I will just put this out there. But I am NOT advocating it. Just putting this up as a suggestion.
Shall we call this one a draw?
If Dr P has gone only myself, TwoBits and Verji remain of the original players. I joined because I liked the idea of bidding and I liked the idea of having victory conditions which meant (I hoped!) we would not have to fight it out till the bitter end.
But many/most of the players have changed. And the bidding for powers - while a good idea - did not really work as there were few bids against one another. And besides that was ages ago
And many of the players in the game did not even take part in it!
The Victory spaces have proved to be a waste of time. Unless you are strong enough to win anyway you are highly unlikely to win by VPs. Plus they are an admin nightmare
So while the game is nicely poised we are all facing a potentially long end game. Maverni, Kali (if he keeps his Nexus for a while) and Abysia all have great chances to win. TNN and Yomi both have a decent outside chance and even I am not completely out of it. That's a lot of end game. If big wars are about to start that's long long turns for us all.
So while I am happy to carry on I will just put that out there for you all to think on. I don't think Maverni (or anyone else) could really claim they are far enough ahead to claim victory. And the game has let too many powers get in to the end game so this one is likely to run for a long while yet. Especially as I suspect we have all done enough research even if we haven't completed everything we could (so all mages are 'available' if needed).