Warnings... loooong post
Finally I Agartha are dead. Maverni and Atlantis quite effiecently cut me down and eliminated all my dominion. My 25 or something priests had no chance to preach to the people about me as both Maverni and Atlantis outnumbered my priests. My last action as I knew this would be my last turn were to breake the siege and try to do as much damage as possible to Maverni. I was owned on the battlefield as Maverni used much better tactic than me but atleast I took some 118 or something with me to my grave.
I started the game in Aklavik Pass very near the northwestern corner. I thought that was good but quickly I had to realize that it was very crowdy up there. I ran into Maverni and Yomi south of me early and I immediatly started to negotiate with Maverni about an alliance against Yomi. At first I thought the negotiation was going good but after a few months the messenger from Maverni was not going to Agartha anymore.
Meanwhile I was attacking hard eastwards and I reached Sauromatias capital at the time when he was stalling so I tried to seize the moment and attacked the capital... well I was trashed by the PD and a new player took control of Sauromatia. He pushed me back immediatly... meanwhile I had started negotiations with Yomi as I realized that Maverni was planning to attack me. Yomi and I agreed to a NAP but he warned me about attacking Maverni as he told me they were allied and he would have to take his side if I was the aggressor.
Also Yomi is a good negotiator he asked for 2 provinces that bordered his capital (I took them because of Yomis big mistake of sending a Dai-Oni to his death while the troops were hiding away) as I still had no friend I had no choice but to agree. I realized that my war with Sauromatia would be hard for me to fight because of the long supply route and that Maverni was gathering forces on the border, so Sauromatia and I agreed to a border and now I could concentrate on my southern would be enemy Maverni.
I still couldn't make the initial attack due to the pact between Yomi and Maverni so I started gathering troops. Since my territory was small, only 5 provinces I got way to small income. I had to push the taxes up to 200% while patrolling. This I did in all my provinces and actually had the highest income of all for a couple of turns (I killed approx 9000 of my starting 30000 population in my capitol over the years as they tried to rebel against my high taxes).
Maverni made the first move and attacked and totally trashed my army in the first battle. He used loads of Eponi Knights on the flanks where I had 0, zero, zip, nada troops he slaughtered my army quite good. Quickly I sent more troops to the front. Atlantis showed up and become a new bordering nation. I quickly new that he was allied to Maverni as he refused to help me against them. Now I had two 1 province fronts, 1 against each of them.
Many battles was fought and at one time I really thought that I had a chance of pushing them back far. In the end... I lost... but that you already know.
So did I learn anything? Sure did I learned more in this game than every SP game I have played in Dominions 3 and Dominions 2 DEMO.
I want to thank FAJ (Yomi) and llamabeast (Sauromatia) for being good neighbours I also would like to thank Sheap (R'lyeh) for all the friendly messeges but most of all I want to thank my nemesis Xox (Maverni) and Darrel (Atlantis) for making this game fun. There actually was a moment I though I could advance on you... but you quickly killed that dream.
Bye all