[Spoiler] Kaiser has a plan

[Kaiser]

That would need a DoF which would lock us out of gaining any of his territory. But I need to ponder this idea some more. We could turn to Woden instead and try to turn the 3 vs 2 Alliance set to our advantage. However he still is in his MA with Suboptimal for ~25 turns

[roland of gilead]

nothing much to gain from it really for now.

i do think we turn to woden.

but we need to really fend off him and Sub first. Make our homeland safe. see how ichabod goes.

maybe lay down some Encampments. to secure borders.

and build soldiers. If it's not military now we need a good reason to be building it.

[Kaiser]

The dance on the razor's edge continues, I realize now that we could have prebuild units to near completion the then finish them when their cost has been reduced with the new world congress.
I am pulling nearly everything I have to defend our coast while leaving only a toke force to defend our SE.



This went better than expected, I assume to loose the PS and nearly loose the Cavalry. It looks like Suboptimal retreated his BS Armada to heal it back up, hopefully because I did more damage to it than he anticipated.
Loosing a FC corps is tough and not a good exchange to a Sea Dog, but buying 2-3 turns time here is key to be able to try to defend AK. My hope is that he assumes my Army to be retreated just far enough backwards to be out of sight but defending here.



Meanwhile, Woden comes in and plunders EM market with a side mission of gaining vision/intel. He likely is preparing his storm on AK which would be a blow to loose, but not neck breaking. It is mostly an important defensive position with a decent production capacity (and an Inspiration coming in next turn when it finishes its breathtaking Neighborhood)



Do you remember the war weariness of -6 we had in Bortus, binding 6 amenities to Bortus was a tough situation and I am still not convinced it was supposed to never reduce over this long amount of time. Making peace with CMF did instantly clear it and our amenity situation is more relaxed now.



Thanks to our Railroad network, our Army who just tried to scare Suboptimal moved over to support AK. The FC did take care of Woden's Cavalry, while the key movements here were Bombard lvl 2 which came up all the way from GM to the AK Encampment.
I made sure last turn to have it in range of the GG last turn so it gets 3 movement and it also is in range of the GG now to move and shot onto Woden's fleet next turn.



The Ironclad moved out and damaged one of his BS Fleets as well as blocks his ironclad. I hope he does not have enough firepower to come over and clear my Ironclad and take AK in one turn, this will likely depend a lot on Suboptimal's BS contributing to damaging AK walls.

Hoping for AK to still stand next turn, I bought an Artillery in AK awaiting the arrival of the first balloons.



Buying one is 960 and a last resort for next turn in case this guy cannot make it to AK. Yes, Big Ben is delayed a turn, but avoiding to buy the balloon has been more important as this is a 1500 swing considering Big Bens bonus.
Please note that we can one-turn any Industrial era or earlier unit in GM if we have the 50% card slotted, as I slotted the Infantery card this turn. We get:
- 15% production from our lvl2 MA with Ichabod
- 15% production from our "to Arms" dedication
- 50% production from our slotted policy

192  multiplied by 1.8 is 345  so I can actually switch some production away to other cities to get them be better unit pumps as well.



Thanks to Bortus war weariness vanishing from -6 to 0 in one turn after declaring peace with CMF, I was able to slot out Retainers for +50% Infantery. Everything which has finished its builds and has no critical infrastructure to build is now working on units.



Isaac invests it time to build a FC Army directly. It also has the first Army we field with a PS corps combining with our heavily damaged PS which barely survived the last turn. Hopefully Suboptimal does not call our bluff here to quickly, we can always redeploy but we really want to focus our Army to present strength.

We can always redeploy, but I prefer doing this without being forced into it as it likely means we have to spread thin.



