LeafNosedBat- EA game (upload pretenders)

[Psycho]

This is not the first time that Abysia stales and I expect that we will hear from him soon.

Carkaton, I watched your assault on niefel castle and I doubt that my main army would fare well against yours. You were pretty strong yourself at that time and are much much stronger now. This game is nowhere near finished.

My assistance to Ulm was very small, practically nonexistant which I now regret. I thought that you were my friend and I acted accordingly throughout the game. You are the one here who is the master of diplomacy. You had several brilliant moves. Like the gesture of sending me three skull mentors (which I didn't ask for) on the turn when you declared war to Ulm. You wanted to be sure your back was safe while you picked on Ulm. And it was not needed because I respected our NAP the whole time. If you win this game it will be mostly because of your diplomatic skills.

Even this post of yours is an excellent example of your skill. Your post is a public attempt to get Abysia to fight against me. The idea (which is very clever I must admit) is to present me as the biggest threat and to gain Abysia's add, when it is clear that you are really the most powerful nation in the game. My arcane nexus may be a potent spell, but your well of misery has been running for quite some time now. I imagine you have loads of death gems. You certainly have plenty of Tartarian as well (I've seen a few). And the darkness you are about to cast is much more devastating then the nexus, which at least is not a spell that is destructive to others.

[Carkaton]

If the skull mentors were not needed it was hardly a brilliant gesture. If my post was an excellent example of my skill, why is it so transparent?

I wanted to keep us closer to parity when I was ahead, knowing that if I did not I could not count on you as an ally. That was my clear intention, not just a stopgap gesture to insure my northern frontier wouldn't be invaded by you in the next few turns.

When you surpassed me however, it was not in your intrest to keep it close. Throwing up the nexus with Abysia still alive, you effectively gained half of both of our non astral gem incomes(if he is going to come back and spend them that is) while getting half price discount on every one you spend. That is so far out of parity that I can not compete. Well of misery is not in the same ballpark as nexus. And utterdark was never going to be cast by me as I do not want to draw the ire of both you and abysia, which would be the natural reaction. Even if I cast it now, you'll have a good idea of how many gems I used to cast it from nexus and it will be dispelled by your massive gem income almost immediately.

Add in the fact that Ulm is still alive and doing an excellent job holding out while I am going to be forced to play whack-a-mole with his flying pretender. This gives your army a chance to sweep through Abysia's lands and take much of everything while I am bogged down.

I had talked to Edi, begging him to surrender his lands to Abysia to keep a chance at a balance of power in this game alive, but he wants you to win. Rightly so, since you were friendly to him, but it drives a further shift from parity from us.

Finally, I agree the game is far from over, but the outcome cannot be denied unless Abysia comes back. Even though I doubt he has the incentive to see this through, since I would most likely win if you don't. Chances are he is not too fond of me because I had a firm chance to ally with him turns ago. He was more fearful of your astral magic than my death magic, but I could not break our previous alliance in good conscience and had to take my chances. When those chances turned to 0 this last turn, I could not stay in alliance in good conscience.

I'm not trying to act like you are an ***, I know that I am the guy who backed out of my word here. But parity, at least an illusion of it, in a temporary alliance in a zero sum game is absolutely necessary, or the alliance will naturally fall apart. I'm not playing for you to win, as you aren't playing for me to win.

[Edi]

Between the two of you, it is not yet a decided game by any means. Depends on what each of you does with it. I've talked to both of you by PM and at this point I have no secrets left as such.

The place where the game went south for me was when Sniffleheim simply abandoned the game without even bothering to go AI or informing anyone so we could have gotten a sub. I had a NAP with him and didn't check the staling data, which Carkaton, my ally of the time did, thus getting all of Niefelheim's territory.

I should have attacked him at that point without warning, as it was essentially a betrayal of our alliance not to share the information. I'm not bitter about that, but this game would look decidedly different at this point if I had not made the mistakes I did. So I got boxed in, fell behind in research and by the time I got my stuff together, it was too late, C'tis had too much of a lead. A stupid strategic error on my part resulted in the complete annihilation of my main army when he took the province behind me and all of my combat mages died in retreat. Lost well over a dozen of them that way, all with equipment.

The province with the trolls helped me in the early game and has staved off my defeat by a turn or two. Losing my pretender earlier was not a big deal, since he was already mute and feebleminded by that time and recalling him got rid of those two afflictions, which was lucky on my part. Another thing that helped me was having Mother Oak up as long as I did, which allowed enough gems to arrange for the Gift of Health, which turned out to be a stroke of genius and really put a crimp in C'tis's plans when he had to spend a significant portion of one army just to take down my trolls.

