This is pretty much the application of Game Theory and Diplomacy taking into account how rank is determined in this game.

From reading around some on these forums tho, I get the feeling that people want a clear cut "winner". Although I'm new and haven't had experience with rank too much, I can imagine situations where you'll want to work out a tie with someone otherwise you could risk an unfriendly situation where the people involved would be worse off.

I'm just curious how often this situation comes up in games and what player's attitudes are towards agreeing to ties or even just compromising for mutual benefit.

Other than that, I'm also curious how many points of Experience equal 1 point of Tribute? I was looking for this information but possibly overlooked it somewhere?

There is no equivalence between tribute and experience points, they are separate entities.

The game has gone through many changes over the years and tribute only appeared a couple of years ago. Before that rank was determined by a complicated equation that included how many troops one had killed in a campaign versus how many troops were lost plus the various ranks of players in the game. High ranked players made less points for similar places in the game than low ranked players. In other words, the better you got, the harder to advance quickly.

In games you can vote to quit if there are four or less players still in the game (I think, maybe it is three) that way you can negotiate who ends up where to some extent rather than having to fight it out to the death.