SGOTM 13 - One Short Straw

Yes. While you can work the clam at size 3, you have to grow through size 4 with 1 :mad:. If you cycle 4-2, you will never have a :mad: in gold.
Waiiiiiit a minute here... how come I get an Unhappy person and you don't at Size 4?

Oh, are you saying that you'd whip immediately upon growing to Size 4? If so, then you aren't using 3 Seafood Resources to grow while at Size 4, which is a "no no."

As I said, at Size 4, the Clam would equal a Grassland Farm (that gets 2 free Commerce, but let's ignore the Commerce), which is still better than not being able to work such a square.


Given the amount of overflow hammers currently in gold, working the gold actually makes 2 pop whipping MORE difficult. If we work the gold, I'm the galleon will become a 1 pop whip before we hit size 5.
Well, something being "more difficult" is not the same as saying "not possible," it just may be more work for the Active Player (time to be glad that it's not you right now! ;)).

Besides, there are a lot of options:
1. Pick different unit types to whip with different Hammer costs
2. Overflow your Hammers into a different unit and create it using mostly overflow Hammers (it could even be an Archer for a future Military Police unit)
3. For a single turn, work a Coast instead of the Gold square, if doing so helps out with keeping a build item as a 2-pop-whip instead of a 1-pop-whip
 
and a medic 3 in 1 stack with a medic 1 in every other stack is more efficient than either.
The thing is, when are we really going to spend the time to heal? Whether we use 1 Treb or 2 Trebs for collateral damage, we'd probably just rather load up whichever of those Trebs survive and continue on with the war... meaning 0 healing from the turn that they attacked, 0 healing from the turn that they boarded the boat on the next turn, 0 healing from the turn landing on the following turn (which could be as far as 10 squares away and therefore they SHOULD be landing on that turn), and 0 healing from the turn after landing when they are used for Bombarding.

Either the stack will attack on the turn that they Bombard (meaning that the stack will board a boat on the following turn) or else there will be 2 turns of Bombarding from the wounded Trebs.

If we plan our attack properly, there will be no healing until after each stack has captured at least 3 of Cathy's Cities--at which point we may have run low on Trebs and will be forced to pause the war if only to collect more Trebs.


There are no turns of healing in there at all. So, it doesn't matter if we have Medic I, Medic III, or Medic III + Woodsman III--these units will all equally be of no use for Trebuchet healing during the main part of the war.
 
OK, we're still at a standstill on two items:

On which turn to launch our attack and what to do with the GG, both issues being inter-related. Being at a 2 - 2 deadlock doesn't help. Do we give bbp time to weigh in or is there another way to break this log jam?
 
@ Dhoom

I don't need you to lay out your plan. I can piece it together with what info you have provided. I'd like to add 2 CR III trebs to your plan, one for each stack. For the three CR III maces, I'm not sure if I would send all 3 to Moscow (since St. Petersburg is weak) or do a 2 - 1 split.

If we go with Shyuhe's plan, the GG will be used later and our initial assault will not benefit from the corresponding promotions. What this plan does do is to push out the debate for how to use the GG for another 3 turns... ;)
 
By the way, St. Petersburg has FOUR Food Resources (although it looks like it shares the weakest of those Food Resources with a Gem City located to the west of it). If we keep the Lighthouse upon City capture or rebuild one, it also has a Lake that will count as a 5th Food Resource.

So, yeah, I'd really rather not raze that City.


The City to the west of there (that we can't see but can guess that it is centred on that lone hidden square) doesn't look like it has much in the way of Food sources, so we may end up just razing that City... plus that City to the west of St. Petersburg would be a land-locked City, meaning only 2 Trade Routes instead of 4 Trade Routes.
 
I'd like to add 2 CR III trebs to your plan, one for each stack.
They won't all be at full health, but let's see what degree of Healthiness they will have.

