The game can be so alluring, and I love the MP aspect of the game, but the length and commitment do tend to wear down even the most dedicated player.
I love the comment that Jasper made recently over at BF where he called the game a “Trial by Endurance”. That is how I feel some MP games go, and those willing to put forth the extra effort normally get rewarded with it.
I admit that I didn’t do that as much as I could have this game, but I did always make moves each turn to better my nation, and prepare for that time where I had an opportunity to make a move. I actually felt like that happened in the past few turns, and I was going to slowly start making a move to try to wear down Pan, while at the same time hoping that Pan and/or Eriu could hold off Ys winning the game. Early game, I was way behind on power, so did all I could to avoid the early wars. I was able to pull this off and establish a powerful core group of globals while, I believe, remaining near the lead in research. With the reduced income, I cranked out a crazy amount of Owl Quills and had probably at least 50 of them by the mid game. My main mistake was not leveraging my gem income maybe 20-30 turns ago and moving out with some of my powerful uniques to try to make a stronger move on winning the game. I will post some later, but I had just about all of the Caelum uniques summoned and they were quite powerful.