The War of a Hundred Small Naval Engagements
It takes three attempts but eventually my spies infiltrate Great Britain in East Anglia. France own London!
From this I can only find 13 big ships in East Anglia, 1 in Kathisar in India, 1 transport in Larbourd, 3 In Maracaibo in the Carribean and 6 Big ships in Barbados.
I think this is the theatre where the war will come from or go to. Maracaibo is the only city, with a level 1 fort. The stack north of it is large though 10/5/0 all the other garisons are a single cav or infantry.
I can't find all GB's fleet so she must have them stationed in TI... or at sea.
I wait to see what happens.... keeping an eye out for ship movements. This suits me as it allows my WE to come down!
Nothing happens for months! It seems GB had forgotten what it was she wanted, she also wont accept peace and so I need a low WE plan to hurt her. Not a single ship of hers come out to blockade me, nothing happens, I honestly think the AI is unsure why it's at war.
So I have a cunning plan, I'll slip a small 1/2 detachment onto Jamacia and see if I can slip them about the Caribbean burning out GB's colonies.
Is this the Gods blessing for my audiatiously cautious plan or a bad omen?
I slip in from the northwestern Caribbean without alerting the British Navy. The colony falls and I slip my fleet into port. I noticed though that the dear old Ai cheats! if I move my ships out of port the squardon in Barbados, moves to intercept. I say cheat only because the AI shouldn't be able to see that fleet.
You can see a British fleet leaving Barbados.
Wea Revolts.... Sigh
I use this knowlegde to my advantage, I send out 1 Barque to the Jamacia straights. The British order 2 Galleons to kill it, of course I time the rest of my fleet out of port to arrive just as the British do.
Rince and repeat.
My Level 1 fort completes in Tuscorora on the Portugesse border and so level 2 is started!
To celebrate this success the people of Huron get Patriotic Sentiment.. grr... I have to redeploy some troops into what was my one low RR area. Huron is too big to ignore it would spawn a largeish army with cav and maybe even an art.
Unami is jealous of the Huron's new found zeal and not to be out done immediately revolt.
My rebelious population then start experiementing with more new things!
Nice, this is the direction I want to go in, not sure I should go there but a few missionaires could be useful. I had wanted to use an NI and courthouse to reduce Christians RR but the Ai has built Constables in all their provs as well so this wasn't such a great option!
Once the 6 big ships on that station are all dead, I send out my fleet to explore the Caribbean a bit more, to find out if the Brits have any ships on pirate duty. They appear not to. At this stage the 3 transports move out of Maracaibo and start loading troops. I sail back to jamacia and time my attack to ensure the transports are fully loaded. They sink to with all hands, including 3 regiments from that stack.
At this stage more transports arrive, two squardons' one of 2 which I catch and sink, another of 1 which I was about to destroy when a 10 strong Big Ship Squardon put in at Barbados and immediately leaves for sea again... I race my fleet back into port to see how things will settle down now.
Election time and I can't keep my military diplomat, I select diplomat again, to try to keep the infamy limit as high as possible:
This new leader's acession to the premiership is celebrated with a revolt in Niagra And Patriotic Sentiment in Unami. They really didn't want to get left behind in RR.
Then we get this old chestnut!
June was not a happy month and to think that the weather was probably really nice too... Maybe that was part of it, nothing like a good revolt to get you out the house!
Back to the war:
This is a new one! Marching single stack armies over to Jamacia for a BBQ. The stack is reduced to 2/2 in this way! The Ai amazes me.
After this madness is done with I set about luring out the 10 big ships, 2 at a time of course, from Caracas where they set up home. This is much harder as I have to kill the ships before the rest of the fleet arrives so I move my whole fleet down here, bar 3 ships on anti-pirate patrol!
As this fleet is being ground down, Delaware gets Patriotic Sentiment... you know an 80% BB limit trigger is very annoying....
Eventually the 10 big ships are sunk and the war looks like this:
I'm about to start shipping my troops about the Caribbean to burn them out. The 17 remaining Big ships are in East Anglia (I renewed my 'Infilteatre Admin' Subscription) so I would have some idea if they move out to intercept me.
My High Judge great man kicks in! Nice to drop Revolt risk and fill that Stability back, thanks to the comet.
Susquenhanna demonstrates that -1 is nothing and revolts!
More to the point France warns me! Nice of them huh?
I checked my truces and realise that most of them finish within a year and then I checked my borders.
Portugal have around 15/15/1 on my borders and have been reinforcign steadily over the last year. France has her 5/12/1 moving about her slowly dying colonies. Ireland has a mere 7/1/0 in her Islands and Burgundy in Innu has 4/8/4...
With my truces nearly up I need this pointless GB war over. I burn out Jamacia on the way home.
I wait for the new year, and therefore the British Tax collectors to finish their dirty deeds and try for a peace. I take 1025 ducats and cancel GB treaty with Scotland... Doing them a favour if they would only grow a brain!
Yes I know I could have stolen a ton of colonies, but I already have 8 and am burning through reparations to maintain them! It is so frustrating!