I decided to end inquisitor's 39 AI challenge when it became clear that the two big competitors were no longer able to grow or defend themselves from my encroachment. Here's the link again so you can see for yourself:
https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=9690458Final turn (51):
Income history:
The end-game gets exceedingly tedious, especially on such a large map, but you just essentially have to wear the big competitors down, while keeping their big stacks isolated and constantly shrinking. For a sanity check, the last several turns took about an hour and a half to complete each one. In the 50-ish total turns, I made 11,650 orders (233 per turn on average): about 4250 deploys, 4087 transfers (incl. delay moves), and only 3313 attacks. The two big competitors only made a grand total of 5,364 and 3,876 orders each, about half as much or less than mine.
And, as it turns out, I screwed up the first of Riryo's games by getting booted (forgot it wasn't single-player and was focused on finishing inquisitor's first). I think I'll let that one count as a loss, and not bother to start a new one, since Riryo said 2 out of 3 would be sufficient. I might have been able to win it in the long run, but as you can see how tedious these games can get, it would probably have taken a great deal of time to dig myself out of that income disadvantage. Here's the link:
https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=9683128(In that game, there was a budding competitor on the East coast, who would have eventually made contact with the big competitor on the West. If I were able to survive that initial wave from the East, I would have been able to let those two duke it out while I steal away their territories bit by bit until my income got up to their levels. At that point, I would have been able to win. But again, it looks like that game would have taken several days of tedious play to get there. I think I'll be satisfied with just a 2 out of 3 record.)