random settings won by AI (Meglobob)

[Saarud]

Congrats to AI and Meglobob for that victory.

This was an immensly fun game for the TienChi empire. While I lost more and more ground to Ermor and R'lyeh with their free spawning troops I did try to hurt them. My biggest mistake in this game was that I forgot that it was a research victory game when I made my pretender, so I went with sloth 1... that was enough to set my research way back and I knew I never would be able to win the game.

I got a big empire from start since ther was no independant troops and I took advantage of that by hiring leaders in every new province and quickly spread to take more provinces with just one leader. I also tried to get underwater as quickly as possible but once there I realized that a battle with R'lyeh was quite futile and I would stand no chance. So I made peace with them. All my other neighbours including ermor I had already made NAPs with 3 turns warning (although I'm not sure Ulm ever answered my NAP offering to them) so I was locked in and started to build a huge army of Barbarian Horsemen and Ancestor Vessels (that was S9W9 blessed). They proved themselves when my war with Ermor started... we both sent messeges that we would leave the NAP at the same time. I had already been talking to Agartha and agreed on the attack against Ermor... I would initiate the attack and draw his troops to my front and the Maglobob would strike Ermor north of me. I had some mighty battles with Ermor and the first 4-5 turns I crushed many undeads but then Tibbs changed his tactics and avoided big battles and instead made small raids to destroy my temples. I started to lose faith in my provinces bordering Ermor which decreased my income quite some and the attrition warfare Ermor was making I had to replace my losses which become increasingly hard. I tried to go on the offensive but Ermor had armies of over 1000 undeads hiding behind the castles in every province bordering my empire. To break through the walls I would have to deprive many provinces of their defence along our border which would have spelled doom for me.

To this mess R'lyeh started to invade me. He had BIG problems with my PD and I slaughtered many of those slimy free spawned creatures in each and every attack but they continued coming turn after turn and finally ha broke through. At the end of the game Ermor and R'lyeh had broke my forces and I was almost helpless and since my ally Meglobob had gone AI I would probably have faced some sporadic attacks from the Agarthans. The sum of it all... I was toast. Thanks to AI for ending the game with a research victory... I would not had lasted for many more turns.

Anyhow... I want to thanks all my opponents especially Tibbs and Folket for all the great battles I had with you.

Signing out
Daniel