The war has truly escalated to a scale which I hadn’t quite imagined. Frederick, either on his own volition or by bribery, has entered the war against Gilgamesh. He still remains neutral with me, however.
Victoria’s knights impale themselves against my defenses in Vienna and begin to leave towards Gilgamesh. I fear that I may be throwing him under the bus in regards to the other two. I could, however, see if it’s possible to broker a piece with Victoria after taking Warwick and then attack Frederick. It may not save Gilgamesh but I would stand to gain a lot from it.
The stack of trebuchets easily knock down the defenses of Warwick in a single turn. Let’s see what our odds are...
They’re ok. Not great, not bad. The trebuches are so effective at knocking down walls that three of them aren’t even engaged. I decide to attack the defending stack with the three trebuchets to improve my chances. Sadly, it resulted in the loss of all three. That’s ok, however, since I can always build more and it was only half my siege equipment. The rest of the muskets are now prepared to assault Warwick.
Warwick falls without a single Dutch loss! A resounding victory for the Nederlanders! We suffer through one turn of anarchy moving into Free Market but it’s only a speed bump. Gilgamesh seems to be doing ok for himself too.
The offensive army is recalled back towards Aachen as some pikes and crossbows are brought in to defend Warwick from any possible counterattacks. To be a good friend, I move a unit of pikes to the Sumerian city of Eridu to dissuade the English knights and German cuirassiers.
The war enters a lull phase. I don’t see any movement from the English or the Germans for that matter. I just have to hope that they haven’t plunged deep into Sumerian territory.
On the domestic front, I begin working on Oxford in Amsterdam. We lost Sankore, but we’re not going to give up!
Gilgamesh decides to force my hand and calls me into the war against the Germans. Ok, Gilgamesh, I’m down, though I wish it could’ve waited just a bit longer. I’ll need to rush a defensive army to Frankfurt to avoid losing it.
Thanks to the Frankfurt revolt, Germany has been cut into two with most of their good stuff and big cities in the north. I can try to clean up the weaker south or try to punch through the denser North first. Either way, I just need to prevent them from linking up their forces split between the southern half and northern half of the empire.
We also get a Great Prophet! Without a good idea of what to use it on, I decide to start my golden age. No time like the present when I’m at war in two different directions. In one turn, however, the world is about to change in Dutch favor. One turn and both rifling and Oxford finish.
So true, Mao Zedong, so true. Rifling is, as far as I know, the single biggest power spike in the game. It is quite literally a game changer. With banks and grocers coming into my cities too, the money is truly flowing. Oxford also finishes without issue.
Frederick makes a small play against Rotterdam, attacking it with a canon. The canon is admittedly surprising, but it doesn’t do a whole lot since there’s no follow up.
Over the next few turns, the old divisions of the attack force in Aachen are upgraded to riflemen and they begin their movement towards Munich. I choose to go north, straight for their population centers and hope to catch them off guard. It could get quite bloody though. They’ve assembled a not insignificant force in the south near Rotterdam.
The siege of Munich is here! Don’t be deceived by the presence of grenadiers in Munich, they only have two of them and then a handful of longbows whereas you can see my stack at the bottom is entirely rifles and trebuchets. Do I wish I had cannons? Yes, but the trebuches always seem to punch above their weight.
Munich falls quickly because, surprisingly, the Sumerians were sieging it from the other side! Thanks for the help Gilgamesh! With losses almost nothing on my side, my attention is turned immediately towards Berlin.
The war may not have started on my terms but it sure is going to end on them.