They were playing to win. That is how we play games so I don't fault them for that. They beat the Kobiyashi Maru. They beat the other players and even the code of the game that is meant to discourage that. Awesome. Congratulations.
What should have happened next is that someone should have done something to break the power block. Like I said before I favor the idea of having all cities secede, but that is just one of many options. The devs are here to deal with odd things like this and should have done something effective. They did not.
The players did it in the end, but they shouldn't have had to.