Okay, so, I guess some testing is in order. I can work out the math from the facts that:
2.3/4 Health Treb = 3 turns to heal
2.4/4 Health Treb = 2 turns to heal
such that without Medic I, we could heal 0.8 Health on a Treb when inside a City that we own.

What about Medic I? (Goes to check in a test game)
So, a test game supports the above-listed 0.8 Health for no Medic I while healing inside of our City, while we get 1.2 Health for Medic I while healing inside of our City.

Trebuchet 1 (Paris) in Utrecht is at 2.9/4 Health. 2.9 + 1.2 = 4.1 (capped at 4), so it, too, could take a City Raider III promo and be at full Health. Great. That makes 2 such City Raider III Trebs.

Trebuchet 6 (Stone) which is E + E of The Hague NEEDS TO STOP AUTOMOVING into The Hague (as does Maceman 6 on the same square). If it does so, it has 3.4/4 Health. However, it has 2 unused promotions.

So, although he won't be able to fully heal, according to a test game, he will heal to 3.7 after 1 promo, to 3.8 after another promo, and to 3.9 after the third promo, which is "good enough" for me. So sure, that Treb can also get the City Raider III promo. So, that puts us up to having 3 Trebs.

Treb 2 (Gold) has an Accuracy promotion, so no point in looking at it.

Treb 7 (Paris) has 2.4/4 Health. 2.4 + 1.2 = 3.6/4

Following the above healing logic plus common wisdom that says that healing adds half of the remaining Health required to become full Health, I would say that it would have 3.8/4 Health after taking the City Raider III promotion. Alternatively, it could be 4/4 Health at City Raider II and we'd have 1 more City Raider III Macemen.

So, I'm not sure about that 4th Treb, but sure, at least 3 Trebs and possibly that 4th one can be promoted to City Raider III.


Trebuchet 5 (Paris) that is SE of The Hague should be given the Accuracy promo and then should heal in The Hague for a turn.


If we go with Shyuhe's plan, the GG will be used later and our initial assault will not benefit from the corresponding promotions. What this plan does do is to push out the debate for how to use the GG for another 3 turns... ;)
It also means attacking with wounded units and giving Cathy an extra turn to prepare for war. These two points matter more to me than being able to get the Great General's Experience Points, BUT, since people seem to like having the Experience Points on Trebs, we see that we can potentially have 2 full-health City Raider III Trebs, along with 2 others at 3.9 and 3.8 Health respectively, which probably is a bit more significant of a factor than City Raider III Macemen.
 
I don't think the current impass is which units to give the CRIII promotion. In my mind, the impass is which of the following three approaches to take:

1. Attack Cathy one turn sooner with a handful of wounded units. The GG will be used after our initial assualt on Cathy; most likely a Medic III since the value of CR III goes down the later in the war we take it (with the upcoming two battles likely to be the hardest we face the rest of the game).
2. Attack one turn later and use the GG to create a Medic III unit.
3. Attack one turn later and use the GG to create multiple CR III units.

shyuhe seems to be in the option 1 camp while Dhoom and I are in the option 3 camp. I would guess that mdy is also in the option 1 camp since he has been advocating to start the attack on Cathy ASAP for quite some time.

So, do we wait for bbp or another member to vote? Does anyone feel so strongly about one option over another or are we all "on the fence" but leaning one way or another?

If we're all on or near the fence, without a fifth team member, either team captain (shyuhe?) or the active player (me) should decide. If three of us are on the fence and one of us feels very strongly about one option, I would "suggest" that the three compromise.

Personally, I prefer option 3 but I'm on the fence and would rather get the game moving than to have this issue hold up our game another day. I honestly don't think that this one decision will drastically change our end date, but it will likely determine how we wage our wars. I can play today if we resolve this issue in the next hour or so. Else we can debate on until this issue is resolved.

By the way, after Friday, I'm going to have to hand this off to the next player. I'm heading out of the country and won't have time to play any turns.
 
