We aren't trading marble to Cathy any more - I stopped that deal during my set since we didn't need the health.
That means that we have a Marble Resource available. Joao will give us 2 Gold per Turn for it. Do you want to make that trade? It sounds like a good option to me.
Also, BtS AI will build units in its cities, but will generally only apply the whip in threatened cities--cities with units on its doorstep.
Okay, I think I see what you are trying to say about threatened--in that you are saying that an AI will be less likely to whip-spam Cities if there aren't units nearby.
Despite an AI's behaviour when feeling threatened, an AI at war WILL build more troops even if we aren't threatened. If you do not believe this fact, then why are people saying that we should "consider taking a Cease Fire with Ragnar so that he will build less troops"? Clearly, we all know that an AI will build more troops when at war, even if its Cities are not threatened (Ragnar's Cities are not threatened but we all beleive that he is building Military Units).
The fact is that she WILL build more troops, Walls, Castles, etc when in war than when not in war. There might be a GREATER tendency to whip when we have troops nearby, but there is still a greater tendency to build troops + defensive Buildings in other Cities that aren't threatened compared to when a war is not ongoing.
An additional 41 gpt translates into about a 40-50% culture sider for us (rough math). So 2 extra whips per city over the 20% we can reach now, which equates to 12 units (20 if you include the 8 from Willem's cities).
The point is that whatever the whipping gains we can obtain from the extra Trade Routes are, we can only gain them ONCE.
Whether we gain them 5 turns earlier or 5 turns later won't really matter... and "5 turns earlier" won't even happen if our Cities haven't regrown from previous whipping that was Happiness-sustainable.
The point is that we will not get EXTRA whipping by capturing The Great Lighthouse sooner. We will get a fixed, roughly 1-whip-per-City gain from running a higher Cultural Slider, and that's because we must MAINTAIN that higher Cultural Slider and because whipping Unhappiness takes 15 turns to wear off.
We can get those troops out a bit FASTER by taking The Great Lighthouse sooner, BUT, and here's the key: if we end up having to use up more troops in the war, then overall, we've had to expend more production fighting Cathy. Getting a few troops sooner (that won't arrive soon enough to help in the war against Cathy unless we have some massive Galleon-chaining going on) will not help us overall if it costs us MORE troops to take Cathy's Cities.
Overall, we would end up with LESS units in total for our next war. That's the variable in the equation that's the most important--the total amount of troops that we can have.
Cathy will start on castles pretty soon after she finishes engineering regardless of whether we declare war or not. Those extra trade routes from castles entice the AI quite a bit, unfortunately.
Well we know for certain that a Cathy does not have access to Stone. A Castle will cost her 150 Hammers. That's more Hammers than a Library and more Hammers than a Colosseum.
There are two perspectives that we can take here:
1. Rush her capital ASAP. However, she has high production in Moscow. If she learns Engineering in a couple of turns and chooses to spend the high production available in that City on a Castle immediately, we will be unable to attack her before that Castle gets manually built. So, we're going to face a Castle in Moscow IF she will manually build one
2. Hope that she will not manually build a Castle and that she'll only start to build one when threatened. In that case, she would not be able to manually complete one within a short period of time but would be able to whip one... but would only be able to whip it after revolting into Slavery. So, if we land our troops then attack on the same turn (possibly bombaring some--we should consider promoting a couple of Trebuchets to City Bombard +10% promotion if we get 4 Experience Points on some Trebs), then, as long as she has not peacefully-built a Castle, we can attack before a Castle goes up
In scenario 2, we can hit both Moscow and St. Petersburg on the turn before she is able to whip ANY population points, meaning that we'll get to whip the maximum amount of population points in both Cities. Both Cities are the only Cities of hers that we can currently see a City Wall in. Those 2 Cities are also the largest of her Cities that we can see (the ones most likely to successfully be able to whip a Castle each).
Other Cities will have to spend either:
1 turn revolting to Slavery
1 turn pre-building a Wall
1 turn and 2 population points whipping a Wall (75 Hammers)
1 turn pre-building a Castle
1 turn whipping a Castle and at least 2 population points to whip the Castle
Let's run some math here...
Let's say that she does the above and has a Forge in her Cities. She's not running Organized Religion, so no bonus to production there.
45 Hammers * 1.25 = 56 Hammers. She'd need to make 75 - 56 = 19 Hammers per turn in order to make the Wall a 1-pop-whip, which doesn't look possible in her Cities that don't already have a Wall (Moscow can make about 20 Hammers per turn but it already has a Wall).
Her 2 other Cities can make around 12 Hammers per turn at max, so we'll say that they make this much, meaning 15 Hammers with a Forge. Is there any way that you can see which Cities have a Forge? I use the Low Graphics Setting, which does show City Walls and Aqueducts, but I'm not sure how to see most other buildings--will High Graphics Settings tell us if there are Forges in her other Cities?
So, assuming that she has a Forge, she'll have 15 + 2 * 56 + 15 = 142 Hammers going into the Wall, and 142 - 75 = 67. On the next turn, she would add 67 + 15 = 83 Hammers to a Castle, giving her 150 - 83 = 67 Hammers required, which would mean another 2-pop-whip.
