I said I wasn't experienced with a bless rush not that I wan't going to rush
And indeed this is my first one, if it counts as such. And as my Bless was only a single + minors rather than double or tripple bless my scales are OK, although I do have an imprisoned Pretender. So I was looking forward to a good end game. I even had growth scales
And it was late for a rush. We didn't start fighting until in to the second year.
Those palankashas did much better than I expected
Even with a fire bless I expected the Skinshifters to be much tougher to take down than they were. But in all the battles I outnumbered them with Palankashas by at least 2 to 1 and usually much more which I think was key. Equal numbers or at least closer to equal numbers would have made a big difference.
As usual I completely misread the game
I knew we needed blesses (at least myself and probably Abysia) while all your nations could live without one or get bye with just minor blesses. And you all had recruitable Thugs / SCs while only I really had those (Raksharaja's if you consider them to be such). To me that gave you a huge advantage of either going for early reserach (for Thug equipment and buffs for your Thugs/SCs) or to have awake SCs for quick expansion and if Wrym's to nick the underwater provinces. We couldn't really follow either of those strategies (except C'Tis). My bless - which I don't think is an especially good one for Lanka usually - was specifically designed to help neutralise your Thug/SC advantage.
Interesting game. But I think the map was a little too small in the end. It would have been better if we all had more space. This game was unlikely to go on for long whatever happened. Even without an early rush the first big battles would have settled it as we were all so close and there would have been little opportunity to trade space for time.