[Valerius]

Congratulations to Dimaz and Psycho on the win. Also, thanks to rdonj for admining.

When I subbed in Ermor was one of the smaller nations but with game leading research (pretender was an F2E3S3 forge lord with Order 3, Productivity 1, Growth 3, Misfortune 1, Magic 1). Two of my land neighbors were Fomoria and Ulm and attacking them didn't seem like a good idea. I was planning on attacking Pan but TC beat me to it before I felt I was ready (in retrospect I think I was being overly cautious). I could perhaps still have jumped in, though I'm guessing TC would have perceived this as poaching and proceeded to attack me. Unfortunately, this meant I now had three much larger neighbors and I wasn't sure where to go from there (I never seriously considered going into the water where Atlantis and R'lyeh were busy fighting it out).

This was my first time participating in a RAND game and my thoughts at that point were to not suicide myself against a far stronger nation, try to weaken the strong nations, and try to increase my nation's power (though my chances of winning were of course virtually non-existent). The best I could come up with was to help Arco/TNN if/when they were attacked (I was assuming it would be Fomoria since TC and Ulm were occupied). But then the same turn Fomoria made his move R'lyeh attacked me. In any case, once the TC/Ulm war was no longer a stalemate I should have scrapped the original plan and attacked TC.

I've really gotten used to the EDM summons and missed having them (iirc the mod hadn't yet been released when this game started). When a global spot opened up and I was able to grab earth blood deep well I really wished I had some EDM summons to spend it on. As it was I did my best to get some tarts with my weak D and N income.

Btw, at one point I wished for the Chalice and had it for about a dozen turns before it was wished away. I immediately wished it back but lost it again the next turn. At that point I would have had to alchemize my remaining gems in order to try again and I probably still would have lost it so that marked the end of my healing tart afflictions. I'm curious who I wished it from originally and if that was the same person I went back and forth with a bit later.