The reason I am so friendly with Kailasa is that we have no common border and no hostilities and we've done each other some favors trading items and gems earlier, sharing intel and other small things like that. Aside from some common moves against Vanheim in the early game, I've had little or nothing to do with him despite us being nominal allies.

Another thing that might have turned the tide on a lot of things is if I'd had access to a single astral mage earlier, because it turned out that some of my provinces (one in particular) were crawling with useful astral sites. Finding the Library of Time 20 turns earlier would have made for a VERY different strategy on my part.

Right now I have disproportionate influence on future events due to all the goodies I've got around and the gem stash I'm sitting on because I have no useful way or even capability of spending it that makes any difference to my ultimate fate. So I can give an advantage to someone, but it does not mean the game is decided. Both C'tis and Kailasa have ways of fighting that will make life very, very difficult for each other. Abysia's disposition is really what will decide this, since he has more useful tools to fight a death nation than an astral one.

For C'tis and Abysia the best course is to crush me as quickly and thoroughly as possible while simultaneously attacking Kailasa and trying to get the Nexus down quickly. For Kailasa, well, I do not have a realistic assessment of his capabilities except for the pretender, no idea what mages and other things. My grasp of the monkey nations in general except for Lanka is rather weak.

So, let's see for a while yet. If Abysia looks like he's not coming back, I'll postpone the hosting so we can see if anybody wants to sub him.

[Carkaton]

If I remember correctly, you had rebuked my alliance offer Edi, taking just the NAP. Even still, I doubt I would have said anything about Niefel's leaving. In hindsight, it's something I'll never do again. It cheapened everything I've accomplished since. At the time, I had thought I had earned them by making him quit. But there's no such a thing as who deserves anything in this game. I do apologize about that.

I will say this though, I remote summoned all his provinces after his second stale. I was planning on doing that even if he had continued, feeling confident enough that I had him pinned to his capitol. It's impossible to be certain, but I like to think I would have ended up with Niefel's lands anyway, but probably would have lost a lot of mages and time if he had put up a good last stand. Which would have given you a bigger window to strike.

[Edi]

Could be we made no alliance and I misremember. That's always a possibility. It's been a long while. I think it might have been that I said I do not want a formal alliance to attack him immediately since Van was still alive and kicking and that would have allowed him to put a dagger into my back. It was also with the assumption that Niefel was still in the game. Doesn't matter much. Like I said, I have no hard feelings. Live and learn.

If I'd known about his abandonment of the game, I could have had several armies over the border in very short time, so we would probably have had a race for his capital. But no worries. It's just a game, so once this one is done, we can always sign up for others where we can avoid the things we did wrong in this one. I've made more than my share of mistakes.

[Psycho]

I did not say that the mentors were unneeded, just that they were not asked for. They were some sort of a bribe. Carkaton, we were not evenly matched, you had a big lead in both research and gems and it gradually increased. The nexus is an attempt to gain up on you. At the moment you are still much stronger.

I agree that we should not continue this game without Abysia. If Darkwind doesn't show up, we should search for a sub. Also I would not like to plan and play my turns without knowing what side Abysia is on. Abysia will probably decide the winner.

[Carkaton]

Edi: I just checked the message archive and you said that you welcomed an alliance and NAP. So I messed up there. I'm not sure how I responded because the forum doesn't save reply messages, only original ones. If you have it still, i'd like to see it.

The reason why I remember thinking we weren't in an alliance is pretty clear though, that you didn't want to get involved with a niefelheim war due to their NAP with you. Then Kailasa became friendly and traded with me and my direction of expansion was set.

In hindsight I would have gone the other direction if I didn't get confused, the only reason being that kailasa's heat scales would have been much better than your cold scales on my lizardmen.

Here's the original message(prior ones were in game and i don't have that far back still on my email):

LeafNosedBat - NAP & Other things

From: Edi

Hi,

Regarding the NAP and alliance in LNB: Ulm would welcome such a development. Vanheim declared war and we are slugging it out right now. Van's dominion is ORder 2, Sloth 1, Cold 1, Luck 2, Magic 2, no idea what sort of pretender. Vanheim's capitaal is in province 60. Abysia is located in the southern part of the map and has asked for NAP.

I currently have NAP with Niefelheim and do not expect that to change. I'm sorry I can't help you more, but I'll try to keep Vanheim contained and expand at his expense. Otherwise the danger is that I'll be caught between the rock of Niefelheim and the hard place of Abysia with nowhere to go. NOT a place I want to be...