[LDiCesare]

I've attached my trn too in case someone's interested.

I had a very disappointing early game.
I planned to attack R'lyeh early on, surprising them with my Demons of Heavenly Rivers, who can breathe underwater and are pretty good early on.
Unfortunately, R'lyeh got slaughtered by Agartha (and I don't think EA Agartha is weak either - umbrals, magma children, Earth attack spammers with lots of hit points, amphibious troops - those who call them weak didn't play them much imo).
Worse, Abysia declared war on me as soon as we met. This forced me to recruit warriors of the 5 elements en masse, as they cut through abysia troops like butter and their 50% FR comes in handy.
The war against Abysia was rather easy and fast, but it prevented me from attacking R'lyeh and let Agartha dominate all the water provinces.
Then, Helheim attacked me before Abysia was even dead. I managed to get some help from Sauromatia, but the war was long and hard. Warriors of the 5 elements became scarcer and are not the best choice against Helheim. I didn't have time to switch to archers armies and my research lagged a lot because of the war effort.
I managed to clam a lot, but I didn't put the gems to any good use. I was staggered when I found the 40% blood site in Helheim, which wasn't protected by a fort, didn't have at least 25 PD on it and no blood mages therein. I think Helheim might have won the war if he had put that site to use. I don't remember what his scales were, though.
Anyway, my late attacks against Helheim cost me a lot of troops and I was a bit careless in letting myself suffer many casualties when trying to take out his last fort.
I was also unlucky in having an Earth attack kill the ether lord I had just empowered to get a powerful S mage, while there were many other commanders in the province.
Basically, I think the wars I fought during the whole game prevented me from putting up a good fight in the end. I also miscalculated the time of the NAP end by 1 turn, but it wouldn't have changed much anyhow, but the decisive factor for me was that I had to use my gems and wizards to fight Helheim, lost a few tarts and nice gargoyles when other nations turtled and built strength.
The Nexus was also a pain for me. In case I managed to hold off Agartha by some kind of miracle, I would have given so many gems to Ermor that it wouldn't have been remotely interesting to keep playing.

Conclusion: This was a pleasant game and well done to Mardagg.