I hate how that, by making the win conditions organic and simple, it actually makes it too hard to track conveniently. Towards the end of the game, you have to stop and add it all up constantly, trying to factor in the potential power shifts and then decide how to accurately pick your battles. Plus, remember this is a game of inches. The game is most likely going to be determined, not by overwhelming military force, but via a SINGLE UNIT which can be placed, moved, or removed nearly at whim. Very rarely will there be big battles that determine victory. Most often it's a sneaky emissary, exploration, or a new alliance card determining things for good. (God forbid you failed to account for those Epic Tale cards.) It's so hard to parse the busy board state and players' win potentials that punishing the leader is pretty much impossible to do reliably, and winning feels akin to random chance.
I've won nearly every game of Inis I've played and each victory does not feel like a master stroke of strategy, to me, so much as politely squeezing past two people fighting in a doorway. Sometimes it even seems entirely an accident that I've won. I feel like I should APOLOGIZE for winning, except everybody else is just glad that this un-fun game is over.
If I had to point at the one thing Inis does the most wrong, is the fact there isn't any moment of positive feedback. You don't feel measurable progress towards victory, at least nothing more permanent than the promise of rain on a cloudy day. Battles don't always result in your gain. Exploring a Territory means very little for you. Building a Citadel may actually hurt you. Placing dudes on the map may actually LOSE you the game. Even the simple act of playing a card might result in nothing happening at all, because of the ever-present Geiss-cancel. Everything is in such an ephemeral state of flux that few actions can be performed with surety that they were good for you to do.
