[Micah]

Thanks Tera.

Marignon didn't start the fight on the island, I did. I was hoping to get rid of him before he got too established. But, between Marignon's best-in-the-game PD and what seemed to be archer indies in every single one of the provinces Calmon had, combined with flaming arrows and my shieldless troops, I failed. I don't think waiting would have helped any though, since he was already in a fairly dominant position.

Ich: I spent my research going after arrow fend, and not anything I could dump massive amounts of gems into. By the time I got it I'd lost too much territory to recover, owing to Patala's amazingly bad PD and Marignon's financial/research dominance. I managed a couple of inspiring battles, including killing their pretender, but I was doomed to a phyrric loss. Alchemy wouldn't have helped me, I was doing alright until the bottleneck broke. I went from viable to near-hopeless in the space of 2 turns, it wasn't a gradual thing that could have been stopped with some gold...I needed arrow fend, and you can't alchemize research.

Moses: I don't think people are obligated to protect me. I told people that they should attack Marignon while I had them distracted. They didn't, and now it's too late to stop Calmon from winning. My expectation was not that I should be protected, but that people should look to their long-term interests.

Why should I hold a grudge against Calmon for beating me in a fight that I started? I fought until there was no hope left, and then a little longer to be sure, but the loss of half my mages and my pretender sealed the deal. Patala was done and I had a pile of gems to give out. Giving them to a nation that beats me fairly seems a pretty good choice to me. Here's why:

Assuming that meta-gaming happens: If I can provide a precedent that a nation might get a couple of hundred gems by waiting the last turn or two before attacking me to let a NAP expire instead of jumping the gun I will be gaining a few turns of advantage from that. Whereas if I insist on punishing everyone I fight and going scorched-earth all of the time it just encourages people to try to surprise me so I have less time to make my empire implode. As I said, I save that for the times when I get backstabbed.

If you're more of a role-player: Not having an ally to evacuate their magical treasures to, Patala's store of gems was left inside their jeweled city, and was found and looted by Marignon when they successfully stormed the castle.

On top of that, as I said, I'm pretty sure the game is done at this point. Marignon leads all of the graphs, by far, and also has blood magic, which isn't reflected in any of them. The arch devils he has running around count for a bit more than 6 size points on the army graph, trust me. If Calmon doesn't win at this point I'll be VERY surprised. I honestly believe that I'm merely speeding the inevitable along with my donation so people won't get stuck playing out a foregone game for quite as long. I'm sure people will take exception to such a deterministic view of the game, but Marignon's lead at this point is just too big.