I hope you are all sitting comfortably. Then I'll begin....
Once upon a time, after the usual early knock outs and hoovering up of the high strength Indies, the Gardens of the Moon game was quite close - having three large powers. In order of size, but not necessarily power - Ermor, Jotun and Pythium. And several medium sized powers - Shin, Ulm and TC. The victor of the UW war - R'leyh. And some small crappy island powers - Vanheim, Marignon and Mictlan
And the sad remains of Arco and Caelum.
Then war began between the big three. Jotun and Pythium against the already huge hoards of Ermorian undead. It looked like an even fight or one that favoured Jotun and Pythium. And there did not seem much doubt that Jotun (serious blood power with a big empire and income so potentially a huge blood income) and Pythium (good end game) were the ones the rest of us feared most at that point.
So as the rest of us wound down our own wars we all planned to join in. I am afraid a very predictable pair of gankings were plotted. The love on this board for all against all games, or so many VPs it hardly matters, means such gankings are common
So I joined Ermor (and the besieged in his capital Caelum) against what looked like the more dangerous faction. We only needed to wound Jotun before we could turn on Ermor. But we did need to knock him down to size before that blood income overwhelmed us. R'lyeh promised to join in a few turns later - and after various delays - did. And Ulm and Shin a few turns after that (once they had digested TC). Now I don't want to give away too many secrets but it's just possible the plan was to then turn on Ermor, after Jotun and Pythium were reduced
But it all went wrong due to two factors. One was Jotun's type of defense and the other was the change of ownership of R'leyh.
Jotun did not try and defend all his empire. He gave up many provinces without a fight which meant that although he got smaller he took little damage to his skrattis or other forces. So no significant reduction in mages, troops, expenditure of blood slaves or forts. Neither I nor R'leyh could do any permanent harm to him. In his inner core he had Gift of Health backing a large hoard of Vampires. It proved difficult for myself or R'lyeh to do any permanent harm to his forces while we lost a lot of our own. It was only when Shin, Ulm and Ermor all joined that he started to crack (Pythium was slowly crushed by Ermor with I think Shin grabbing his last few territories).
Worse was to come as Jotun started putting up obnoxious globals. First was Illwinter. We could all have lived with that
But it was followed by Burden of Time. Then Arcane Nexus. Then Astral Corruption. So we had Jotun - getting more powerful each turn and making himself so obnoxious he had to be taken down.
Now had he been a friendly talkative diplomat
he may have talked us all round in to switching sides while he still had a decent stab of winning late on. His pretender was E/N so was not one of the obnoxious global casters who therefore may have been deemed expendable by him in return for peace. But he made it clear to me (at least) that he was not interested in diplomacy. NAPs and a bit of trading that was all he was prepared to do. It seemed to be a position driven by philosophy rather than game situation
During the war R'leyh quit after losing a large army and force of mages to a Jotun counterattack. The two may be unrelated of course
We will never know....
Still Dimaz stepped in after a short pause. Now there was a clear long shot win strategy for R'lyeh. He needs 9 capitals. He has two and can fairly easily take and hold the three Island powers capitals as all the island nations are weak and very vulnerable to him. That is 5. He then just needs to seize four more. Not impossible with his teleportation / gateway abilities and so many capitals being on or close to the coast. And the situation of everyone fighting the by then dominant power's enemy rather than Ermor must have seemed stupid to him. And those obnoxious spells are less bad for R'lyeh. He can laugh at BoT. And Arcane nexus - even if he got no cut - would simply give gems to a power fighting his enemies. So I can see why Dimaz has played like he has. And he has been taking on Ermor pretty much singlehandedly.
But for the rest of us it slowed down the assault on Jotun just at the time his obnoxious globals were starting to bite. Further pushing back the time any switch to opposing Ermor could take place and forcing us all closer to Ermor. And to take up the slack the departing R'lyeh forces left, Ermor stepped in. And so he gained some more territories there too.
So the game has drifted to an Ermor win. The most likely outcome for some time. And I don't think anyone could say Wraith has not deserved it. He's fought well (and often) and done the diplomatic spade work.
Of course if people want to carry on I am happy too. It is difficult to muster much enthusiasm now in my one sided fight with R'lyeh but having held on in such a hopeless position, fighting hopeless wars, for so long, I am not going to quit here. But considering Ermor now owns the Nexus backed by
quite a few gems
Even a final crusade - for those of you who remember or care for such plans - now seems rather futile....