[TheDemon]

Post-mortem:

Should be fairly obvious in hindsight what our plan was as the EA Arco/EA C'tis team. We were of the opinion that C'tis is very underrated in the early game, so we put him in the front, Skellyspam and Elite Warriors kicked major ***. I had an awake Great Sage and was rushing for Rain of Stones and Mother Oak. Blazin took a Lord of Rebirth and planned to put up a strong Gift of Health and do mentors -> tarts. We achieved this and it made us at least a minor contender in the lategame.

We were attacked early by Utgard, I think about 2 turns before we were ready to go to war with them ourselves, but Skellyspam and Elite Warriors beat the crap out of giants. Our big problem was bringing forces in through the various chokepoints so the war with Utgard/Bogarus took a dozen turns longer than we wanted. We should have moved on way sooner instead of taking time to clean up, and by the time the cleanup was finished Jotun/Aby had their commanding lead.

I guess we could have thrown the game at this point, but we counted caps and decided there was an very small outside chance we could grab enough. I dropped BL sucessfully, but we messed up on Ulm, and Jotun beat us to dropping on Lanka by one turn. Would have been an interesting battle on Lanka had it been one turn later. Obviously it would have been extremely difficult for us to take and keep Lanka and grab Patala, Marignon and Man (ok Man might have been easy) for the win, but that's the dom3 endgame for ya if you choose to fight.

Anyway, big congrats to DrP/Calahan, you played the game at a pace far above ours, and that led you to a well-deserved win.

I will mention that at the point where we were asked if we wanted the game to continue, another team (presumably the other Arco/C'tis) had already asked for the game to continue before I had a chance to PM Blackguard. So, it wasn't just us drawing things out. Personally I think that going out fighting for victory in the endgame was far more exciting than conceding the game. I felt much more fulfilled having fought the game to the end, regardless of what anyone says about it having been over long ago. I hope there are others who feel the same way.