I believe I understand the concept of the system, but it gives little to no benefit to the player in "last" to try and come back...

For example, in a recent game I should have been the first player out due to having 1 territory/2 dice with all 7 players playing... which would be -17 for 7th and probably -20+ or so dominance, so say -40. Due to fighting going on around me (being ignored), I was able to eventually fight my way back to having 6 territories in the span of around 15 turns. As the result of dice placement and other players being defeated, I was able to come in 4th... for a score of -0 for 4th and -20 dominance! There was no benefit to fighting back other to avoid the 7th place finish. Finishing 6th would only possibly have been worse, and 5th probably would have been a "gain" for the same reason (fewer turns staying alive).

I realize the above example is from my own experience, but the same experience is shared between 3rd/4th place players who have 1-2 territories left, but are not captured by the 2 players who would be 1st/2nd (fighting each other with 10+ territories each). The final 2 players get the dominance benefit (12+ for 2nd, 20+ or more for 1st), while the 3rd/4th place players tend to lose points/very slight gain as a result. To use another example of my own play, finishing 3rd for +7 with a dominance of -9 for a total of -2 points.

I'm not advocating another complete rechange of the system, but without some sort of "forward progress" benefit, there's little incentive to fight back from a losing position when 6th can be higher than 4th and 5th higher than 3rd...