No idea why Shiny never used his vamps.
I think his vamp queen met an untimely end in one battle where he tried to RoS or earthquake my large army but failed due to a first turn army of gold and got killed in the process. I had converted the province by that time.
There was an attempt to stop my army at Eriu but it failed. I don't think Svarogia realized I was going for the win until it was too late. No teleported mages also.
As for Man capital, there wasn't much stuff, but there were S mages and the master enslave Arch Devil there. Mainly, I had to defeat my own army there to capture the fort.
As for the boots of plains. **** that was a stupid mistake! My Bane Lord got attacked twice that turn by Horrors (bet you didn't know you could get attacked multiple times by horrors under AC? Well, neither did I! Nearly lost my pretender that way).
Managed to kill a Doom Horror in the first round but got killed in the second by a regular large Horror.
Anyway, I changed his damn battle orders to attack instantly, forgetting Armor of Virtue would not react in this case since it has a retarded AoE1 returning autocast mechanism that takes a turn.
Oh, yes, btw, (this one can go into the Hall of Doh) I also managed to lose Al Kazim to a bunch of tritons. Yes, an equipped buffed Al Kazim lost to about 50 tritons due to a lucky shot and damn poison.