Pythium spent the last year or so staling while next to a couple of aggressive AIs, is how they lost so hard.
And Ragha also got very powerful when they went AI, though it was less obvious because they were at war with Lemuria and as soon as they went AI they launched a full-scale, well-supported invasion of Atlantis. Lemuria, if you wondered at all why I suddenly agreed to your proposed truce to attack the fish, it wasn't that that army had just died, as I had another like it only moreso in the wings. It was because I needed said army to push Ragha out of my territory or probably lose to them even as I kept you in grinding stalemate.
I'm pretty much convinced that I lost my last chance at winning when I assaulted the Throne of Summer to try to stop its fort build but was seduced by Undead Mastery rather than being sensible and going with that caster chain-casting Bone Melter (which IIRC would have had them dropping AOE 16 dam 25 AN/no MR undead-killing pretty much every turn). That would have probably been a decent calculation against Ermor, but it was idiotic against Lemuria.
I'll also point out that my last-ditch effort to kill Agon and save the Throne of Eternal Suffering might have worked had it been alone... but as we could all see after the fact by who DID destroy that throne, by the time I got there it wasn't alone...
All in all, good game, and it was nice (or rather, "nice") to see a proper Cataclysm. LA Atlantis is a real powerhouse, and it was fun to mismanage their advantages in petty, distracting wars. If Man, Lemuria, and AI Ragha had not consumed my attention and resources, I'd have been a serious contender rather than a serious runner-up.