MP: Magellan: All-EA Nations CBM game, 3D spherical map, Running

[Jarkko]

This is the fully objective ( ) AAR from the Pangaean point of view.

Sauromatia nearly nuked Pangaea out early in the game, but Abysia came to my resuce and I got Carrion Woods up early enough to get enough manikin to counter their SC pretender, and enough centaurs to rip their archers apart in berserk rage. With Sauromatian troops also tied against Abysia the end was rather sudden and abrupt, and Sauromatia went under fast after the Gorgon died. I felt the alliance between Pangaea and Abysia was strong and good one, because Pangea and Abysia complement each other so well, and I was happy how Abysia had saved Pangaea

I don't quite know what happened with Marverni. They brought lots of troops on my border during the final turns of the war vs Sauromatia, I panicked and asked for help everywhere, and asked Marverni for a NAP. Total silence was the replies. I got sneakers in, and launched a frontal attack with the troops returning from Sauromatia, at the same time as TC attacked Marverni from the south. Sadly TC was apparently tied on other fronts too, and the Pangaea-Marverni war resulted being basically a one on one, with TC grabbing with airdrops some of the more juicy provinces (especially woods, which are so important to Carrion Woods) during the last days of the war.

Before Marverni went finally under, Pangaea and TC got into war. I felt it was unfair TC now all of the sudden flew in to claim lands I had fought and bled for, TC felt I was unjust as they had attacked Marverni when I was desperately looking for anybody to help against Marverni. TC had absolutely fabulous sacred troops (their own plus the griffon-riders from *two* locations). In the end the massive mass of Pangaeans (at this point mostly manikin and maenads) was simply too much for the elite TC troops, and when broke through with two humongous armies into TC heartlands (with three big armies clashing and jousting with the two TC armies), it was all down-hill for TC, especially as I was able to replace my losses fast enough to actually grow my armies each turn. With cities falling instantly to the hundreds of manikin and maenads sieging, TC ran out of room to manouver, and that was the end of that war.

Mictlan did look very strong, it did seem to me they might be soon in a game winning position. Pangaea, Abysia, Kailasa, Tir and Helheim agreed on a joint attack on Mictlan. I was blood-sacrificing like mad at Mictlan borders to kill their dominion (Mictlan seemed to have massive vampire armies, and I sure didn't want them to be able to take advantage of their immortality). In the end Kailasa and Helheim pulled out, and Tir went AI, and Abysia was getting attacked by AI Tir. Things went pearshaped pretty fast, but I had *lots* of sneakers inside Mictlan borders and *lots* of troops on the borders of Mictlan. In my opinion, with perpetual storm up the point to attack Mictlan was now or never.

The attack on Mictlan began, and it went pretty well. Then the Armageddons started, and things went to poo. My unarmoured troops (who in combat were mass-protected and thus quite tough) died in droves to Armageddon. I couldn't break the defenses of the harder defended Mictlan cities with my diminishing armies, and I was forced to feed in hundreds of troops each turn to replace the horrific losses from Armageddon, and still my frontal armies got so small it did start to look really bad. I continued to blood-sacrifice as fast as I could, and started the saccing next to Oceanian provinces too.

In the end it became clear to me I will lose the game if Oceania is allowed to stay and keep up their globals (even though the Perpetual Storm was good for me). Pangaea joined Ulm to take Oceania down, even though I was able to send only a small part of my armies (but led by my pretender). The capital of Oceania proved too hard to be cracked though, I broke the gates, but with dozens of mages inside ripped my assaulters to pieces (tried to attack IIRC three times, then gave up).

It began to be clear Kailasa is marching towards victory. I summoned tartarians and other death summons to help, but my efforts were too puny. As a last effort I redoubled my blood-saccing and built temples everywhere and summoned telestic animations too. If I was unable to kill Mictlan, Oceania and halt Kailasa with conventional means, then I would try to dominion kill everything.

Then Kailasa attacked Abysia, and I was totally impotent to help my ally. My troops were tied against Mictlan, while I couldn't get my troops out of the ocean as Oceania had freezed all the seas. I sent in the sneakers and began to withdraw from Mictlan lands. I first thought I'd hold some token troops against Mictlan and Oceania, but it proved to be the wrong decission. I pulled out all my troops (informing Mictlan and Oceania of that) and re-aligned against Kailasa. I did ask for Ulm, Mictlan and Helheim to attack against Kailasa, but all I got was excuses; I can understand Mictlan was more than reluctant to join with Pangaea after I had backstabbed earlier, but I still don't quite get what Helheim was doing when the time was to act or die.

I was ready to throw in the towel then, but decided to go out with a bang. I attacked with everything I had, and things went wrong after the initial suprise; to make matters even worse, AI Abysia decided to attack Pangaea (even though I had not attacked their lands so far). Ulm joined the war against Kailasa a couple turns later, but it was too little too late.

Once again, grats for Hadrian for a very well played campaign and a very well deserved victory! For my own part, I made many mistakes during the game (the final mistake was to attack Mictlan, I should have pulled back when Tir went AI and watch how things develope in the east first), but I was happy I actually was able to prove just how deadly the massed manikin-maenads can be if things go right (even though Carrion Woods mean my economy was shot to hell way before Armageddon ) ; after the war with Tien Chi I actually did believe for a while I might be one of the contenders for winning the game, but that just shows how it is bad for the health to catch the victory disease