RE: EIC actions, I really think we should take the "Improve and expand the EIC's paramilitary river navy" action next turn and have Eike just go wild on that. The Empire's gonna see an increase in riverine bandits from the Black Water canal, and we should stay on top of that for the sake of the Empire (and also our wallet). We don't have to rush to put agents on Kislev unless we want a rumor mill from its cities (which we might, later on, but right now it's not super urgent).
I wouldn't mind spending a personal action on training Eike's intrigue, though. She has benefited a lot from just shadowing us, I want to see what Mathilde teaches on a focused level.
Mathilde was found at ten, not eleven, which is at the very young end of the spectrum (per the WoB post you cited).
I imagine the only ones discovered younger than that would be those rare few children who themselves have at least one magic-using parent, like Mandred (age
7!) or the druidic families - for all we know Panoramia realized she'd learn magic around that time too.
This is only true if you assume that Boris is capable of perfect discernment of what is best for Kislev. Humans are frequently muddled in their thinking and do suboptimal things even by the standards of their sincerely-held values, or lack necessary information because they do not have perfect understanding of all the relevant factors. Furthermore, "what is best for Kislev" changes as you change your optimization horizon: optimizing over a two-year horizon and a twenty-year horizon will lead to very different actions. My strong guess is that what Boris would do, left alone, is focus on pure military buildup, which is an extremely reasonable choice for him to make. If he diverts some resources to instead tackle a canal project, then Kislev is weaker in the short term but much stronger once the canal's benefits have had time to be felt. Which one of these is "better" for Kislev depends a lot on your assumptions.
Also, people don't necessarily come up with good ideas just because they're in a position of power. We assassinated Vladimir some
months ago and it still took us up until the second day of the voting moratorium to jump on the idea - and
we're a lot of people brainstorming. Boris is just one guy and
he doesn't run a trading company, so there was no guarantee that he'd have thought of it himself when he has so much else on his plate.
Would the Kislev canal take longer or shorter than the canal that's just finishing?
Probably a lot shorter - the Black Water canal also involved a series of locks (which are harder) and the terrain was less favorable. It was also a dwarven-led work, so there was probably more focus on safety and reliability than on speed. There was also
also the Marienburg bandits, the mysterious disease outbreak we never followed up on, and the Skull River ambush. It can't be said that it had no delays.
The Urskoy-Lynsk would be longer, but Kislev does not lack in manpower. It would be through very friendly territory and easier terrain, and Boris would hopefully be wise enough to learn lessons from the Black Water and make sure nobody so much as
looks funny at the canal.
