Here's my view on why the winner is clear after only few days.
First the default expanding was like 30 to like 15 on average. Then it got raised to 45 to 30 on average. At first the winning 'jump' came like on the 6th or 7th day, in the recent sets on 3rd or 4th day. Is there a correlation?
I believe there is (was). Netters (those who actively waited for expanders) can get land much more easily, can get tech and army much more easily (even the less active players help the NA/tech a lot more), because while getting land was made easier, getting tech and na wasn't made any more difficult. So if you have full tech and you can get a lot of land, then of course, you jump as fast as possible. There were states with 20k land on day 4 or day 5. Of course they will break away.
Meanwhile, stockers or alternative strategies were offered no relief. Only the netters (jumpers). If you stock in the bottom, you still need a lot land, even though you have no army upkeep, the topstates will be uncatchable if they have so much land. But if you are a stocking state with a lot of land, you will lose a lot of land...
I hope the old game remains somewhere (different server, chaos rules maybe?). Reduce expanding, tweak the GB formula, I think I remember that in the old GB formula you didn't get shitload of land just because you had little land and enemy had a lot of land, like you do now.
I won't judge on the new game, it seems kinda random to me, but let's see what comes out of it.