[Micah]

Calmon: I'm merely being prudent...I assume you wouldn't be massing more troops to pursue a lost cause, so I'm guessing you have some sort of nastiness planned. I gave you warning so you could take your troops and leave, instead you decided to sink 700 or so gold into PD to kill off a few of my elephants. Again, if you're so confident that you'll lose you wouldn't have done anything of the sort.

I also never said I wanted peace per se, I just said I didn't want any trouble with you, which is perfectly true. I could have really launced a surprise attack on you and taken out your expedition team and a province, but I gave you warning beforehand so you could withdraw peacefully...you did not.

And you have more than a fraction of my income, and excellent PD to sink it into. Letting you dominate the graphs and kill me down the road at your leisure because I have nowhere to expand to wasn't my idea of a sound strategy.

As to Ulm, well, trample is a gross mismath for them early game, and I simply abused that fact. It wasn't particularly skillful, but it was effective, and given their central location on the island it was again a case of kill or be killed. Not attacking straight away before he got paralyze would have left me with inferior recruitable troops, less provinces due to our forts' spheres of influence, and much, much, much worse PD.