Bjorn: Pretty cool! I suspected you might be in area #5, but hope to find you with fewer armies. The final battle came down to one remaining army on both sides. Will get my turn 2 posted in a couple of days.

korexus: The agony of going first on turn one! I had three theories about what you might do, and couldn't pick one, so went with a plan that wasn't too bad against any option, but was of course worse than if I'd known what you'd do... It worked out ok. :-)

There were some tweaks to the game rules a (long now) while back. One of the big ones was a chance for armies to recover if you win a battle. The reasoning behind this was that in a multi-player game, it was a bad idea to be the first attacker, as you'd run out of resources. It probably also shifts the balance of first turn conflict, but as you say, it was very close.

You can check the full rules at https://www.kaomaris.com/manuals/standard/or go to https://www.kaomaris.com/manuals/differences/ for a summary of just the changes from the classic game. Now it looks like I have to go first again, so I should get planning!