I played Maverni in this, and made just about every mistake you can. I thought this was going supposed to be a newbie game
Anyway... the game starts, I try to expand quickly. End up choosing to traverse the mountains because it seems like there's more room there. I probably would have done better by expanding south and just fortifying a natural chokepoint. I receive a message from Caelum asking me to turn over 3 lands. Doing so would leave me FAR behind in territories and completely cut off any room to expand. I didn't think I had any option. In fact the request was so unreasonable, I assumed his message was simply an excuse to instigate war. Therefore I decided to take a more aggressive response.
I attack, and send out messages to negotiate a NAP with the only other neighbor I knew about at that point, Yomi. Unfortunately, I was way too late on the diplomatic front. He attacked the SAME turn (Hadn't received any messages at that time, so I probably should have been more on guard).
Basically I knew at that point I was screwed. I somehow ended up 2 front war while playing a weaker nation. I also hadn't found any Indy provinces that could make scouts so I had no clue who my enemies' neighbors were. So all I could do was make forum posts and hope someone would pick up on the hint and join forces with me against one of them...
I knew my army couldn't take Caelum's head on. My initial plan was to simply avoid his troops, pillage and disrupt what I could, and research up to something that could deal with the mammoths. However, Yomi's attack forced me to pull mages off research to defend. At that point, I could only hope for luck or aid from some outside source... it didn't come.
I split forces and tried to send one squad to deal with one of Caelums armies that was marching through my lands. The Caelum strike force ended up not having enough chaff, and lost half my mages. This is when I realized my pretender was awful. I really should have gone with a SC of some sort. Mammoths just trampled everything I had. The other force was fairly successful at fending off Yomi's first wave, but having little income, and minimal research at this point made it just a waiting game. Yomi's Blade winds and fireballs sealed my fate.
Caelum offered peace when I was down to 2 or 3 lands. But I sent an antagonistic reply simply to ensure my swift demise. I was out of the game, and I was pretty sure the two of them were allied by then anyway.. so why bother?
That's about it from my end. I had fun even though I got crushed. At least I learned to spend more time figuring out and/or testing a good pretender design for nations I play
