[earcaraxe]

thanks Vargr for the game, u proved to be a cunning opponent!

and ur pesky raiders were my achilles heel as Valerius showed me enough of their capability already in an other game.

and thanks valerius for the amazing feat of ur resurrection, i havent seen a province-graph like that ever.

would u care to sum up the history of the game? were u two in war in the early game? or ever?

from my perspective:

i started with an awake serpent lord pretender with 2 in every path, to get me a lot of gems early and by saving on sitesearching. taking luck and drain, and building skkull mentors. I waited a little to build up my kingdom, do the critical research, then planned to not turtle, so attack someone as early as possible. i saw the 4 of u get in a war early, and i saw a very strong abysia in the early game. so i attacked my only neighbor who wasnt in war: tien Chi. After a long war my skellyspam+darkness prevailed. just as i finished off TC basicly 3 of us remained: vanheim, hinnom, sauro. and a very small eriu (but with valerius at the helm, i knew he was capable of pulling off some suprises). hinnom immediately attacked me, but proved to be weaker, and finally i won (perhas it was kinda 1 vs 2,5). what happened in the meantime? as i remember vanheim was also in war with hinnom. who had erius cap under siege and how didnt he finished it off?

i have learnt a lot about fighting zmeys, first of all that they are superefficient, and easily worths their cost. at the end i had the income to summon 3 every two turns.

it was funny that valerius beat me by a second to both mother oak and earth well (wasting 130 gems). first i was reluctant to try to summon the earth and air royalties, but then i decided to take my chances. i got both erath kings, and nephele too, who (after about 2 hours of testing) i could equip to be an efficient zmey-killer.

i was also helped by the wolven gate west to my capitol, which gave a nice help to my bane summoning and ghost rider spam.

i dont have much experience playing with air nations, u might be right about the usefulness comparison. what are air gems can be used for in the endgame? i mostly use them for flying boots and booster and one or two big summons, but than again, i rarely play air nations.

those fire and water evocation rituals really stopped my main army at the gates of vanheim's cap, then it took me until now to gather up a new 700-ish (or something like that) army again.

thanks for the game again!