1. Factions consistently outnumbered eachother in last round, IVL lost several worlds when burp played where his enemies were 100% pirate and he still had unaligned on his own team. By the end, the factions were forming into two major blocks, with freemachines + ascended vs trueborn + empire, which made balancing even worse and often ended up with people winning but their enemies still getting more IP from an alliance.
2. There is no way for someone to do this unless they successfully defended the planet, IE you held it by too small a margin and they earnt it.
3. You couldnt do that in the last round, either?
Yeah, each round will have different factions and setups, its meant to be an evolving storyline.