[shatner]

I've played and won as LA Atlantis once before so I wanted to try something a little different this time. First, I had a rainbow with lots of little blesses instead of a big W9N4 like last time. Secondly, I wanted to emphasize Atlantis' unique "I can invade far away" schtick, so I made it a point NOT to attack my neighbors (Man and Gath).

Because I was big and scary early on, my neighbors seemed happy enough to agree to peace (though I tried to be generous with gold and gems when needed to help cement the deal). I then went to war with Patala but my research was not to the point where I could remote-invade someone by myself. As such I invited Patala's neighbors (T'ien Ch'i and Marignon) in on the fun. I got bogged down in cracking a particularly tough fort and Marignon was a little late to the fight, leaving T'ien Ch'i to gobble up the largest chunk of Patala.

My neighbor Man was doing poorly and had no where to expand but into me or T'ien Ch'i. To give him something to do and to prevent T'ien Ch'i from gaining too much from our joint war with Patala, I encouraged Man to attack T'ien Ch'i. The majority of T'ien Ch'i's forces were way up north and had a lot of slowing terrain in the way so I figured Man could gain some turf and delay TC's consolidation of it's Patala spoils.

I don't know the particulars of that war but the end result was Man gaining little before TC stalled them out and then TC was able to bring his Patala invasion force south to successfully invade Man. Of course, Man takes a long time to actually lose a defensive war, which kept TC very busy for a long time... as in, busy for the entirety of the Jomon war.

During all this, I was cozying up with Marignon because I was quite worried about Jomon and a little worried about TC (both of whom were Marignon's neighbors). Marignon and I became good trading partners (mainly trading skull mentors for lightless lanterns) and started scheming on who to invade next. I suggested TC but Marignon (for his own calculated reasons, I'm sure) made a compelling case for attacking Jomon. Great! However, that left me with the problem of eventually having TC on my doorstep with me possibly still embroiled in a war on the opposite side of the map. Also, technically TC didn't have a land-border with Marignon (which doesn't matter much to Marignon since they can sail); if TC conquered Man, their only invadable neighbor would be me.

With TC clearly winning the TC-Man war, and with TC clearly occupied by said war, I gave a pretty blunt communication to TC where I spelled it out. I said that he and I were pretty much doomed to fighting in the future and it'd be a fight to the death. With that being the case, I'd normally invade him now rather than wander off and join Marignon in a fight against the distant nation of Jomon. However, if he was willing to sign on as "ally-for-life" then we could share a victory with Atlantis' god reigning supreme and Atlantis ruling the island and the ocean, while TC could have the outer-ring of land and worship whatever they wanted so long as it didn't try to unseat Atlantis' god. He agreed, signed an NAP-12 and suddenly I was free to invade Jomon.

I made sure to get Gath onboard for the Jomon invasion, mainly to make sure Jomon didn't talk him into invading me. People are generally willing to go along with whatever war will get them the most spoils and the deck was stacked against Jomon with me and Marignon already committed against it. The war on Jomon went surprisingly well, with Marignon kicking all sorts of Jomonese butt, while I had something of a repeat of the Patala war and ended up bogged down trying to dig the enemy out of a couple of castles. Fortunately my resources and research was more matured so I was able to simultanesouly besiege 3 of Jomon's castles (including their capital) while the Marignon blitzkrieg raged on.

As soon as the Jomon capital fell (oddly enough, this was the only foreign capital I controlled despite being the biggest nation), I started planning with TC about invading Marignon. I chose Marignon over Gath because he was reachable by my secret ally TC and also because I was very worried about Marignon's angel-devil-blood-blood-astral-fire endgame of doom. When I approached Gath about joining up (again because I sure didn't want to fight a two-front war), he said that invading me would probably be better for him. After all, my capital was closer to his forces and I tended to use convential armies, which he felt he was better equipped to handle than fighting Marignon's crazy blood-raiding-remote-attack armies. However, I had always been a pleasant, cordial neighbor and I had traded pretty favorably with him in the build up to the war with Jomon. In contrast, he had never had any sort of substantial diplomatic exchange with Marignon, so he was honestly open to either of us as targets for expansion. The point which tipped him into agreeing to fight Marignon was that I said fighting them would probably be more interesting and educational than fighting me. Gath agreed and that pretty much brings us to the present.


So this is a shared victory between me and and T'ien Ch'i. Congrats TC, we of Atlantis salute you from our island and ocean strongholds.