What I have taken from 11 pages of reading is
1. Diplomacy is now discouraged and even somewhat disparaged as a viable part of gameplay.
2. Having an ally and/or NAP is basically useless, as the new rule ensures one side or the other will have to break the alliance and turn on the other tribe eventually.
3. The actual winning of the world will now boil down to patience. Since many tribes are left with only a handful of active people after a year or so (inactivity is a plague, for myriad reasons, not just "noobies get the sadz and leave" )..those different handfuls of people will get to play the "guess who is active and hope they are closer than 2 weeks noble time away in hopes that I gain one village" game for months on end or the "who can eat the most inactives fastest" game to win.
With merges being discouraged and the new rules being vague at best, what I think we will actually see happening is a core of experienced players moving together from one world to the next, jumping on every player as soon as protection is lifted, giving new players no chance to learn or even survive long enough to meet someone who can teach them. One tribe will dominate from the very beginning and they will win by eating inactives to reach that magical 80%.
Oh yay. How fun.>.<
I'll try O world when it opens, but if my predictions come true and it looks like it will become months on end of eating inactives, it will be the last world I play.