12... Norgard to win in 12... WHAT? Holy crap. I agree, attack animations were highly distracting (though pretty the first hundred and 50 times, kinda like Nectaris). I'm kinda suprised you were able to unit level that fast.
To clarify, I took out the empire on turn 12; I hadn't taken out the other countries at that point. In fact my defensive situation was somewhat... interesting after that. But by then I had enough knights it wasn't a big deal.
I had played the game through several times at that point and it was mainly a matter of knowing where to aim strategically and not getting unlucky on too many rolls. Armies with a bunch of holy-word (and geno, if lacking in white-element knights, as in this case) casters are
unstoppable. I don't think I had a full seraph/fafnir army by the 12th turn but I had archangels and that's enough. Upgraded dragons help.
Funny thing is you can also steamroll the game with an all-jinn army (on attack, more conventional to hold castles) with a bit of luck and a willingness to roll out the limburger.
But it's more fun to play it "normally" a few times
And yea, I'd heard of Master of Monsters as another really incredible game and thought of mentioning it here, I'd just never played it.