Greetings all.
I regret to say but I am going to bow out of this game at this point.
About 5 turns ago Mictlan(Archaeolept) offered an "alliance victory" option to Pangeya(qunatum_mechanic) against my Vanheim nation, and Panquea accepted it. Frankly I was quite startled by such development, especially after all that Machaka controversity and discussions of "fair" and "not fair" victories and gameplay. IMO the idea from the begining of this game, which was even reflected in the name, was that "The Throne Of Heavens can have but one owner". (c) But as Archae told me, it was not officially in the rules, and it become clear to me that unfortunatly both Mictlan and Pangeya have different ideas of what constitutes a fair victory. They also both replied to me that they dislike endgames, and would like to be over with it as soon as they can.
My attempts to talk to Archae and QM against such "alliance victory" were not successeful. But I think that in the situation when Micltan alone was stronger than me (he had 10 times more SCs, more gem income, better reseach, much better army), him offering "alliance victory" to the 3rd major nation did not make much sense to me, to put it mildly. ;(
But this is just my opinion, clearly Archae and QM feel differently, or they would not go ahead with such "strategy". I am not going to start discussion on this. What I am telling here is my personal opinion, nothing else. Other people may feel differently.
All I can say is that if I wanted to win the game in such manner, I would won it twice already, beyond any doubts. As you all know well, Machaka offered me to do similar things by "throwing the game in my favor" on two different occasions, when he was still very powerfull nation. And as you know I did everything I could to refuse such victory, since I simply didn't feel there is any glory or fun in it. I also worked hard to find sub for Machaka, together with Zap, so I would not overun his huge empire in 2-3 turns as I would if it would be swithced to AI in the middle of the war with me. All these actions of mine were motivated not by masohism,
but by simple desire to have "fun" and "fair" endgame, instead of automatic victory for my nation. And of course I don't regret it, since vitory does not mean much to me comparable to fun and challenging gameplay.
But anyway, enough about it. I don't want to start discussion of what fair and what not. I am just explaining my motives and feelings. If you guys will want to continue this game and will find a sub for me, I'll be glad to provide my password along with master password for the game. Although I must say that in this situation when 2 out of 3 major nations agreed to share "alliance victory", the rest of the nations don't have any chance to win, no matter who will play them. I could still struggle for a very long time in this game, since I have a lot of different resourses, unique artifacts and strong overall position, but such "endgame" simply does not make any sense for me.
To be fair, I want to say that both Archae and QM played well, and they lead their nations to become one of the major nations in the game by using good skills and tactics. I also freely admit that their combinded might is stronger than that of my nation, or any other combination of nations. I just wished they would not decide at the end to go ahead with "alliance victory" in such sitiation, simply because they "dislike endgames". ;(
Anyway, I want to thank each and every player in this game, both permament players and subs. IMHO the game was a real bLast. I think the house rules worked very well and prevented a lot of end-game cheese that plaqued so many other MP dom2 games. I hope you liked them as well.
I hope each of you guys had a lot of fun with this game. So my deep thanks to you all for all your time and efforts to create this great gaming experience, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.
Take care!
With best regards,
Stormbinder
Re: Zombie\'s army
If anybody else in this game still using patches prior to 2.14 I suggest you do it as well. Just pay special attention to items in your one handed commanders before upgrade 
Linear Mode
