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[Il Palazzo]

Undefended you say? Hmmmm...

[Dakk]

MY SEEKRIT STRAT IS BEYOND YOUR SILLY CAVE CYCLOP PEOPLE'S SIMPLE MINDS.

[Il Palazzo]

After many months of torturous studying of arcane lore and gnostic mysteries contained within the holy book of Scientology, it was finally announced by the terrified scholars, that the name of the Abysian (false) god - PalazzoDiesThisTime - is in fact a cipher, which after applying a specific set of cryptologist tools, as well as smoking copious amounts of weed, eating only McBurgers for 40 days, and singing "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" in reverse, revealed itself to be an encrypted name of our greatest enemy - XENU!

Terrible news such as these were, the glorious nation of Lanka did not fret, and immediatelly launched a holy crusade to remove the evil Xenu from Middle Earth. Our thetan factories switched to full-time war effort, and our celebrities marched forth. Woe to anybody who stands in our way.

[Kebooo]

Bael finished scribbling his hurried letter, then he spat upon it and ripped the paper to pieces. He had a servant reconstruct the ripped letter, piece by piece, and then repeated this process late into the night. When he finally felt satisfied, he had the letter sent to the Marverni king, hand delivered by a slave-boy from Girithlin.

A meeting between the finest mages and warlocks was convened the following night. They bickered about what to do about the unexpected Lanka invasion. Some believed they should be bribed with hundreds upon hundreds of beautiful, gorgeous gems. Others thought they should be embraced as lovers. Bael thought differently.

"My dear brothers, we all look quite dazzling tonight, even though we seem to have all worn the same clothing. No matter. This dire threat from the Lankans can only be dealt with in one way. By completely ignoring it and running as far as possible from them as we can, slaughtering and maiming as many Marverni as we can. Through this, and only this, can our god be appeased."

The assembly grumbled, but they all knew this was the truth. They retired to bed so that they may wage war on the hated skulls of the Marverni once again.

And elsewhere, PalazzoDiesThisTime chuckled to himself. He quietly whispered "Palazzo never dies." and cried himself to sleep.

[Il Palazzo]

"HE'S FUCKING NUTS!" cried a markata in the jungle.

Back in the less civilized parts of Lanka proper, L.Ron Hubbard was embarking on a carpet-flight with his wife Mary Sue. Mary Sue was openly disturbed:
-"But dear, are you 100% sure that PalazzoDiesThisTime is Xenu? Would our greatest enemy run from our advancing crusaders rather than stand and fight, or at least send a squadron or two of DC-10s to steal our thetans and deposit them in a volcano for exploding? Perhaps our cryptologist made a mistake?"
-"Shut your mouth woman! I know that you and that Abysian prophet have been exchanging passionate letters while I was gone. Don't you dare defending them now. But, however misguided you might be, there is a sliver of truth in your words, and being endlessly compassionate on Thursdays I will explain it to you. I have been following the decryption effort very closely, and have noticed that there were more than one possible explanations of the cryptic messages hidden in my own book! The conflicting messages include not only that PalazzoDiesThisTime is Xenu, but also that Fhionnuisce is Xenu, the Horned Prince is Xenu, that Cassette is Xenu, One Eyed Pete is Xenu, and Your Mother is Xenu."
-"But... which one is the real Xenu then?" Asked confused Mary Sue.
-"Why, all of them of course(especially your mother). I have already ordered my faithful servants to prepare for an all-out war with the evil Xenus of Middle Earth. They march as we speak."

"HE'S FUCKING NUTS!" cried a markata in the jungle, but there was no one to hear it.

[E. Albright]

Grr, I missed the deadline. Given how long it is that's rather sad, but still.

I will admit my motivation to keep at it is down, as the long (but yet still somehow not long enough?!?!?!?) turn length, coupled with my having been mostly stalling for time and executing delaying actions for about the last game year, hasn't exactly kept me at the edge of my seat...

[Il Palazzo]

(...) hasn't exactly kept me at the edge of my seat...

Actually, I've got a similar problem, if for reasons pretty much poles apart. Without any false modesty I can say that there's noone there who could stop me from getting the last two VP provinces I need for victory, from which I'm but two turns' march away. Or who could reliably counter my armies for that matter.

If you guys want to continue anyway, to e.g. finally use those huge armies of yours(I'm looking at you ,Ignus), I could refrain from capturing those VPs and carry on with regular conquering.

Otherwise, let's just finish it.
Post your decision regarding the subject.

After checking the stalling chart, I've noticed that T'ien Ch'i has been gone for the last six turns, so he won't be saying anyting.

In hindsight, setting the turns to such a long hosting period was a mistake. The ratio of turns submitted to stalled remained pretty much unchanged, while we just kept on losing players.

[E. Albright]

Actually, I could probably obliterate one or two of your armies*, especially if my pretender could be bothered to stop gathering shiny pebbles and go back to pretending, and I'm pretty sure the main army of Abysia could catch and kill at least one, but I'm quite content to call it a day.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

*I stand by this statement despite my wretched track record for actually standing my ground against Abysia. Abysia was very possibly the single worst nation for me to end up next to, as it was almost impossible for me to actually kill off any appreciable numbers of its primary army simply because of their heavy plate. The fire immunity and copious cheap fire mages didn't help either.

[Il Palazzo]

Actually, I could probably obliterate one or two of your armies.

O RLY?

You've piqued my interest. Should the game end, I will demand you to tell me your secret techniques!
Perhaps I'm overconfident, but I can't imagine anything short of Firestorms etc. to have much effect. Especially with me being ready to cast a virtually undispellable Astral Corruption to disable most ritual attempts.

[Neonivek]

Goodness

Surprised no sea army took to power.

Sea is quite the malicious to those who lack the ability to enter it. While the game doesn't seem to put on similar penelties

[Kebooo]

Well, I'd like to see if my capital force can break this siege or not. I don't expect it to, but I need to learn more Palazzo secrets so that one day he can be defeated.  I got the sense E. Albright was losing some interest in the game when he didn't want to pair up against Palazzo without major concessions from me. Look at my research score! You should have used me as fodder since my long term threat was very low.

[Il Palazzo]

Well then, I suppose we can play a few more turns.

Those of you who are no longer interested - feel free to set yourselves to AI.

[E. Albright]

Even after that stale I could probably still cobble together enough force to kill off the western army, but a) it'd be a Pyrrhic victory, and b) my heart's not in it. I'll leave Marverni to the tender mercies of the AI...

(In retrospect, I really don't like this map. There's a difference between maps that aren't blandly balanced, and maps that effectively kill players off via starting positions. I got a reasonably posh starting position, so I'm not complaining for me, but T'ien Ch'i literally lost the moment they got stuck in Mordor...)

[Il Palazzo]

...but it gave them a crazy high gem income too. Seeing how Early T'ien Ch'i is summons-heavy, low income shouldn't be a problem - and indeed, Lorak did quite well there.

I've set Mordor to AI, seeing how it's been stalling for the last six turns or so. Of course, it attacked me straight away.
If only Ulm and Pangea joined the fray, it could still be quite interesting.

Well, I'd like to see if my capital force can break this siege or not.

Man, the storm demons are kinda overpowered.
Also, I think that the Earthquake was too damaging for your mages, without doing that much in return.

[Kebooo]

Yeah, I had never even used earthquake before. It was worth a shot just to see what it did. My magic/research sucked (I used my mages for battling Maverni the whole game) so I had very, very few options for what to cast. I still have an army in the west, but it's only about comparable to the one you just destroyed. So I set myself to AI. Good game, and let this be the 37th lesson to everyone, Palazzo never dies.