GN for Iron-Willed. RA for Infamous. SO for Chancellor.
EDIT: Reposting my post-game writeup here, since it looks like the more appropriate place.
BLACK DRAGON POST-GAME WRITEUP
So this was my first game of Alamaze in about two decades, so I was worried I would be a bit rusty. Happily, though, things came back very quickly to me, and along with some excellent advice from more experienced allies such as Kevin (SO) and Bob (DE), and friendly and helpful forum posters, I was able to come out of the gates pretty strongly. I deliberately chose the BL because out of what was left, it seemed the most appealing in terms of regional competition (or lack thereof) and flexibility.
Southern Sands fell quickly, and I also sealed an agreement with my northern RA neighbor early on, for a non-aggression pact. It wasn't clear to me how things were going to go between RA and SO, and with that in mind I wanted to make sure I paid attention to the bigger early-game threat (which was RA in my opinion), since one goal of the early game is to survive to the mid-game.
I also struck up a great rapport with DE to my west, and after a quick misunderstanding (mostly due to my own inexperience with the game) was smoothed over, the DE and I had what turned out to be a game-long alliance. DE also suggested bringing SO into our alliance, and after I learned from my RA ally that he had reached an amicable resolution with SO on Synisvania, I felt comfortable making that agreement.
So at this point I was on excellent terms with DE, SO, RA. That basically left only one place to go, and that was into Runnimede. This was additionally attractive because BL starts Tolerant in Runnimede, so after checking in with DE and SO, we decided that BL/DE/SO would make a joint foray into Runnimede. This pretty much worked like a charm, GN/UN didn't seem to expect us, and between a storm of BL emissaries, an invisible SO group pulling off a 171 on Cradia, and teleporting Demon Princes shoring up areas where groups were blocking us and assisting with Demonic Denigrations, we pretty much knocked GN out of control right away.
We were able to broker a separate peace with UN, and the negotiations were particularly tight for a turn or two between me and her, but at the end of the day we sealed a deal that we kept with each other all game. So that left GN in Runnimede (more on that later), while DE was distracted by an invasion by the GI/WA alliance.
After an abortive attempt to negotiate a ceasefire, the BL/DE/SO alliance responded to the GI/WA invasion with full force, and I was able to see second-hand exactly how strong the DE Kingdom is on defense (right up there with AN, in my opinion). Between Demonic Denigrates and teleporting Demon Princes scooping up pop centers that had been taken military earlier on that same turn, Bob was able to keep control of Arcania the entire game, I believe. With some side assistance of magic, recons, and high council issues, BL/DE/SO were able to not only fend off GI/WA in Arcania, but also take the fight to them in Amberland.
This is where RA comes in, in a huge way. I'd maintained excellent relations with RA while all of this was happening, and with RA also looking for a place to expand, it didn't take a lot of encouragement for RA to invade Amberland, primarily with assistance from SO and also initially from me, although I ceded my Amberland interests to UN as part of the deal with her to cease hostilities in Runnimede.
Between 171 spells and a RA/SO emissary blitz (with a couple of BL/UN emissaries as well), GI lost control of Amberland quickly, and even after he fell back to defend Amberland, the sheer quantity of resources being brought to bear on Amberland coupled with a steady stream of high council denigrates of GI ended up being too much for GI/WA. On a side note, I really sympathize with bluefile2, the GI player, because his allies ended up missing some key turns and dropping out, which is always a frustrating position to be in.
As Amberland became more and more locked-down, each of BL/DE/SO and RA appeared to be looking to their own endgame possibilities. I moved out of Runnimede after finally taking control (this was made more difficult by SO ownership of Cradia and UN ownership of four towns, which made my margin of control very thin indeed), looking for another target, even as RA moved into Talking Mountains and DE moved into Torvale. Meanwhile, SO moved into a couple of different places, I believe regions 2 and 3, in addition to his earlier bases in 5 and 9.
At this point, I made a huge error, which is to say I moved my wizard-group to an unpopulated area so they were unable to train. This was a CRITICAL training turn, because it would have allowed me to Destroy Village on the GN village capital in the water, which would have really hampered his ability to hurt me. This set me back multiple turns, because on the next turn, my wizard-group ended up moving to a pop center that became uncontrolled on the same turn, again preventing training. Additionally, after getting the orders right the entire game up until this point, I accidentally swapped columns on high council issues for two straight turns (since I didn't understand the error message on the first turn), which meant my denigrates of the GN in region 7 didn't go through.
Around this same time, Bob (DE) suffered a setback by inadvertently missing a turn, and Jason (RA) also suffered a setback, apparently by misreading an artifact location. But I'll let Bob and Jason go more into detail on those setbacks. Regardless, I'm guessing the fact that all three other rivals (even if allies) for the possible win suffered such key setbacks contributed at least a bit to Kevin's ultimate win, well-deserved though it certainly is!
Anyway, for me, the failure to train my wizards and the two missed HC orders caused me to let DuPont (GN) out of the box, and he managed to enamor to a point where his persistent GN emissaries caused me to lose control of Runnimede. So instead of invading Northern Mists for my third region (in all honesty I briefly considered going into Synisvania as my NAP with RA was expiring, but I ended up deciding against that due to the RD groups wandering around Synisvania as wild cards, plus I decided I'd rather not go against RA since he's a formidable player), I had to return to Runnimede to put down the GN revolt.
I managed to do that successfully and take control of Runnimede again, and I was on the verge of invading Oakendell this upcoming turn with both emissaries and groups for a shot at a T23 win, but Kevin beat me to the punch.
I'm guessing DE and RA were also close to victory.
It was a fascinating game on a number of levels. I will probably post some post-game reflections as well, on overall game issues, but this summary writeup will probably do for right now.
Buddy/Ignore List
