so, this game is finally over heh? well, cooling down is a wonderful think I gotta say
so anyway, my 2 cents. started the game pretty well with my Prince of Death, found Niefelheim too early on my north, very close to me, fortunately he didn't want an early war with me, than he started staling and was subbed. anyway, before I knew whether I had to face some crazy blessed giants on my doorsteps I immediately rushed enchantment3 to give me skelli spam as a stopping power for whatever rush might emerge from the north. than I found Ermor and Vanheim. at first I didn't know where Vanheim was, but we were fighting over the same indies, so I just let him keep a fort he had up and I built my own fort next to it, to block an incoming offensive should it ever come. my scouts reported that most of Ermor's province had no PD at all, some at 1 and not much above it. seemed like a perfect target to blitz, so I prepared some black servants with those skelli amulets, to hopefully raid all those juicy 0-5 PD provinces with just animate skeletons from the amulet. unfortunately I had to give Ermor 3 turns notice due to our previous NAP, and I guess he upgraded his PD immensely during that time cause my first strike was a horrible failure. I did capture a few provinces here and there, but not nearly as much as I hoped. than we basically got locked into this war that I eventually lost. my main mistakes were twofold. the first was that I didn't focus my research enough to really abuse my research lead, instead I went for as many globals as I could(Mother Oak, GoH, Well of Misery, eventually BoT) which forced me to not focus on a single field. the second is that I completely ignored gem generator making, mainly clams. nonetheless, these wouldn't have been too critical if it wasn't for a few careless stales of mine, that really destroyed my tempo and gave Ermor just enough breathing room to commit into a successful offensive and slowly but surely bring me down. at the end I was desperate, which was why I put up the BoT up, and if it wasn't for those crucial stales I would have had a few GoRed healthy tarts to hold off Ermor's push into my peninsula and cap, unfortunately due to the stales(and scattered research) when I eventually got the tarts out it was already too little too late, and I got 2 Monstrums instead of more useful tarts...
I guess Ulm did focus a lot on gem gens, as everybody should under vanilla settings, while I suspect the rest of you didn't. this, combined with his obvious experience lead to his easy victory with a relatively mediocre nation, especially compared to all the powerhouse nations we had(Lanka, Niefelheim, etc). still, if I hadn't messed up my research plans and tempo I could have probably still beaten Ermor back, than Lanka and TC and burst into Ulm with an armada of fully equipped tarts, which are much easier for me as C'tis to amass than for Ulm.
and well, it's not that I was in too many games per se, as I had plenty of free time for them, it's just that I lost my focus a bit too often which lead to my very poor game play.