[Spoiler] Kaiser has a plan

[roland of gilead]

Had a look. Certainly be interesting to see if the artillery survives.

Hard to be sure on that given we don't know whats out there.

run some science projects to speed along the path to AT crews?

I also think more cities need to be building soldiers though.

the offer you sent is funny, I like that. No real way he can take it. Taking his offer would just be asking for a slow death.

I don't see a culture win being possible.

[Kaiser]

He has at least one BS Armada lvl 4 and another 1-2 BS there. The big question is if he has a Sea Dog available and if they can attack the encampment to raze it.

Yeah, a couple places still work on infrastructure, probably too many:
- Steve Newton as its factory will reach Cassius and John Lamarr, can switch to units in 8 turns
- John Lamarr as the Library is some cheap and GSP (2 turn build the campus was a 1 turn finish and brings 6 on top of its science
- Charlie Burke as I am worried about a culture victory and want to push to get quicker to Facism (its 50% unit production bonus will be huge)
- GM and EM get some well needed Encampment infrastructure down to secure the area
- Isaac has to do some repairs of districts/buildings
- Bortus Armory is a fancy but being able to build more Armies directly with a military academy will be huge in Facism
- Talla keyali should also produce units, but I am letting it finish its Campus and Library to increase its production and speed us up in direction of Nuclear weapons.

- Claire Finn will actually get a ME next after its PS Army to speed our connection to Ichabod up
- EM, GM, CF, Cassius, Klyden will want to get Research Labs done quickly after Chemistry to further push our so we have maximum uptime for nuclear bombs before the Woden and Suboptimal can get SAMs

I like the science project idea, GM can run some (it is still oneturning them I think), that would also give us a shot at Einstein which is the best GS to get for us until the information era.

[Kaiser]

Sorry for being late in reporting, I had to finish yesterday's turn quickly before the DayZ session started and was a bit rushed. Only by these crazy maniacs to have gotten the turn around to me by morning. I approve, but that reduces my available time for reporting.

Here is the catch up



Unsurprisingly Woden rejected, it would have meant handing me a quarter of his empire for peace. He probably also feels that he can set demands here as his MP is nearly double mine with expected loads of tank armies. 



Confirmed at least 1 Tank Army in his core. I checked the army upgrade cost for my Musketman Army to be 1170 . The standard upgrade is (430 - 240 )*2 + 10 = 390 which is exactly a 3rd of 1170

That means his Curassier to Tank upgrades for armies were 930 each, he was at ~5400 so was likely able to upgrade into max 6 Tank Armies.
12 if he was running the discount card (which he should have), so that is about the amount we are facing.

The big gamble of my response is about where he has these 12 tanks, if he can quickly move in I will be very hard pressed to defend my core. If it takes him some time or he goes for Ichabod instead, I can muster more PS Armies which are weaker but can slow him down until my AT Crews come in. That is what we are saving our money for.



This is the interesting side, right

The Arty Army stands, he did not even try to raze the encampment with a Sea Dog, so he either has none left or it does not work as else he really should have destroyed it.
I am a cool headed guy, ...



Am I not. 
I mean, this likely was a bad move to kill his lvl 2 BS and cramming my units in there to threaten his other units. I actually was able to bring one of his tanks down to 50% health and could have killed it with the attack from the PS Army and the Curassier Corps, but I did not want to leave my formation open for counterattacks on our FC Armies so decided against it.

It felt good to sink another one of his BS. I am pretty sure that he currently has only the BS Armada left here as the amount of shots on my PS and Musket in the recent rounds was maximum 3 and I just sunk 2 BS the last two turns.



Some more payback here, let's see how much gold we can get back with our Cavalry.



Finally!
Sadly there is not much flood threatened terrain, but we have none (another benefit of settling mostly inland) in our territory. 
I just hope the Suboptimal and Woden will be punished for their coastal settling as flood barriers are a long way to go even for me 

[roland of gilead]

Just be careful Around Barry he can afford to lose units more than you.

Will spend some time in the morning having a poke around.

certainly nice to put him on the back foot a bit.

he has 3 shots at something though there which will likely be deadly.

probably has to retreat the rest.

