my first AAR - Arco DL, first 6 turns - newbie

[RedRover]

Read and enjoyed your (too-short) AAR.

IMO you quit too soon. When your Pretender dies, your Prophet and Priests get the "Call God" order. Each turn, a unit with this order generates its holy level in points. As soon as the point total hits 40, your Pretender reappears in your capital, minus a level in every path.

This is a setback, and significant this early in a game, but in solo play, IMO, you have a reasonable chance of still making a go of it.

Also, AI nations declare war on a very abstract basis. (I personally think they read the scales and hit you if your average rating is higher than theirs and your military compared to theirs does not meet a minimum threshold.) In any event, unless they actually have an army on your border, I suggest you just ignore them.

Incidentally, you can manually save a turn before you host by hitting Alt-Tab to get to your desktop, then drilling down to the game file and copying the three datafiles to another location. Otherwise, as soon as you host, the game overwrites the files and you can never go back to the previous turn. If you have saved the turn files, you can plug them back into the same map and continue with the game, although randomized elements (like mercenaries) are likely to develop differently.

When I started, I was happy to discover that games I played with the demo could be continued with the full game.