Thanks to reaching alliance level 2 with Ichabod, we were able to use our GS to get the remaining 2 Eurekas for the Modern era. Important here is the Radio Eureka, as we are trying to finish Mass Media into Ideology into next Governments as quickly as possible.
We need 1 more MA for the Facism Eureka, we already have the Communism Eureka which might be a decent alternative. But +5 CS and 50% unit  sound quite important. Steve Newton is likely finishing his MA next or GM will quickly get its Encampent fully build, which makes sense as our main unit pump. I am just not sure we can delay the 4 turns this likely takes (crazy)



CMF asked for a DoF and I accepted, his MA with Suboptimal still runs ~25 turns, so have secured us a 5 CS advantage for the moment as well as support CMF in keeping his cities Bruins and Wild by offering him a cultural Alliance to take our city pressure of his back.

I also asked Ichabod to trade spices for 5 , he is running a deficit, but I do not know how high it is. I do know that next turn my spices run out and he trades me 3 luxuries while I trade him 2. I hope he sees that handing him Misty Mountain with its 2 spice resources + 5 is a good deal.

Let me know if you have any tips or advice regarding our unit movements. My current plan is being bold hoping for both to assume that my Army is occupied with them while we need another ~5 turns to bolster our unit pool.

GM finishing Big Ben and starting into unit production will be huge.

Here is the save

[roland of gilead]

A lot of really good stuff there.

will get a look at the save in a few hrs.

[Kaiser]

Sadly not good enough, we lost AK this turn and sadly this means we lost the Artillery and Bombard corps in the CC and the Encampment as well. We now have a balloon but not unit to fire back.
I completely disregarded the possibility of Woden capturing the city while its walls were still existant, which also meant he could fire with the encampment and CC onto our Army there.
3 Units is a hefty price for this mistake, in retrospect, I should have kept the Ironclad inside AK to keep its CS as high as possible while bringing the bombard in position on the tile SW of AK to then move and shoot on his units the turn after to get at least a kill.



I retook the city with our army there and the damaged musket to loose as few as possible when Woden will likely take it next turn again. Total losses here are currently:
Kaiser:
- 1 Ironclad
- 1 Artillery
- 1 Bombard Corps (I thought it save )
- 1 FC
- 90% HP Musket
- 80% HP FC
Woden:
- 1 Cavalry
- 1 Caravel
- 30% HP Ironclad
- 30% HP BS Fleet
- 30% HP Privateer Fleet
I hope to be able to take it again afterwards, as he will then lack a melee navy unit to conquer it again.
He will likely raze it though if he really has no other Melee Navy unit there.

We need units, yesterday (I know you are telling me this for ages already :D) so more and more FC are in the build queues by now. Next turn 2 further good build queues will switch to units and in 3 turns GM will start to contribute as well.



At least this worked, CMF should be able to avoid loosing any cities to Suboptimal peacefully.
Ichabod accepted the deal and I also offered CMF 5 for Wines this turn, in preparation of loosing Fur likely for a long time soon.

Our Spy has been made available by signing the Alliance with CMF, which is a nice feature I did not know about. He is now redeployed to Wodens territory and will be there in 5 turns to give us another +3 CS against him.
I went for "The Grey Havens" in the hope of a much later conquest of "the Black Gate" to then let him run loyality projects to bring it to rebellion as long as Woden does not change his capital location to a different continent.

Here is the save, we are about to loose more units, I guess, I just hope it wont be to many. I am guessing we are going to loose AK with its musket, the redlines FC and the FC corps.

[roland of gilead]

a blow for sure.

will be hard to take black gate especially with no AK in place.

he can have battle ships on all approaches including in the lake. need to try and find a safe place to bombard it from i suppose and send in a suicide troop to raise it.

[Kaiser]

I played the turn late yesterday (actually early this morning) and was not pleased with myself.



I am continuing to loose troops right and left, Woden is handing me a decent spanking in terms of how to conduct a war, especially with limited resources. I lost 2 FC and 1 FC corps and was only able to kill one Curassier in response (with some damage on his Ironclad).

I consistenly keep forgetting the angle's enabled by my roads as I am to much in the mindset of me being able to use them while he is not.

I try now to block the only bridge with a Musketman Corps upgraded into an Army with what was left of the Curassier mop up  Musketman. It probably was a mistake to create the corps, as he can now focus his 3 Curassiers and something running along the road onto my MM Army. However its stats are nice :D

Our FC used to mop up the Curassier will probably be killed by BS and his Privateer, but I though it important to keep him N of the River. We are down to a desparate amount of units, this war has backfired horribly but it was inevitable and Woden lost a more important city with Misty Mountain than me with AK.



