First inkling that you�ve won/lost an MP Game?

[Twan]

I think that attitude "others will take care of it" attitude is quite common

A variant of this I've seen in many games is the strong but not strongest nations ignoring victory conditions and prefering to play very long term hoping that "someone" will stop the first one.

Globals like Strands of Arcane Power, Forge of the Ancients, tartarians, artefacts etc... may be decisive in a normal victory game ending at turn 100+ but if the game is with VP, province or dominion victory all this is useless if the ennemy can win around turn 50 or before, and to stop someone in this kind of games good levels in alteration, evocation, thaumaturgy or even a big army of normal troops worth far more than going for endgame enchantment, conjuration or construction. As well, fighting the weakest nations is only usefull if you have time to use their capitol income for victory.

The extreme example was in a 50/150 province victory game with ten players we played this year. I was playing Atlantis with an awake Dagon and short term scales, and simply took as many indies provinces I could. I had the biggest army but the first in research had three time my level, and Niefelheim had rushed 2 weak neighbours and so owned 3 capitols. Anyway all this was useless as I reached 50 provinces in turn 26 because they only started to attack me when I was at 45, and I won the turn after, attacking as many ennemy provinces I could.

I've made the same kind of error in a longest game with VPs victory last year. I was playing Arco and was first in provinces and income and second in research iirc but was far from most VPs. I could have researched thaum 9 for astral travel to gateway my troops on some far away undefended VPs but instead prefered to go for conjuration 9 and invested a lot to developp death and prepare a tartarian factory... And Pangea won before my first tartarian was sent to the front.