly state they borrow from Glory to Rome, if you're looking for a similar experience:
It is first worth noting that I think these questions directly assume a functionalist philosophy of mind, by loosening this I believe you do not hit as many of these issues.
Your question in 1 is discussed in Qualia Research Institute's Against Functionalism (specifically the section Objection 6: Mapping to reality). Though perhaps a better area to explore this is the discussion of absent mental states in philosophy of mind. I think there is a mapping from allowing non-bijective internal experiences in functionalism, to non-bijective mappings of computation...
It's worth noting that although this teaches the rules in a intuitive fashion, I think this may encourage people to form a two eye stronghold - and then sit back happy with a tie. Though perhaps this is hard to get on such a small board. Or even this is the concept you want to teach!
Another scoring option could be to use the Stone Counting variant, where whoever has most stones on the board at the end is the winner.
More general comments about teaching go: I would encourage skipping 9x9 for teaching, I found that this doesn't really give a sense of territor... (read more)