ghettosuperstar
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To OP: I have this happen to me all the time. There are only two things you can really do:
a) Join games that have starting income of 10k or less. The reduced starting impact minimizes the impact that a late joiner can have. I've had games where I've killed the same player 2-3 times due to multiple late-joining.
b) Play with diplomacy. Much as I love a good 1 v 4 fight myself, I know that later on in the game, the more fronts that I fight simultaneously, the more disadvantaged I become. To prevent this, sometimes you have to get a feeling for who will ally against you, and pre-emptively extend an alliance to one key player. Sending an ally request wont work when they're already allied against you; you have to do it before the enemy alliance is completely formed.
A 2 vs 3 is not as fun as a 1 v 4, but you have to look at your situation to see if you can last the x turns and win by SP, or if you need one ally to slightly even the odds.
As for the shady rule changing - yeah, it sucks. I just enemy list them and hunt them down/ troll them later on in other games.