Well, Baalz has well deserved his victory (and Fantomen is right, you would certainly have won in the end), congratulations
It was nice and very instructive to finally cross blade with vets, I hope I can fight you and Fantomen in another game soon
(and do better
)
My "plan" (which was more of a few ideas) was not THAT good, plus I didn't tell Fantomen everything so I suppose she is merely patting my ego^^ (what a nice and feminine touch, /me purrs) :
My main problem was your SCs, so I was going to start using my starpawns (they stayed in my castles all game, I didn't use them in battle, except a few times) to try and kill your SCs (although admittedly your SCs were very tough, I think half a dozen penetration boosted Starpawns casting Paralyse, Enslave Mind and other nasty stuff from the back could have taken a few down), mostly in my dominion since I supposed you couldn't afford to fight too long in it and risk not being able to order your commanders (I'm curious, how inconvenient was insanity so far? how about you Fantomen?) and continuing my "guerilla" in your backyard with more flying stuff (you have probably noticed I was targeting your temples to weaken your dominion in the long run)
I was going to cast Arcane Nexus and WoM (well, I was actually going to "offer" WoM to Fantomen because I had seen how difficult her SCs and thugs were to deal with and I had other gems to make SCs, thanks to the Endgame Diversity Mod), useful for various stuff including spamming Dreams of Ryleh on your commanders and making Void Spectres factories.
I was going to start using my gems to make good well-equiped SCs/thugs instead of economical ones (which didn't work, either against you or Fantomen (I think I have learned what real SCs/thugs should be like from seeing you two play, I'll have to practise in the next game:P))
The long term idea was to wear you down : that Fantomen and I "contain" you while I tried to slowly choke you with Harvester of Sorrows and Void Spectre (kitted out to be able to take your 10 PD provinces) : cut your money and make it unwise to use gems to compensate, make your commanders sick and insane (or dead), in short try to make your empire impossible to manage so you would crumble... :P
However I think it would have probably necessitated a more experienced hand to execute : LA Ryleh is not so easy to use and I didn't play it well. Upkeep quickly became a problem, I should have played more agressively instead of sitting on firepower (stockpiled gems and great mages) doing nothing. But with what you describe I doubt it could have been enough...
Thanks for the game
(and thanks to BvG for the help
)