Nations that have clobbered me in a straight fight

[Tyrant]

What nations have kicked your butt in MP in an even fight? Not swallowed you whole because you were much smaller, nor prevailed narrowly in a long hard war, nor rushed you with an SC pretender, but just smashed your forces and overran your lands from a starting position of rough strategic parity.

My list: EA Mictlan, Neifelheim, MA Cealum (x2), Sauromatia, MA R'leyh.

[PvK]

None.

[ano]

None by now

[effeDom]

how the hell did caelum do that? raiding behind your front-line kind of tactics?? (in which case no mammoths)....or what?

i have played caelum in SP twice (well once very early i didnt know enough about the game to not get smacked anyway). but i am right now in another game around turn 40 and, yes, ive been sandwiched at war between fomoria and abysia but still, they arent even pressing *THAT* hard, well fomoria is...but i have no idea how to compete with caelum. ive had to result in flying ALL my research mages out to use harabs as phantasm/skel spam and my seraphs as lightning spammers in order to just defend chokepoints (of which this map im situated directly in a mountain pass so i can chokepoint off at both ends in 1 province, otherwise i think id be dead now...its glory of the gods multiplayer im in the middle of the map on the west side of that big mountain range, bordering r'lyeh in the water who hasnt bothered me....yet)

otherwise, i dont see how caelum is strong at all. sure they are bothersome, annoying, raiding you behind your lines, but everytime ive encountered them otherwise i steamroll them easily.
im playing an abysia game right now where i ran into caelum, who also happens to be bigger than me in provinces, income, and research (crazy, because i pump research like mad with abysia, non stop mages in all my forts possible + lanterns, + indy good mages that i find after they are done site searching they do research as well)....and yes caelum can be bothersome taking a province behind me, but i have a column of armies marching towards their land, and i am unstoppable, i hardly loose any troops on them and their armies are about 3x bigger than mine on average, and then my armies from behind just wipe up the provinces they raided.

i really dont see how caelum can be good, and ive heard so many people laud them so well.
eagle kings are good, orb lightning is nice, but....really....it actually sortof sucks, and there is no better *ok now i pwn* lightning/air magic out there. and caelum has access to little else. skel/phantasm spam is actually the best trick up caelum's sleeve that ive found as far as utility.

ok maybe i post this in the wrong thread, i dont want to derail your subject so....
people who have clobbered me are:
fomoria, niefelheim, abysia, and la ermor

[Twan]

None so far.

Straight and even fights are rather rare in dominions. I don't remember a lot, more usual to see someone (often me) expanding too fast and people ganging on him, or long attrition wars when 2 big powers fight, with gold/gem economy deciding the final outcome.

[Dedas]

MP is a whole different world to SP. In MP you could get clobbered by just about anyone including (very much so) Caelum.

[Sombre]

Caelum is a nation whose strengths don't come across in SP at all. The AI is utterly garbage with them and they aren't ideally suited to fighting the typical SP war of killing massive numbers of AI troops pouring towards you.

[lch]

Niefelheim (as Agartha), MA Ermor (as Ulm).