Swarm 2.5 (Ryleh wins!)

[CUnknown]

There must be a turn waiting for me at home.. if you've already taken it, then nevermind, let's just wait until the NAP expires normally. I must be a little confused as to the timing of the NAP -- I want it to end as soon as possible. I was giving you the option to end it early, or so I thought. We've been taking turns pretty quickly! Maybe I'm having trouble keeping track.

** Only the unrighteous need fear the Great Hunt! I'm sure your filthy blood hunters were targeted precisely for that reason. You should thank us for destroying them and bringing you closer to righteousness, if such a thing were possible with one of your kind. Your corruption of time with the foul magic of death is clearly a violation of our treaty, since it affects the righteous as well as the unrighteous! The Paladins and Inquisitors of Marignon are righteous by definition, of course. **

Maybe I forgot about the Great Hunt, hmm. But you have to admit Burden of Time is a little different! That's a much worse spell.. I may have killed a couple of yours, but all of mine are going to die. Ack. I was having old age issues as is..

[IndyPendant]

I'm afraid I cannot sympathize very much with that position. That's like complaining "You punched me back much harder than I punched you!" ; )

My sympathy lies with poor Pythium and T'ien Ch'i. They're the smaller players in this game (although T'ien Ch'i is almost gone) and they have to suffer the penalties of our globals as well.

Let us see what happens now, when our forces collide.

[CUnknown]

IndyPendant - dude, you're psychotic.

Xox - okay, first, you're attacking the wrong person, second, we had a non-aggression pact! Please turn around and attack the nearest Ryleh province to prevent him from winning.

[IndyPendant]

Heh. Thanks, CUnknown...I think... ; )

However, all my alpha-strike has done is even the playing field a little. I've already lost a number of thugs, your armies are much bigger than mine, and you have had the use of those provinces for far longer than I have. It remains to be seen whether I can keep what I have taken from you. I am far from winning the game, and it's in Xox's best interest for him to let us wear each other down for a bit anyway. Frankly, I'm surprised he attacked you at all, particularly if you share a NAP. I suspect he thought you would steamroll right over me, as you have all your other opponents--and he may yet be right! And finally, unlike T'ien Ch'i, Xox and I share a NAP as well, and as a quick search of my posts would show...

...I take a very, very dim view of violating NAPs.

That having been said, I would understand if Xox wants to end our NAP, and give his three-turns' warning now.

[CUnknown]

Yeah, it was meant as a compliment. I've just never seen that sort of thing before.. it was pretty impressive.

I agree that you are not going to win the game in the next few turns.. or, at least I hope that you don't have -more- where that last turn came from. If you put up another turn like that next time, that would be it.

Yes, my armies are stronger than yours (although you have more darkvision guys than I do, so that does even the field a lot).

But -- you've got artifacts and tartarians. You've got 3 globals to my none. You have way more gem income than I do, I believe... at least, it seems that way from the last turn. Definitely you do now, seeing as you took like half my provinces.

It's sort of a global skirmish right now.. we'd both just be trying to take as many of each other's provinces each turn as we can. I think you're right, that this could go on for quite some time.

Pythium can definitely attack me if he wants... I dunno what the best move for him at this point is. My initial reaction to seeing that turn was that you were winning in a landslide, but maybe it is not as bad as that. If I can start taking back the provinces and killing some of those starspawn, maybe you wouldn't have the resources to repeat that kind of thing. We will see.

[CUnknown]

Wow, I'm impressed that you still had money for PD after Utterdark.. you must have been saving up cash for this purpose.

Seeing as you have 5 globals active, and you're only a few provinces away from hitting the victory limit, I think it's pretty safe to call it here unless Pythium has a secret plan in the works..

Good game, IndyPendant. I thought I had this one won, but there is nothing I could really do to counter your teleporting tactics. I think, if we do this map again, it would be best to make water races illegal. Or cut down the number of water provinces. Not that you didn't do a great job. Congrats.

[AlgaeNymph]

I'm ready to call this game, too. I knew I should have started an alliance against R'lyeh...