And so we have our first defeated faction... I'm a bit surprised it took that long!

That explains why I heard nothing from Pangaea for so long.
Regarding Machaka... Did the turn get force-hosted? I thought it was due only some hours from now... So either I had my times wrong or Yskonyn is around.
Oh, I did promise to say what state Shinuyama was in when I took over... I suppose I can do that now for some aspects (but not all obviously):
I took over on turn 12.
-Shinuyama had a grand total of 3 territories.
-Judging by independent troop numbers, there's been some defeats to neighbooring provinces.
-No territories had been searched for sites.
-An army relatively equivalent to the starting army was sneaking 3 provinces away in another player territory with the prophet and 2 other generals. That country didn't neighboor us yet so I have no idea what was it's purpose.
-The home army was roughly similar to the sneaking army.
So yeah... that was a mind-numbingly horrible shock and a lot of regret for taking over. There were a few things that managed to salvage things somehow though:
- An event that gave me 60 bakamono sho on the first turn... They make militia look great comparatively, but at that point they were extremely welcome.
- 3 turns of unused income, so a fair amount of gold to jumpstart it.
- A completely blessed starting position that allowed me to have independent territories available even that late. It would have been an amazing position on day 1 to make an amazing expansion, but on turn 12 it allowed me to at least keep a few.
- An extremely suicidal army splitting and emergency expansion strategy for the remaining independents where I risked everything in a ton of battles each turn which I was afraid not to win but that all paid off (except for one). The militia merc and slime was key to my expansion, as stupid as it might sound.
So that's what I'm willing to disclose... The rest will have to wait until I'm doomed
