If I'd
try to win, I'd astral travel (or just walk) to take two thrones, that can be done in less then 3 turns, especially since both my pretender and prophet can teleport around.
Anyway I maxed out research (✓), have forts in any province that is resonable to have one (income ✓), have every gem-global I can cast up (gems ✓) and now take provinces from someone that attacked me (provinces ✓).
Are saying that without me following my restrictions you would have beat Ry'leh down, all other things being equal? You always have/had the option to, especially now with some undead forest critters.
I wasn't playing to lose either, mostly I wanted to help out the new players where possible, by harming the big players - Eriu and Caluem both received some support, while T'ien Ch'i and other large nations got some assassins and mind hunts to slow them down, which worked out ... alright.
For 50+ turns I did stick to all rules, now I failed 2-3 out of 10, none of which affect any of you that didn't attack me.I aimed to allow new players to expand at there own speed without as much fear of being eaten up by big players. Nowhere does it say "try to lose", so you might have been under a very wrong impression if you expected me to send you all gold/gems and surrender territory.
No more then 1-2 land provinces (for ... testing purposes) See last guideline
Always trade friendly
MindHunts4Cash
Low Army size
No globals that harm everyone
Disspelling Globals that harm everyone
No first aggression, if avoidable
Scouting everything
No intentional multipathing, I'll stick to astral Sort of failed that one as we went along, even if unintentional
Focus on Research, Gems, Cash, Provinces - in that order
Seems Bogus himself came to stop T'ien Ch'i btw.
Oh and one of the mountain kings died to a Mind Hunt, but that doesn't do anyone much good now.