[Spoiler] Kaiser has a plan

[Kaiser]

It seems we have another bug time, I was greated this turn by this (had to retake the picture as I obviously forgot when panicking about this)



This surprise musket showed up out of the blue and even had enough movement to pillage my lumbermill. Where did it came from, did I miss it?



I went back to last turn and there is no musket on any visible tiles, so it had to start either near Barry or near Bruins/Wild and could never reach that tile in one turn. Movement 2 + potentially +1 for starting in own territory (civic card) +1 for GG +1 for promotion (Commando, which is impossible as this guy actually has tortoise when defending against my cities).
With 5 movement he could be maximum on the rice NW of Matterhorn or on the GFH E-E of Isaac Encampment. Maybe on the PHFLumbermill E of Isaac Encampment when starting NW of Bruins.

Here I became fully paranoid and checked Spy missions, but they can only spawn Anti-Cav and need to be executed on a Neighborhood, which I have none in my empire at the moment.

So the only remaining explanation would be a mountain tunnel, but I am 4 techs ahead and still easily 20 turns away from that. Even then, pillaging costs 3 movement (or full if you start with less) and crossing the mountain tunnel costs 2 movement. As I already ruled out Commando, I do not see how this guy was able to get here and pillage.



Maybe it has something to do with them having to resign their DoF, but why the heck would the Musket land here instead of near Barry or the yet unclaimed hills to the South?



Alternatively this is the 2nd Musket on this picture, I remember killing one of them but I never understood how they made it to be on the same tile and I also do not remember if he retreated or if I just never saw the 2nd musket again.
It looks like this region might be a bit buggy.

In any case, I do not think he has a real way of accessing us on this tile and this is either a bug or a weird border closing interaction so we can repair the lumbermill and should not worry to much about this avenue of attack.

CMF's DoF with Suboptimal indicates that he prefers loosing 2 cities to Suboptimal over being more vulnerable against me.
Suboptimal won't stop here and will likely use Eleanore's mechanic to take even more cities from CMF and even pressure us, he is back at a real shot in this game, also thanks to his greatly improved  and , the middle is biting us again.



At least there were 3 era score in this for us as our unpromoted Cavalry finished this guy after Encampment and City shot on him first.



Oxford is at 169 this turn, we need to check our number here next turn to calculate if we continue building it. Ichabod started and has 16 turns to go, he should have a charge of Gustave left which is worth 480 (552 with Skyscrapers). That should mean he has about ~78 / t in Rio so 10 turns with Gustave, 8 or 9 if he slots Skyscrapers.
I increased EM to 77 base and need to see if we can cross the threshold with a Chop, but turn order continues to play against us here and we probably have to give it up.



Bad news here, Artillery corps consume 2, Armies likely 3 oil. I think we prefer having 3 Artillery over 1 Artillery Army, right?
We should Army the hell out of the remaining units though as we soon have to fight against better troops.



Looks like Suboptimal is preparing his next raid, I guess he will come by sea as well, not sure about the S but we have only a Quarry in danger there, I believe.
I went ahead and bought the floodplains NE of Matterhorn in the hope that he cannot use the bridge in that case. That should at least slow his Cavalry down from pillaging the CH even though he can certainly block it.
I changed Isaac to a Builder to not loose the in case he puts a unit on the CH.

[Jabah]

from your pic, Artillery corps consume 2 to build, but 1 for maintenance, no ????

[Kaiser]

Great thx for the hint, you are completely right and I worried for nothing. Yay, next turn first Artillery Corps

[roland of gilead]

we can build more they just won't heal right?

so depends how we use them and when we go get them.

[Kaiser]

We got 96 in the interturn, leaving us at 10.15 => 11 turns to finish production. With some effort we could organize a chop > 111 (forest lumbermill W - W of EM) to shave this down to 9 turns.



