Short before winning on a large map some nasty critters attacked a town before i could cast firestorm on them,

after losing the city i decide to reload to try again.

loading the autosave gave me a sound like a resource is destroyed and after it finishes loading its "loss by conquest"

i tried loading the last save before the autosave, still "loss by conquest"

the third savegame in the list fortunately still worked, and the weakling leftover faction surrendered properly

As a sidenote, i tried to go for the spell of making, but it didnt show up in the spellbook after building all the 4 towers and the forge, is there another prerequisite for winning with this option?

As a second sidenote, monsters were squatting happily in front of my cities for a long time and fiddling their thumbs, but when i reloaded cos of some mistake i made they all attacked my cities at once, so i had to fight like 5 battles before the savegame loaded up.