Her north-eastern City only has 5 population points, so it's not at immediate risk for a Castle appearing, but one could appear over time.
Her north-western City does have 7 population points, so it could whip a Castle that would appear on the 6th turn of war.
Building a Fort does give us flexibility on her northern Coast, since she does have 3 Cities up there.
As a total aside, vassalge is probably the civic we want the most right now given the number of units we have running aruond. I'm assuming we don't want to adopt bureaucracy at this point?
Well, Feudalism is the last tech that we want to take, because taking it means that other AIs will get Longbowmen faster. If EVERY AI has Feudalism, then we can take it. At that point in the game, we'll probably WELCOME some turns of Anarchy, as our Core Cities will have been whipped-out and we might prefer a turn of Anarchy to ship our units around without having to worry about how much Gold we are paying to a Cultural Slider for a turn.
As for Bureaucracy... it could still be worth it, particularly during the time period where Willem's Cities are in revolt, since these Cities will still lose 1 turn of revolt time when we switch Civics (I just confirmed this fact in a test game).
We still have a good 5 whips ahead of us from Paris, given its +2 Happiness plus Gem (+2) plus Dye (+1) and 6 whips if we also grab Ivory (+1).
Each 2-pop-whip is worth an extra 45 * 2 * 0.5 = 45 Hammers. According to the F3 screen, Bureaucracy will cost us 2 Gold per Turn, but I'm not sure how accurate those numbers are. Still, with a worst-case 50% Cultural Slider, our capital can make:
8 Commerce from a Palace, 1 from the City Centre, 2 from each Clam times 2 = 8 + 1 + 2 * 2 = 9 + 4 = 13 base Commerce * 0.5 = 6 Commerce from Bureaucracy minus 50% for a Cultural Slider at 50%, meaning that we'll make 3 Gold per Turn from Bureaucracy.
Actually, that's not a lot of Gold, so eventually, it probably will pay to switch into Vassalage, but for the next little while, we'll have to decide whether getting 5 whips (6 with Ivory) of 45 Hammers each: 5 * 45 = 225 Hammers beats 1 turn of missing out on Food and Hammers and Commerce within our empire.
Of course, upon closer inspection, 2 of those whips come from us having a 20% Cultural Slider already, but with us at a 20% Cultural Slider, we appear to be breaking even, meaning that we don't really care about losing Commerce for a turn since we aren't making Gold.
So, it's whether we will care about the lost Food and Hammers, and we'll just roughly say something like the Food equals twice as many Hammers, even though that's not purely accurate.
BY THE WAY, IT LOOKS LIKE WE CAN SAFELY RUN a 10% CULTURAL SLIDER without any Unhappiness on the current turn, so we should probably do so... and then watch the F1 screen religiously each turn.
Here's what we're making right now:
Paris = 7 Food, 15 final Hammers,
Gold = 10 Food, 5 final Hammers
(when you play with the Cultural Slider, this City seems to like to hire a Scientist, so every turn we really do need to look at what each City is working with their citizens and if the Cultural Slider gets altered, we'll have to look a second time)
Marble = 8 Food, 2 final Hammers
Stone = 4 Food, 12 final Hammers
(if we remember to switch the DesH Mine to a Coast)
Pig = 10 Food, 1 final Hammer
Iron = 5 Food, 12 final Hammers
Other Cities are in revolt, so they don't count
Total = 7 + 10 + 8 + 4 + 10 + 5 = 44 Food, 15 + 5 + 2 + 12 + 1 + 12 = 47 final Hammers
Doubling the Food gives us 44 * 2 = 88 Hammers, for a grand total of 88 + 47 = 135 Hammers
So, yes, if we count the 2 whips in Paris from running a 20% Cultural Slider, we'll make 225 Hammers, which is more than the lost 135 Hammers of production from a single turn of Anarchy.
Thus, yes, assuming that the F3 numbers for switching Civics portray an accurate picture, then it makes sense to:
a) Revolt to Bureaucracy before we whip again in Paris
AND
b) Probably wait to revolt to Bureaucracy until after we're done any other whips from our Core Cities that we wanted to use in the war against Cathy
BUT
c) Whip before Willem's Cities come out of revolt, so that we won't lose a turn of production from those Cities, too
Also, if we are concerned about unit spam, one solution is to take Moscow + St. Pete and then take peace with Cathy while we go after someone else, and leave the rest of her cities for last. This will let us take the GLH while minimizing her "war mode."
Her northern Cities really are "out of the way," so there's a cost with sending our Galleons there twice.
Her Cities are not so close to each other as to prevent us from working too many squares in these Cities.
However, the real point is that Cathy probably will not be WILLING to accept a Cease Fire for a good number of turns. So, we can either spend those turns continuing to fight or we can let her build up for those turns. Given those options as being our only realistic choices, I'd suggest that we continue to fight.
The difference with Ragnar is that we can capture his Ivory City and then IMMEDIATELY take a Cease Fire, even if he has troops in position to counter-attack his captured Cities. It's a great tactical flexibility to be able to take such a Cease Fire at an opportune time--an option that we won't have with Cathy.