Which is not enough thanks to playing order as Ichabod will finish it in 9 turns, so scrap 133 and rethink what EM is doing. We can always build Kilwa Kisiwani later and would still get a 15% :sciene: increase out of it as long as we rest Bologna's Suzerain



Woden as quicker than I expected and he also did not read into me slotting Skysrapers that I have no immediate attack designs on him. His Battleship is in position to fire on AK and is still outreaching us until we get flight => observation ballon and a siege unit into AK.
I checked and our Bombard corps does ~30% damage to it, so we can even consider bringing multiple with the GG to one turn it. However, we cannot neglect our shores near GM/Isaac.



Luckily he only does 28 damage per turn to our urban defenses in AK, so we have some time to react to this.

Sadly we just barely missed the threshold to buy a Artillery Corps in Claire Finn this turn, as Woden is pulling the trigger in the N, I am pulling it near Misty Mountain and bought a normal Artillery in the Steve Newton Encampment to remove the Misty Mountain defenses for either me or more likely Ichabod to swoop in and conquer/raze it.

This will be the extend of our military actions in this region though, afterwards the Artillery will go to the N to then be integrated into an Artillery Army.

The timings are running nicely, I will delay Mobilization a bit until we are finished with Potala and Big Ben in ~8 turns. Then we use it to switch back to Natural Philosopy.
Our Military policies become tight as we want to run:
- Conscription/Levee en Masse for reducing our upkeep cost
- Grande Armee as we want to produce PS, FC and continue buying Siege units
- Wars of Religion for a +4 Bonus against Woden and Suboptimal (who has his own religion spread far enough by now)
- Logistics as +1 Movement is always good, especially in a defensive war
- Retainers until we can cover for a total of 8 amenities (current amount of garrisoned cities) we are at +6 and should be able to finish enough ED in the next ~8 turns
- Force Modernization for upgrading our Bombards into Artillery
- Raid would be a bonus for some minor offensive maneuvers, but is the easiest to renounce

Here is the save

[roland of gilead]

an artillery can hit it right?

[roland of gilead]

only with a balloon as you say.

[Kaiser]

Woden is bringing more Battleships to the fight, but it is still bearable for the moment.
Difficult is Suboptimal also bringing battleships, he has reduced the encampment more as it has less CS, but also because I assume he has a 3rd Battleship on the tile between the two we cannot see.
The encampment is a nice level of security there, but not as crucial as AK, we will have to split our Siege to defend here.

I will save 1000 so three more turns, to get an Artillery corps next. It probably has to go to AK first and wait for the 1st Balloon to start firing back from there.
In the meantime the Bombard from CB will shot twice more on the Bruins Encampment to get +1 range promotion and then speed up to AK as wellto start firing on Wodens Battleships there.
The remaining Siege and Ballons will go and defend our Campus Hub, while the remaining empire will produce PS and FC coming end of the UN sanctions on unit



As you can see, here is nothing from Suboptimal, so I have to assume his Army is either in the Sea, where he is trying to force a landing or trying to circle around the South. Our North is more important, so I repositioned some FC near GM to be able to react quickly from there.
Our South keeps his token force of 2 FC, 2 Musket Corps and 1 PS Corps as defenders for the moment and will build itself some more defense soon.

Instead of eating another 7 turns of delay for our scout to get there, I decided to run increased visibility on CMF to keep him as weak as possible. With his newly achieved tech parity military, he could start threatening the South while we have to defend the more important North.

[roland of gilead]

that's a lot of pressure from the seas.

and Sub is catching in science.

The trouble with ships is they are easy to drive off if you like. couple fo hits and they have to limp home.

We need to crank up the land armys and go hit these two.

[roland of gilead]

Those battle ships really take control of the battlefield up to a point. We are going to be very defensive for a while. Perhaps once we aren't Woden is the correct one to attack. He after all is under more pressure and more advanced.

trouble is with those battleships the shore belongs to them.

we really need to go full military here.

and balloons going to be huge.