It's a point I feel fairly strongly about, but since it directly affects the active player the most, I'm willing to defer to your decision on this. We have about 60 turns to finish the game (minimum), so I don't think it's going to make a big difference at this point.
 
Getting to Medic III requires 13 experience points for a Charismatic leader and CRIII requires 8 experience points. I assume that we would split the 20 experience points between two units, right? So if we go the Medic III route, we'd also get a CR III (plus some other promotion) unit out of the deal.

Or, better yet, based on my testing, if we split the experience points among 3 units, the first two listed in the stack get 7 while the one listed last gets 6. Unfortunately, we don't have any units with 6 experience points that hasn't already gone down the CR line otherwise we could have gotten 1 Medic III and two CR III.

So, I guess the choice is 5 (or 6) CR III vs. 1 Medic III and 1 CR III+. Right?
 
How about this: We promote one of our 4XP maces to combat 1 medic 1. We then attach the GG to this unit, and split the XP with 2 other trebs to allow us to promote them to CR3. This would leave our medic unit with 11XP, with a little MM we should be able to use this to make an attack on one of Cathys cities in a couple of turn to get an extra 2XP at extremely good odds to give us medic 3.

Either way I think we should play on tomorrow as we only have a little over 2 weeks left.
 
How about this: We promote one of our 4XP maces to combat 1 medic 1. We then attach the GG to this unit, and split the XP with 2 other maces to allow us to promote them to CR3. This would leave our medic unit with 11XP, with a little MM we should be able to use this to make an attack on one of Cathys cities in a couple of turn to get an extra 2XP at extremely good odds to give us medic 3.

I'm fine with this, but it does require us to delay the war by 1 turn. It does have the advantage of allowing our troops one more turn to heal though. Would the CR III go to maces or the stronger trebs based on your and shyuhe's earlier comments?

EDIT: BTW, if this 4XP mace is listed last on the list, it will be the one to only get the 6XP. I guess the units (maces or trebs) that get the experience points only need 1 or 2 XP to get the required 8 for CR III, so the 4XP mace should be listed first.

Either way I think we should play on tomorrow as we only have a little over 2 weeks left.

??? Are you saying to play today or wait to play until tomorrow?
 
How about this: We promote one of our 4XP maces to combat 1 medic 1. We then attach the GG to this unit, and split the XP with 2 other maces to allow us to promote them to CR3. This would leave our medic unit with 11XP, with a little MM we should be able to use this to make an attack on one of Cathys cities in a couple of turn to get an extra 2XP at extremely good odds to give us medic 3.
We would actually only get 10 XP on the Medic unit if we use Macemen for the 2 City Raider promos.

The XP will be divided-up in the order of units' listing on the game screen and in BtS that listing is based on Experience Point levels (in Warlords and Vanilla I think it was more focused on the order that units were created).

So, given that we only have 4 XP Macemen that could become a Medic III, they would be listed after any City Raider II Macemen, since our City Raider II Macemen have 5 XP, meaning that the XP would be split:
CRII = 7
CRII = 7
Future Medic III = 6 (4 XP + 6 XP = only 10 XP).


If we instead make that 2 CRII Trebs, the Trebs are units that only have 4 XP. Therefore, there is a good chance that the Future Medic III unit will get 7 XP.

So... does that make your vote:
Attack on T + 3, Promote 2 Trebs (make sure that they are 4 XP Trebs, although I think that the only 5 XP Treb that we have has Accuracy anyway) and 1 Maceman (that has 4 XP and no promotions) using the Great General, while attaching the Great General to the Maceman?

I could live with that approach.


Note that we would not need to promote the Maceman [Maceman 6 (Marble)] now at all, since we'd have 2 other Macemen that would be Medic I units.

Attacking with Maceman 6 when it does not have Combat I may give us +1 XP from a battle compared to the XP that it would otherwise gain, but even if not, then there is no value to taking the Medic I and Medic II promotions until after we need some self-healing, i.e. until after we have fought our next battle with that Maceman.
 