Btw, it is just me being in this horrible oil crunch on this map. I wonder if there was any manual oil allocation or check at all, because the difference is hilariously unbalanced.

Here is the save, the next turn is already there

[Kaiser]

Woden decided to not attack our MM Army and did not manage to kill our FC here, that is good as it has a promotion ready and can help the river defense.

AK will rebel in 4 turns, I am curious to see if Woden tries to counteract this or if he let the rebellion take place. Turn order means I will never be able to gain control of the city again, not even for 1 turn as Woden will just conquer it when it turns back to me.



But we lost a unit, an unexpected unit. I was very sure that the PS Army here (district +5, hill +3, Matterhorn +3, Army +17, MA +5, Religion +4) should have survived a BS shot, but it did not. This is annoying as it was unneccessary and wasteful again to loose this unit.

It really shows that I never seriously fought against these units and especially not competent players. I feel I am throwing a good game away by being very bad at warfare, especially in this era.



I decided to fortify the MM army there, even though it can be attacked by a BS from inside AK. But I am counting on tortoise working against Battleship shots as well bringing it up to 99 CS. Guarding this bridge is crucial and I will likely will need another unit on Casa, as there is the other crossing outside of AK itself on this river.

Next turn GM will turn on unit production and churn out a hell of FC and PS. In 3 turns we can buy an Artillery Army, EM will likely provide its balloon.

It looks like Suboptimal is nicely benefitting of this war and his extremly isolated position.

Here is the save

[roland of gilead]

I think we need to be doing our defending under our walls at least until we can reclaim the field with more units. But like you i have no experience at this level.

We certainly need t lose as little as possible and build fast and everywhere or we will definitely be defending under the walls anyway.

[Kaiser]

It feels good to finally not loose 3 units a turn :D



Though this seems to have been the only attack last turn. I am pleased with the outcome of a BS shooting at our Curassier here, he needs serious investment to kill this guy. I probably make him an Army at some point too.



Big Ben is in with a nice cash infusion as well. GM will now start its unit pumping duty with a FC/turn for quite some time. I might consider buildings the Encampment building chain at some point, but for that we need to make our Encampment safer first.



Payback, even if it is just a little. Here I kill one of Suboptimals Depredation Cavalry. It took both shots from Isaac as well as the FC now stationed in the city. It looks like he intends to push on Isaac, we need an Artillery here to kill his BS.
I do not want to loose Isaac, so we need to pull a part of our Army over to defend it, even if it means further losses.



Here I decided to kill the Privateer Fleet from Woden to stop his plundering of my coast, this was a one-shot.
I could have moved and killed his 60% BS Fleet instead, but hopefully he does not realize that I slotted Logistics to be able to move my artillery and shoot.



Both kills actually brought me some decent era score, we are already approaching the Golden Age Threshold



Ichabod seems to be preparing an Assault on Rivendell, this would be a huge blow to Woden as Misty Mountain and Rivendell were his two best Campus locations and relatively important cities. Woden might be stretching thin but his close city settling and the rough terrain make an attack on him very difficult.

Ichabod took Suzerainship of Boologna and pushed his Cavalry inside, this looks like a pillage mission but it could also be a try to move to the back of Rivendell for occupation. He really needs more artillery and I start to wonder if my Balloons would work for his Artillery.

I retook Suzerainship of Bologna, as I want to speed up the next GG as much as possible to be even more flexible in my defense with my artillery over here. Interestingly his Cavalry was ported next to Moria, I am not sure if this is good or bad for Ichabod.

I am starting to rebuild my army, we finished 2 units this turn and will finish 4 next, then 3 +1 Artillery Army for Isaac two turns after. This should be around 400 MP increase in 3 turns to get our MP back to a at least decent level.
AK should rebell in 2 turns, I expect Woden to reconquer it before I even have the chance.

here is the save