The last war has begun and whilst I've taken the initiative, HRE is about to bite back hard.
The initial attack seized 8 stars in the declare war turn, which is good news. A combination of conventional strikes and deep smuggler hits on warp gates.
The bad news is Holy Roman Empire is mobilizing at least 10K ships at short notice to strike back (6k on a smuggler departing from the wormhole southeastward, and another 4k arriving through the wormhole next turn) This is just what I know about, and it's reasonable to expect more. Prior to the onset of war I could see 30K Holy Roman Empire ships compared to my 38K.
I'm confident I'm bigger and have much more industry than HRE, but he has had shorter, more imbalanced, and from what I can tell less fierce fighting with Sea Serpent than I had against the southern alliance. That means he's been able to build up some strong fleets. He also has a minor weapons edge, but I even that up next turn. I'm about to reach weapons 10 and I'll continue researching weapons for the next cycle at least.
I'm offering encouragement to both Sea Serpent (Rakec) and Tzeentach (Zachsmack) in their respective wars with HRE and Ragnar. Both are losing and at risk of elimination but retain enough ships to cause major problems. Sea Serpent in particular pins down some of HRE's ships which means he can't bring everything back through the wormhole.
So how are the front lines looking? Let's split everything west/east of the wormhole.
West of the wormhole
The big question here is what Cooby and Ragnar can mobilise to help HRE. I don't think Cooby has any options, HelloThere and TdT are more than keeping him busy. Ragnar on the other hand has reached out, clearly irked by the attack and I'd expect a non-token force from him. I don't think any of us are directly fighting him yet and he will have been preparing for conflict for a while. My guess is he has something to send south and help. That's why my operations here are mostly just stealing what Industry I can and grinding down HRE but ultimately, I have attacked to make the fight happen on HRE's territory. I'm not going to win this game (probably) I think I'll come second or third, but I do want someone from my alliance to win and that means really all I need to do up north is not lose.
East of the wormhole
Down south
I've reconfirmed to TheBorg and Tube-Pipe that my advances are stopping and have stopped all further waypoints into their territory. I could be a bit greedy here, but I'm aware Tube-Pipe retains a significant fleet and could still cause major problems for me if I push my luck. I've encouraged HelloThere/TdT to do the same but that's their choice.
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