For those who are interested in my Version of the events, here's what happened, in my view. Abysia's astounding success was a combination of good tactics (if questionable strategy) on his part combined with unbelievable stupidity on mine (and forgive me if I don't give you the full rundown on all the tactical errors that I made
).
On turn 17, Abysia attacked T'ien Ch'i as follows:
238 - 1 Assasin vs. PD1
211 - 1 Demonbred, 1 Devil vs. PD1
193 - 1 Demonbred, 1 Devil vs. PD1
186 - 1 Demonbred, 2 Devils vs. PD1
If you look at the map, and note that 272 is my capital
and that 244 was still indy, you'll see what an excellent choice he made in which provinces to attack. I held 178, with a castle (which of course he did not attack until later). For all he had very light attacking forces, he knew or guessed that I had PD1 in all those provinces.
On turn 17, I was sitting on C'tis's capital (125), while Slurpy was sitting one province north, 155, leaving me no path of retreat back to my own empire. One of the biggest blunders I made was on the previous turn forgetting to make the payments to 2 key mercenary Groups. As such, on turn 17 I had an inadequate army left with the choice of staying in the C'tis capital, taking one more crack at Slurpy (assuming he moved back into the capital), or attacking 155, which could still easily leave me attacking Slurpy, perhaps with PD into the bargain. Anyhow, I chose to stay in the capital, and lost my main army, including my pretender, my prophet and two heroes. In retrospect, this was one of my many blunders. If I had attacked 155, at least I would have had a retreat path into 178, and maybe some of my key commanders and/or pretender would've survived.
From this point my prospects looked (and still do look) bleak, indeed. To everyone in the game, most especially Slurpy, I apologize for my sloppy play. Especially as the consequence is that this game looks altogether too much like a two way race between Abysia and Pythium (although at least it's not a one way race!
). As if Abysia is not strong enough to begin with, giving her TC gem income into the bargain is hardly a good thing for the game, as a whole.
In my own defense I will say that my attack on C'tis if in poor judgement, was at least understandable in that C'tis had failed to take a single province at the time I committed to attack him. That gave me (I think) good reason to believe he was weak and could be taken out quite rapidly, and in a way that would leave me stronger to face the inevitable Abysian invasion (which I'll remind everyone - Abysia started making explicit threats on turn 7).
Anyhow, roughly speaking that's what happened. From this point, I'm not sure how many turns I've got left. At the least, I hope to force Abysia to use something more than the few paltry devils that he has to date. And I will do all that I can to counterattack, and if possible, take something significant back.