I just finished reading through the spoilers. That was very entertaining! I had no idea that so much in-game chatting was going on -- nobody sent me a message the entire game, except for Archinerd's terse "Meow". I must say that the Blood Vassal there at the very end was a huge surprise, as was Sblroghast/Zod's big unveiling of hidden prestige! I particularly enjoyed how I was mentioned in almost every spoiler.
Here are some thoughts I had while playing that I didn't spell out. First, Archinerd got robbed every time we went against each other. My initial plan had been to actually
feed him prestige through vendettas, gradually "losing" to him and putting him into a 1st-place position. I could then calmly sit back, look non-threatening, and wait for him to "win" so that King-Maker could take effect and I could take his place. There was some risk that he would take Pandemonium in the meantime, but I figured that if he were out in a big lead he wouldn't risk it.
With that plan, I started up a fight with him as soon as possible. What I
didn't really expect was to start
winning those fights. I was
really surprised when his rituals didn't destroy one of my legions -- I didn't have any defenses, after all. Between that and winning the Great Games (also something I hadn't planned, even though I launched that event) I changed my entire strategy. First, I trumpeted how ineffectual Archinerd's attacks had been, with the hope that everyone else wouldn't consider even trying to do it again (even though I had just been lucky and didn't have any defenses). Winning the Games gave me a huge advantage -- everyone thought my Praetor was hot stuff. In reality I just got lucky, and I should have lost my fight with Zod.
One big thing -- I had no idea of the threat Chaz represented to me. I really think he could have taken me if he had started making demands from me earlier. Once I noticed that he had that ultra-tough unit, though, there was no way I would get into a knock-down drag out fight with him. The whole middle part of the game was pretty boring for me, actually. I couldn't afford to buy any new units (thanks to the constant Looting the Vaults rituals ...did anybody
not cast one of those at me?) Pretty much I just strutted around acting tough and praying that nobody would scry what my Avatar
really looked like.
Thanks all for an exciting game. Believe it or not, I kept expecting to get knocked off my pedestal the entire time. I thought for sure Drenichra would kill my unit next to The Face in the Sand, I thought Chaz would certainly raid my Places of Power, and I never expected tgb to get raided and lose his (very secure-looking) 2nd place position along with the Temple of Lust. I thought the AI would take the Vats of Torment away from me when I messed up and pretty much gave it away.
I think the biggest surprise of all for me was the turn-around of the AI near the end. I had planned on beating it down, taking advantage of its stupidity to consolidate my lead. What surprised me the most was how quickly it put together a set of legions that I couldn't defeat -- mostly because it had an artifact that added
full stats as support to adjacent legions, which it then parked in the middle of them. I really had expected to beat it down again, but had to back off. Even worse, I couldn't move my Creeping Doom down to deal with the bigger threat (Chaz) because I was worried about losing The Face in the Sand to the AI!
Chaz, I didn't leave one of Razgon's hexes there as a blocker on purpose. It was a happy accident.