I'm fine with this, but it does require us to delay the war by 1 turn. It does have the advantage of allowing our troops one more turn to heal though. Would the CR III go to maces or the stronger trebs based on your and shyuhe's earlier comments?

On second thoughts, trebs would be better. We wouldn't have to attach the GG before the attack, we could attack with a medic 1 mace to give it 6XP, then attach the GG to it.

??? Are you saying to play today or wait to play until tomorrow?

Sometime within the next 24 hours.

There are no turns of healing in there at all. So, it doesn't matter if we have Medic I, Medic III, or Medic III + Woodsman III--these units will all equally be of no use for Trebuchet healing during the main part of the war.

We don't have the spare production to go around with a lot of badly wounded trebs that can't be used on the offensive due to the high chance of losing them. We won't have enough units to keep the advance going without doing at least some healing.
 
The drawback to waiting until after the attack to attach the GG to the mace is that we don't get the use of the CR III trebs in the upcoming battle. I can live with that, but it is a bummer. It does have the advantage of not having to attach a GG to a unit and then having him die in a fluke loss...

So, are we agreed on delaying the war by 1 turn to allow units to heal fully? Or do we want to attack ASAP with some wounded units?
 
Regardless of how the GG gets used, I'd like to have the units healed and strike hard and heavy on the first turn (T+3 attack).

If we honestly want to "wait to Heal Trebs" then I see little point in going in with wounded Trebs, since the Trebs can heal the remaining Health needed to be healed within our territory within 1 turn, but will take multiple turns while in the field... even if they have "enter" a captured City, that's +1 turn, then +another turn to heal there = +2 turns compared to +1 turn in our territory now.

Those +2 turns are turns that will be spent when Cathy will be spamming units in her other Cities, whereas now, she is being a Pacifist.
 
One comment, if we attach the GG after our intial assault, how do we get him safely to either Moscow or St Pete? We could sail him directly into St. Pete, which seems fine as long as the galleon doesn't have to sit in open waters for a turn. Trying to get him into Moscow means that he has to sit in the open and will require an escort or two to keep him save, which will impact the healing of those escorting units...

I guess that's a logistical issue that I'll have to deal with. Attaching the GG once we have a Combat 1 + Medic 1 mace with 6XP makes sense.
 
One comment, if we attach the GG after our intial assault, how do we get him safely to either Moscow or St Pete? We could sail him directly into St. Pete, which seems fine as long as the galleon doesn't have to sit in open waters for a turn. Trying to get him into Moscow means that he has to sit in the open and will require an escort or two to keep him save, which will impact the healing of those escorting units...
Sailing into a City costs us 1 turn, though, since it means that the units that want to get promoted will have to enter the City, instead of directly climbing into boats and moving on to the next City.

The Galleon itself would have to enter the City, unload the GG, then leave the City, which is not really the issue... the issue is that the GG would not be on the same square as the units this way and would either need to:
a) Spend a turn moving the GG using up all of its movement points to join where the units-to-be-upgraded are standing
OR
b) Spend a turn moving the units-to-be-upgraded to join the GG in the City

With scenario b), we'd also have to goof around by empty the City of its planned-garrison-unit then return that unit to the City... probably loading it on a Galleon, leaving the City with the Galleon unless the Galleon was not in the City, joining the GG, then entering the City with the Galleon and manually unloading the City garrison unit (don't forget this last step), and then one turn later, getting the GG-promoted units to leave the City.

As you can see, we won't be making use of Medic III right away, since other units won't be able to be on the same square as the future Medic III unit, even if it can immediately promote thanks to having 6 XP.


I guess that's a logistical issue that I'll have to deal with. Attaching the GG once we have a Combat 1 + Medic 1 mace with 6XP makes sense.
We would not need to promote to the Medic I promo, though, until the last minute. This point will apply more if we only get 1XP per battle, which would give instant-healing by taking the Medic promo if we were wounded in the battle that earned us that 1XP.
 
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