[Baalz]

Gah, Mount Chaining *and* the Steel Ovens? Despite searching every single one of my 100 or so provinces I couldn't find any blood magic bonus sites...which obviously would have made quite a difference (I was pulling in well over 300 blood slaves per turn at my peak).

Good to know AC had some teeth, but honestly by the end of it I was just as fed up with it as everybody else. I lost *several* really good dudes to doom horrors. I think it hurt me more than Helheim...

Oh, also, boots of youth absolutely do *not* protect you from burden of time as I assumed they would. That was by far the biggest clusterf*ck I've done in a Dom game yet...not only did all my mages die, they took a hundred pairs of forged boots with them...then all my blood hunters started dying. I probably would have lost to Micah anyway, but damned if I didn't outright cripple myself and piss off every single potential ally immediately after dissolving my NAP with a much stronger nation. FWIW, when I cast it I was concerned about Helhiem and Mictlan tearing each other down so that somebody else (Ulm) jumped up into first place and figured between the GoH and the youth boots it wouldn't effect me. Oh well, definitely a (painful) learning experience...

Heh, funny story about the BoT, once I realized how bad I was screwing myself over I tried to get rid of it ASAP. Problem was I had spent an assload of gems casting it for obvious reasons and I had cast it with a vampire count. I had been pushing my dominion aggressively so it took me several turns to sneak him deep enough to be out of my dominion, then I gave him an attack order, but Micah attacked that territory that turn, killing the count inside my dominion. Gah! When I snuck him back the *next* time he managed to scare off the light PD with his fear before I finally found somebody willing to drive a stake through his heart. That dude was really determined not to die!