MP: Santa in the Chimney - no diplo mp game, 6/6, game ended, revenant - ermor wins!

[curtadams]

When I took over Ossa had left me a big pile of mages and a commanding lead in artifact Construction. But there was almost no Ulmish army - basically just a hodgepodge of retreat survivors. Ermor had two massive armies on my border and T'ien Chi had a thug army beelining for my capital. I decided to ignore Ermor - because if he attacked there would be nothing I could do - hope he was peaceful, and push back T'ien Chi with my capital mages. First turn I grabbed two provinces while he pulled back. Ermor just sat there. I managed to wipe out T'ien Chi's SC armies with ordinary Ulm troops in front of huge battlemage squads, with the aid of a couple of strong artifacts. T'ien Chi had been negotiating up to the first fight, where I came in to save a fort from attack, but after that he said it was war. I won that war in the second big fight. We both had armies that were melting away with mages and SC's on both sides. His broke first - I think if mine had things would have turned out quite different.

Once he started to lose, T'ien chi holed up mage armies in forts and they were very tough nuts to crack. The last and strongest I never could. In the end I had to fight Ermor and I used my army/mage/special SC strategy, augmented with lots of H2 priests, but it turned out to be useless against his huge communions. The last turn there were something like 8 huge battles, and I lost every one. I even had an SC assassinated by an Ashen Angel and it happens so fast in replay I can't figure out how.

Along with Ermor, I wasn't impressed with SC's in this game. They seem very vulnerable to getting stuck fighting chaff while mages or SC-killers take them down.