jyri: With all this talk about tightening the net and closing in, one would think our enemy actually manages more than capturing one defenseless gold mine per turn and immediately retreating afterwards.  
 TS 
  I've only had my one peasant in your area for a long time. Everything else kept getting killed by various unaligned map devices (indies, the volcano), or rebelling, or was simply too slow to arrive before now.  
 I believe Southern triggered a quest to kill some infidels early in the game. When he was eliminated, they turned into scouts and started stealing mines and a city in my lands. That theft caused a shift in the delicate alignment of my forces, which triggered unit rebellions on multiple fronts. You can imagine the subsequent headache while I got things under control.  
 I think we've got this in the next turn or two, though, as my guys start trickling in.