I guess our triple-stale just about settles it....
This has been one of the most enjoyable dom3 games that I have ever played. Everyone here has played a great game and very sportingly too.
Right from the beginning, fighting a desperate war with the Firbolgs, I thought I would be resigned to surviving and nothing more. Then when I finally defeated my long-time foe, he took refuge under the waves to harass me some more...awesome, I really liked that aquatic empire.
Then, as the Nief giant grew monstrous, I struggled with Ermor, won some small victories and was eventually dealt a harsh blow when his god nuked my main northern army.
After that, I thought again that there was no chance of me winning. But Ermor and Kailasa were content to lick our wounds and that front stayed quiet until almost the end of the game.
This was very fortunate for me, because I had to teleport/gateway/fly/ocean-travel my whole force to the east to stand a chance against Nief, who was about to crush Sauro.
Ghoul built up a mean, mean, Niefelhiem (I especially liked the earth-empowered Jarls
) and I said many times to myself that he was sure to win. But I was lucky that my air-bless somewhat countered his rain-of-stones-jarls and my death-bless was perfect for giant-fighting.
Nief was far more powerful than me in terms of raw power, but he lacked the mobility that Kailasa has, especially late game. So we played the guessing game of "where will these raiders fly/teleport to" and I luckily raided some crucial provinces. On that last turn, I basically won that guessing game by placing powerful forces in the way of three counter-raiding armies with devastating results. I guessed right.
After that, ghoul wisely called it, he could have played on but it would have been even more raid-defense against harsher and harsher odds.
Ghoul, you would have really deserved that victory that I snatched, congrats for almost conquering the world, well played.
Good game everyone!