GG, all. This one was close.
I think I'll write up a little post-mortem of my first foray into multiplayer Dominions. Some highlights:
* Going through innumerable schedules and throne steal plans, failing
twice. The first time my UW army was too badly damaged by Arco/Man that they couldn't hope to hold the Throne near Arco, so I aborted. Then when I had sent two stealth Bacabs over land,
both were discovered on the same turn. This bizarrely worked in my favor, since one Bacob routed into the other's territory. We thought of teleporting Dendrite onto the last throne on the spot.
* AH! IT'S A FROG MAGE conquered most of the river but lost his entire army to Man's UW force, and was chased back yakky-sax style, to my territory. Then, some time after I had retaken most of the UW (while FROG MAGE was churning out krakens) I send him with a new army into Arco's part of the river. (This was part of the original throne steal) When he lost
that army (having run out of Death gems for shadow blast), he attempted FROG ANABASIS by walking across land to Troea. At one point he was attacked and routed
closer to Troea. He stayed there blood sacrificing until the throne steal, where he flew to Star Peaks.
* Dendrite suicide-teleport-bombed into Ulm's doomstack in the hope of slowing them down, and accidentally routed them instead. He had to spend a turn building a laboratory just to get back. Then he bombed Arco's army with the same intend, but instagibbed the one commander and had to build another laboratory.
* I set up
so many communions (a.k.a. BAT SABBATHS) and not one saw the light of day. Either the army would go the other way, or, in the case of Ulm, just was Bone Ground to death by Dendrite.
* The first time I used Darkness in a large was so one-sided that I lost one bat while crushing an entire army. Then I tried raiding Man's capital. It wasn't so effective. D: There went an entire army, many boosters, and quite a number of gems.
* I discovered a combo (Darkness+Earthquake) and never had a chance to use it.
Either the army would be in a different place, or I tried to be tricksy and not use it (at Man's capital) or, in the case of the final turn, Arco/Man remote assassinated the Darkness caster.
* I ganked so many things with raiding bats, including an indie mage recruitment site (as seen in the threat), a lizard communion, and a couple temples. (Xibalba has to be one of the trolliest nations.) Infernal Disease ganked a bunch more commanders, leaving bits and pieces of armies everywhere.
* I attempted to stop one of Arco's invading armies by setting a horde of bats to
Attack Fliers. Given that there was only one flyer in Arco's army (the Siren) we reasoned that it would target her. The Siren didn't show, but somehow they interpreted it as "Attack a bunch of the army, and then jump the mass of commanders anyway."
* My favorite commander got diseased, so I went about conquering every indie province I could, ending with Star Peaks. He died, but somehow undying triggered and gave him full hit points again. So I did this again, attacking Star Peaks eventually, and on the same turn Man invaded. Commander retreated and died in enemy territory.
.
* There were multiple Misfortune sites, and I was paranoid about accidentally finding the Vale of Infinite Horror with a random blood mage. We believe it's in Zanthrast, and as a last-ditch doomsday device I had considered Bowl of Blood-ing it.
* Man attacked a fort that was
one turn from completion at the beginning, greatly changing the course of the war.
* And yes, the throne by Agartha was, in fact, the Throne of Night.
OK, now that the game is over, I have to ask: What was with the fortress at Polgrave? If it was on Troban we would have been doomed. Was it actually an anti-Ragha fortress?
NINJA EDIT: You've had had to fight through quite a bit of Agartha and then break through a Citadel to get that one throne. I'm not sure if attacking earlier would have been enough.