[boltcutter]

Ivarr considered the last four years of long, slogging battle as he sat by the fire in the main hall. The grim battles against the lich of T'ien Chi. The months of despair when it seemed that his Lord Ulmon was dead, and the news was all bloody and bad. Then the return of his Lord, the crushing of T'ien Chi, and the storming of the castle at Caelum. Hardly a castle, he thought, looking out at the wooden parapets with no ladders, scorched and broken . Giant mechanicals worked, tireless, repairing those walls. "Better them than us," was all he said to the new men around him. It was not exactly clear what he meant.

Turns 44-49:

Caelum is besieged, then stormed. There are 140-ish troops inside a Mausoleum, and it takes me some time to get the siege train into place. The battle is brutal- they have Air Shields and Confusion, we have three Crushers, dozens of superheavy troops, and enough Smiths to cast Blade Wind over 20 times, delivering over 1000 individual sharp things to the enemy. As always, their spearmen take a few jabs, get nowhere, and rout. From here it is merely a matter of cleanup.

My spies are starting to trickle into Pythium- I have only two there, but three more are on the way. I have learned that if I build unrest, the AI will move a fairly large army into that province- would it be an exploit to use spies to move armies away from my route of attack, or would humans respond likewise?

Shopping: I am now making around 500 Gold a turn over my expenses. I can finally start buying what I feel I deserve, instead of robbing Dominion to buy Province Defense. I have nearly enough Smiths, and have started the luxury of an actual cavalry unit. [I built three horsemen, long ago, and the second just died storming the gate at Caelum. ]

Planning: I need to finish off Caelum, and then start [hopefully] on both C'Tissan fronts with a large supply of angry Trolls.

Scores, etc:

There are basically five Pretenders left worthy of the name. Pangaea's pretender, a blind Cyclops [note to self: be careful with your one and only eye] is dead, and they hold only a couple of underwater provinces and their capital. Caelum is crushed, with a few dozen troops and a handful of provinces left.

In general, the top three are Pythium, Vanheim, and C'Tis. Vanheim and Pythium seem to be carving up Jotunheim[ good neighbors, for evil deathcult heretic unbelievers.]

Pythium is particularly low on research, but high on Dominion [they're at 3, I'm at 1, and the others are at 2.] Other than that it's pretty much a 3-way tie for first.