I had had a good NAP with Azarien, but they had done some mercenary work for Nemeton, spamming “Vengeance of the dead” on my pretender that had already more than 3000 kills. Thankfully that didn’t work and I got lucky in the 2 first turns, until I could raise her to 30+ MR. But this was a bit upsetting and would enter in my final decisions.

Azarien was also heavily engaged against Tortuga that was also fighting and winning against Ellujdnir. I didn’t have a NAP with Ellujdnir, but the geography didn’t suit me and I didn’t want to engage and I left them for Tortuga alone.

As a result, I dropped my NAP with Azarien and told him “if you win against Tortuga, I let you, otherwise your lands are better in my hands than the pirate’s ones”.

In the end, he got badly defeated and by turn 50 I raided widely, taking a lot of lands, some of which should have probably been for Tortuga if he had had time.

I tried to charm some of his mages as I did with the sylvans, and if I could get a very good S2D1B2 (Turn 52), I also discovered that Arcane Bolt was a very deadly spell against my mages and troops. I lost 2 queens to this and got much more cautious afterwards (this happened Turn 54). And in the end, I only got this one mage (but it was a very good pick, and he himself was very useful afterwards)

Now a 59 provinces nation with 140+ gems per turn (turn 54).