[Kaiser]

I knew it would backfire, but it felt so good to kill another of his BS. His BS Armada is inside former Geneva right now, maybe he did not want to risk any more surprising BS kills
He did give the kill to the CC for the XP 



Time to retreat and get our Army in a defense position again, I chose to position so I can quickly move to both fronts and deployed our new Industrial/Modern GG near Isaac.



And here you see why, it seems like Woden was preparing an attack on Ichabods Capital and he is bringing his tanks over now. There is an escalation on our border incoming and we lost a PS Army this turn.
I will book this as emontionally healthy, because I remain happy with the move killing his BS last turn and the amount of smilies I want to include in this post is high.

You can see the battle ratio for one of PS Armies which are nicely boosted by GG, MA, Wars of Religion (Woden has that too) and increased intel (Woden has that for the moment as I am relocating my Spy). We are basically only 3 points apart as his tank also has 4 support bonus, so I need to leverage defensive terrain as my army has quality but not numbers to get support bonus into the fights

My Ichabod relief force armied up and positioned so it can move quickly to our NW (~3 turns), Rio or Belem (~2 turns each)



GM and Isaac are currently bringing their walls up again, I am hopeful that they will successfully do so to give us some increased protection here.
GM can actually 2 turn PS Armies, which it will do after the walls to get as many of these guys out as possible for the upgrades to AT crews. (Should be 2)



This small excursion brought us only 400 gold, it could have been more with different civics, but we are quite locked onto our current set of civics for the moment being in ths two-front war.

[roland of gilead]

you killed at least 2 seadogs i am sure. he can't really bring an iron clad round.

if only we could be sure.

[Kaiser]

I think I killed 3, the Ironclads are basically useless now that we do not have a coastal city anymore. He needs BS too fire and Sea Dogs for coastal plundering :D

[roland of gilead]

can he still build sea dogs?

[Kaiser]

Yes, submarines will replace them but then he can still coastal raid.
All units of the coastal raider class can do that ... and Norway with its Naval Melee

The only tile we really do not want to be raided is our EM Campus, so I will bring the MM Army back to it next turn as it is capable of enduring a ton of ranged damage with its defensive buffs.

[Kaiser]

It looks like Ichabod does not value our MA as strong as I do. He accepted my deal for all my oil I sent to him to upgrade his Curassiers anyways. Our MA ends in 5 turns, I am curious to see if he will sign a new one or will turn around and backstab me near Steve Newton.

I asked for one oil back to have the emergency Infantry upgrade opportunity next turn.



Here is some CMF protection to slow any later Suboptimal attacks on CMF down here. I am not sure how helpful it will be but I regretted all the road connections I had.



2 Tank Armies and a Tank already here, Wodens core is void of tanks with some straggling FC corps so his 12 tanks might be attacking next turn already.

He has an Artillery in Rivendell Encampment but we are already starting to fire on it with our 2nd Arty Army.
Our PS Army from Ichabods territory is moving back to joing our defenses up N.

I positioned an PS Army at both bridges we currently control. One bridge is controlled by Bologna. We can retake Suzerainship of Bologna in 2 turns with our Envoys and Amani establishing until then Woden needs to declare war on it to pass through its territory which is a nice protective layer for our territory.

I have positioned for max support boni, we have a total of:
- 2 PS Army
- 1PS
- 1 Curassier Corps
- 3 FC Army

Reinforcements are:
1-turn: PS Army, PS
2-turn: PS Army, PS
3-turn: PS
4-turn: PS Army, PS



216 is the turn the MA between CMF and Suboptimal is up and Suboptimal could try openly for CMF



I debated this a lot, as it might be correctly read like a sign of weakness. He is mostly tying down our Arty Army on the E front for the moment, but if he moves in we need to bring units over which weakens our already very thinly stretched forces.

If he accepts though, we can bring the Arty Army and MM Army over to help defending the 1st river.
Woden's best move is in my opinion:
- to go for Bologna (does anybody remember if we have the declare to suzerain rule in this game or not?)
- circumvent my defenses and try to come from the N (former AK territory), I slowed him down by pillaging my railroad NE of my Niter

Loosing 5 CS due to Ichabod peacing out decreses our odds significantly. I can just hope that he will not bring his 12 tanks at once but is forced to bring them in more slowly.