If the northern worker had roaded the forest next to Hague instead of chopping, we could have fully loaded all three boats on T+1 (from the current turn) by galleon chaining and invaded on T+2.
We still wouldn't have our 3 Trebuchet reinforcements arriving at St. Petersburg.
I see what you are saying, but no one really commented on what to do with the Workers. Even my suggestions were vague, offering multiple choices for what the Workers could do, instead of giving any concrete suggestions.
At best, we could have attacked 1 turn sooner and possibly captured Moscow one turn sooner with potentially higher troop losses (attacking with wounded units), while still not being able to take St. Petersburg any sooner.
However, no one thought of this Worker Roading idea ahead of time, so we're all to blame here.
Anyway, I much prefer being able to spend this extra turn:
1. Healing our troops
2. Distributing the Great General's promotions
3. Getting 3 more Trebs into play
4. Still being able to capture St. Petersburg on the same turn although admittedly it could have been possible to capture Moscow 1 turn sooner with a likely lost troop or two over and above what we'll lose (I don't think that the extra turn of Commerce would have made up for the lost Hammers, though)
5. Doing all of the above while having Cathy spend 1 less turn building war-based units
6. Giving Cathy 1 less turn of being able to leverage Slavery (1 less turn in the future, after she has come out of revolt--assuming that she bothers to switch Civics at all)
In any event, the question is "what are we going to do with CR3 maces?"
I would say that we could be "bolder." For example, we'd aim to Bombard St. Petersburg and Moscow with all but 1 Treb on the first turn of movement points, then attack with 1 Treb at each City, then throw in the City Raider III Macemen.
The Cities will still have City Defences. There won't be much Collateral Damage done. However, our City Raider III Macemen will do an admirable job against attacking Cities defended by only 1 or 2 Longbowmen each--they are just the right kind of unit that we need here.
It seems kind of silly to throw in a lot of Trebs when there are only 1 or maybe 2 defenders that we really care about wounding.
On the other hand, having City Raider III Macemen is just what a situation calls for--when there aren't a lot of defending troops that really need to be softened-up by collateral damage--we just want some first-rate Macemen units to do their jobs so that less Trebs need to attack and thus more Trebs will stay healthy.
With only 1 Treb being used to attack at both Cities, our remaining Trebs will be fully-healed for attacking the second City.
The same scenario can be repeated until we find a City where Cathy has whipped a ton of Longbowmen defenders, and by that point, we should still have 2 fully-healthy Trebs in our stack that can attack.
Thus, a Medic III unit won't help us very much at all in this war.
The single Treb that gets wounded in attacking each City (assuming that it survives) can keep moving with the stack and acting as a Bombarding unit for future Cities.
@Dhoom - there is at least a barb sword and warrior north of Amsterdam. We should move the 4XP mace to the front and start a mace in Amsterdam. It'll shrink a pop, and then we'll whip it the very next turn. I'd rather have the extra mace on our Russian front at a cost of a pop in Amsterdam.
We have no room on any Galleon for Maceman 7 (Gold).
The key to remember here is that just about all of our units have 2 promotions, so we need not feel bad about leaving a unit with 2 promotions to act as a Military Police unit.
In this case, there is no rush to send him directly west, since he can't even board a Galleon until any sooner than T + 4 anyway.
Shrinking population points is pretty lame if it can at all be avoided, PARTICULARLY in our Cities that have not been whipping. Cities that have not been whipping do not have Whipping Unhappiness and should be able to whip multiple times. Once Willem is dead, a lot of the Unhappiness will go away, and it will be a shame not to use this City's Happiness to its fullest potential.
1 lost population point = 56 lost Hammers. That's more than half of the cost of a Maceman. I see no reason to throw away 56 Hammers when there is no need to do so.
I am all for continuing our aggressive whipping. Working a coastal square does not improve city re-growth time since they are essentially food neutral. So a city in a 4-2 whip cycle should whip as soon as it is size 4 (assuming that it has enough hammers to do so).
Run the math for yourself. You don't actually get more units built or get them any faster to the front lines given that we don't currently have a Galleon chain or even an eastern front line to send them to yet.
The only case where it can get you units faster to the front lines is for the very last round of whipping, when we're ready to set sail.
So, all that we would be accomplishing is throwing away some otherwise free Commerce.
Sure, when we're at the final round of whipping, we can be a bit more aggressive, but there is no gain (and is a bit of loss) in doing that early whipping prior to the time when we are going to launch our fleet.
Gold is the one exception, as it has 4 good tiles. However, only three of them merit working right now given our whipping needs -- the seafood. So a 5-3 cycle may be the best.
I prefer a 6-4 cycle but would be okay with a 5-3 cycle if that's all that our Happiness levels would support (i.e. if Gold City growing to Size 6 were the only City that would require us to increase the Cultural Slider for +10% for). Being at Size 2 is just painful, since we're losing a lot of potential Hammers that way.
Hammers are still our bottleneck though, so I'd rather not shrink it down below Size 3 again, even if it means having to raise the Cultural Slider. If we're really that tight, then we should seriously consider building a Theatre there now.
A Theatre = +1 Happiness from the Dye Resource and +1 extra Happiness per Cultural Slider level.