Finalizing is just a mechanism to speed up the game if a consensus is reached to skip to the next phase. It should not be considered the default action.

Yep, he just wants to ruin the game for everyone. We're playing a game with a bunch of people at work, and we've all got access to the internet. I don't care so much if the time limit runs out when making real moves, but he's stated several times that he's never going to finalize anything so that it always takes 48 hours.

We're in retreats right now, and he's the only one with retreat orders, so we're going to wait 48 hours for that to end. He's going to be eliminated in the next two turns, which means 48 for orders, 48 for retreats, 48 for orders again, and if he has more retreats, well, you see what I mean.

Well, maybe, but that's still a valid diplomatic tactic. Think about how you could persuade him that rather than delaying he could work with you etc etc

Well, I've managed to persuade 2 other countries to support me into one of his final 2 control centers, and we've coordinated the other countries to support an attack into the other one. It may be a valid tactic, but all it seems to do is make everyone angry.

Make games with smaller phases. You can't boot someone for following the rules.