Knights of Tezoth

Yeah, it's playable, we'll defend the queen from rumors (does she also refresh turns for rumor victims?), buy a handful of Sithian units, build a Knight doomstack and win. We could also send Axel to ally with Silverdane, then by sound logic the recruitment should unlock.

I'm not saying it's unplayable — it's almost always playable even in the most hopeless situation. It's just that stuff like this doesn't motivate you to dig into the mechanics when you'll spend half a day just wrapping your head around it and watching how bots and other players moved for reference, then another two days thinking over your move, grinding yourself, the GM, and the thread with questions, and flipping through two hundred gray pages of questions from other guys, only to then eat a turn skip, a kill by that Revalander bastard, a cut to your finances, army, everything you want, losing three sheds on the border, allies, the nearest settlement blowing up, and so on and so forth.

You've got Alex handling it. Don't freak out. It might even be wiser for you and Nebko to leave it to him, since he takes surprises more cool-headedly.