[Curious Yellow]

Wow, we can finally talk about this game now?

First off, congrats Executor on your win.

I played Eriu from the start until turn 53. One of the main lessons for me from this game was that I don't really have the stomach for lategame micro with large empires, so I burned out and subbed out. No more games with more than 6-8 players for me.

In my mind the turning point in the game was about turn 40? or so, when the Ulm-Ashdod war was winding down with Ulm on top and with an active Forge. At that point, Vanheim and Svarogia both attacked me and I felt at the time this ensured that Ulm would win. Ulm was left to turtle with the Forge and secure their holdings.

It's weird that Wraithlord rememembers it like I attacked him. I had just absorbed Man and the furthest thing from my mind at the time was war with Vanheim. The nation I wanted to go after was C'tis actually, but being attacked by Vanheim and Svarogia (which were both about my size) sealed my fate. The war started out okay, winning a few big battles but started losing a lot of small ones. Micro weariness really set in for me at that point and I didn't play as well as I could/should have.

My "war" with Pangea was the funniest part of the game for me. He couldn't find a way to kill my thugs in the field, and I had little hope of storming his maenad-filled forts with my commanders-only strategy. I took one fort by building like 5 siege golems, but didn't have a chance of putting a dent in his capital. Funny that he managed to hang on until the end of the game.

Made some mistakes with globals during the game as well. I tried overwriting Pangea's Mother Oak with like 60 extra gems, but didn't work - after that I really struggled with nature income. When war with Svarogia/Vanheim set in I tried casting Mechanical Militia, thinking it would slow down raiding - but it never came online, someone else cast a global and mine just fizzled.

By the way the 11th hour switch to CBM 1.92 kind of screwed my plans, removing awe from the Tuatha commanders. My testing showed that in order for the tuatha to be effective as expanding thugs against indies 9 with CBM 1.92, they needed to be able to self-buff barkskin. Therefore I went with an awake master druid with E9N4 + some astral/fire and terrible scales, so that I could research alteration 1 early enough to have a decent expansion. The forge bonus on the female commanders was a decent compensation though, which I made good use of later on.