Swarm 2.5 (Ryleh wins!)

[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...

[IndyPendant]

Thanks CUnknown. Yes, I had been planning (read: worrying about ; ) this blitzkrieg for weeks, including saving up for PD. With 5 globals up and so many provinces, I think I can achieve the win now as well. We'll see how Xox feels first however.

And funny you should mention about the Lonely Mermaid map having too many sea provinces... ; )

[IndyPendant]

Well, I PM'd Xox, and he has responded acknowledging my win. The game is officially over, and I can finally say good game all! ; )

I received, created, and exploited a number of lucky breaks this game. The first, ironically, was Ulm attacking me very early in the game. If he hadn't, I probably wouldn't have attacked him, but early game he was just about the best possible foe I could have. Low-MR, high-resource troops and limited battle magic, and a capital on the shoreline. Yum!

Second lucky break was discovering a Citadel of the Lore Masters site early on, which jumpstarted my magical diversity and bloodhunting something fierce.

Third lucky break that I leveraged to the maximum was sort of Marignon. (No offense, CUnknown! ; ) He offered to help me mop up Ulm's remaining forces, and I let him take a bunch of provinces primarily to avoid looking like a big, tasty target to everyone else. I was comfortable with what I had won. This developed into a respectfully wary, friendly relationship between our two nations. And then he promptly went on an aggressive conquering spree--which allowed me to turtle up, research and site search like mad, and point frantically at him while whistling innocently...; )

I also found it strange that I got *all* the artifacts. Every. Single. One of them. (That I could build, anyways.) Was anyone else even close to getting them? I went Conj-5 for sitesearching, then Const-8, then Conj-8, with only a few stopovers for a couple of levels in other schools. And except for Wild Hunt, no one else bothered with globals. At all! That surprised me too...

Next lucky break was Marignon's Wild Hunt, because it allowed me the excuse I needed to launch some offensive globals early, exploiting the loophole CUnknown left me. ; )

Last major lucky break was when I realized how I could win. It felt kind of cheap, so I suggested changing the winning conditions so that the provinces would have to be held for 3 turns--and was flat-out refused. So I blinked, thought "okay then" and turtled up even more fiercely. By the time Marignon attacked T'ien Ch'i, I was fully outfitting about 2.5 Starspawn thugs a turn.

I was actually really nervous about that. At first I was concerned someone would try to take my land provinces away from me--forcing me to divert research and equipment resources to fighting a war. Then I was concerned Marignon would conquer too quickly for me to build up a sufficient number of thugs--or that he would do something similar to what I was quietly planning, and blitzkrieg the last ten to twenty provinces he needed for the win before I could react. I was also concentrating almost all of my efforts into one single tactic, and if I lost too many battles when the time finally came, or if I underestimated Marignon's defensive strength even with Utterdark up, I really had nothing left except Globals. You have no idea how much time and thought I put into agonizing over every little detail, or how many hours I spent on those last two turns....

I had a ton of fun with this game!

[CUnknown]

I'm glad you had fun! I did, as well.

I didn't realize what a threat you were, I mean I knew you were powerful, but the extent of your power I really had no idea. I probably should have attacked you straight away after we finished Ulm. It's just, I couldn't have defeated you completely (I had no underwater capability), so I decided to save you for last.

I never got the research for artifacts.. I had other research priorities.

About the victory conditions -- I didn't refuse to change them. I thought it was a good idea, actually. It's just it was impossible to change at that point. As soon as someone conquered the necessary # of provinces, the game would have ended. And, it really wouldn't have made a difference anyway.

I thought that I could win quickly by just conquering the world and never even going into the sea. There were 120 provinces, 20 sea provinces, and only 80 were needed for the win. My plan was to force you to react to me being about to win, let you take the first strike, see what you had going on, then push you back into the sea with overwhelming force.

That plan didn't go so well, obviously.

I thought I was far in the lead in this game, I just greatly underestimated your strength.

I knew you were building tartarians, but I could have handled those. I didn't anticipate you hoarding death gems for all those globals.. Utterdark really screwed me. And I didn't anticipate the teleporting starspawn -- well, I mean I know you mentioned that you were going to do that. But I thought the 15 PD or so that I had would handle them. I didn't anticipate all that equipment you forged for them!

That's what really blew my mind.. everyone one of those guys was equipped out to the teeth. Your conservative playstyle led me to believe that you were weaker than you actually were. If I had all the gems that you apparently did, I would have... you know... done what I did in this game. Expand and destroy as much as possible!! Bwhahaha!!!

But definitely in no-graph games, I can see the reasoning behind holding yourself back. Certainly worked out well here. I think if we had graphs on, this game would have been very different. Who knows what would have happened..

[Xox]

Sorry Marignon, I did not realize we had a nap, I searched my emails before i attacked and did not see it. Yeah i hate those globals and wanted to attack ryleh, but you were rolling over tien chi and I owed them big time for helping me defeat Pangea who was the one who had attacked me very early on.

My personal victory conditions of defeating Pangea satisfied and no longer having the ability to be a big player i was just trying to support tien chi. In my opinion You should have attacked ryleh instead of tien chi and tried to enlist us smaller empires in your cause.

xox of pythia

[Micah]

Ha, good work Indy, hope my contribution to the war effort helped out. =)