Won't stop being butthurt even after retiring?
BB understandably refused to war us as their size distribution is a lot weaker than ours as of now. I would refuse also in their position.
Orc merchants are quite weak late age versus dwarf tacts and we are 40k smaller. No real chances to beat AMA 1v1. War could have maybe been setup if AMA didnt take 15k from us by hitting strippers into war, but not now. We would have been similar size and had a bank advantage to offset the late age orc merchant.
All the people telling allies to war every age have no idea about anything. Setups and eoanaps are made with the sole purpose of beating the primary competition (ABS) which was accomplished. If we didn't go orc merchants and went something more late age centered like human sage or dwarf tact, we would have likely lost versus sanc's dwarf merchants in that OOP war and entire age would be different as sanc would be able to bully our allies early age with a strong early/mid age setup.
Almost all the crap this age wouldn't have happened if the ages were made to be shorter, like YR8.