[otic]

In Blackguard's defense, I do have one reason to believe that he still qualifies for kiddy-pool games like ours. The reason is that he hasn't been a terribly effective communicator. Even in the first twenty turns of the game I felt confident that other players would come to collude against him because he had the outsider/enemy position in our group, part of which comes from being the lone water nation and part of which comes from a consistent defensive / arrogant / knowledgeable tone in his communications. I think that a very experienced dom3 player would have handled the diplomatic situation more carefully.

As a specific example, the raionalistic line-by-line response against Amadamus comes off as combative and unnecessary.

PS:
I've basically given up on this game. My offensives never got past Marignon (158) (some learnings there that I might share later on) and they cost much blood and treasure. I will keep handing in turns because I don't want to hold the game up, but I'm not spending any more time thinking or planning. My thanks to everyone who traded with me - the purpose of the trading was to outfit my army to win at least one battle against Ashdod, which they did, just barely, with three times as many commanders and twice as many troops as the opposition.