SGOTM 13 - One Short Straw

shyuhe said:
Things are going well on the war front. We lost 1 treb taking two cities
Nice work! :goodjob: Of course, now I am curious as to how things went against Ragnar's boats.


shyuhe said:
I'll slow Gold and marble to 6-4 whip cycles, although it'll be growing into unhappiness until we get drama.
I know that it feels bad to grow into unhappiness (and this issue may plague us again as we whip more, even if we do have Drama now), but I guess that the point becomes a comparison of the squares being worked:
Size 2 means not working a Clam, Size 3 means not working a Gold, and let's assume that at Size 5 and Size 6, we gain 1 Unhappy person respectively.

In that case, we'd lose the ability to work a 5th and 6th square when growing past Size 4, so the temptation is to keep the City tiny and always have Happy citizens. But, if we keep the City tiny (whipping down to Size 2), it means not being able to work a Clam for a turn and not being able to work a Gold for a few turns.

I'm drawing a blank as to how to come up with the comparison math here, but intrinsically, it feels worthwhile to work the Resource squares as much as possible. I suppose that the math would involve looking at Foodbox sizes, meaning that we'd need to prove that the extra value coming from the Clam and the Gold would "beat" not working these squares and getting smaller Foodbox maximums from whipping. Without the Unhappiness, then (again, without doing any math), common wisdom suggests that it is totally worth working the Resource squares. With the added unhappiness, it gets closer, but I think that since these squares are really strong (5 Food + 2 Commerce and 3 Hammers + 7 Commerce), they still make up for "working" 2 Unhappy people at Sizes 5 and 6.

So, I guess that the take-away here is that if we have a situation where we only have enough Gold, for, say, 5 turns at a 40% Cultural Slider and 10 turns at a 20% Cultural Slider, then we might strongly consider running the lower-valued Cultural Slider for a longer time period if doing so allows us to keep working all of our Resource squares at the cost of having a couple of Unhappy citizens instead of working Coast squares, versus the alternative of running out of Gold for our Cultural Slider for some turns in the future where our Cities would have to stop working some of their Resource squares and might even begin to lose Food in their Foodboxes.


So, yes, if we have the Gold to support having 0 Unhappy people, great. However, if Gold remains tight, then it is worth considering having the odd Unhappy person if that citizen would have otherwise only worked a Coast square.

Of course, this fact means that if Gold is tight, we might need to look at our Cities on every turn (or use the F1 screen) to determine how high to set the Cultural Slider. After the Cultural Slider is set, we may need to check every City to ensure that it is working the correct squares. For example, Paris might auto-work a Cottage after having played with the Cultural Slider, so we shouldn't trust the City Governors to do their jobs properly.



shyuhe said:
And techs
Ragnar has Horseback Riding = War Elephants. I really think that we want to target his Ivory soon, particularly since he is in war mode.

We should also consider tech trade deals: will we want War Elephants of our own? If yes, then Horseback Riding might be in order. Will we want to build The Heroic Epic? If yes, then Literature might be in order.


shyuhe said:
I think we should send all but 1 or 2 boats west to get ready to pick up the remnants of the Willem front so that they can advance towards Cathy. We need to start preparing to open up the eastern front as the west has more than enough troops to eliminate Willem and start on Cathy.
I honestly thought that the plan was:
1. Capture Willem's Cities
2. Wait for Willem's Cities to come out of revolt
3. Aggressively whip Willem's Cities
4. Attack Cathy with our new troops from Willem's Cities plus other troops that we have built

Attacking her prematurely just means facing a ton more Longbowmen. Assuming that she hasn't switched Civics, we'll have a turn or two where she switches Civics to war-like ones, but after that small window of opportunity, she'll be able to whip out Longbowmen. I don't think that our current forces will be able to capture enough of her Cities to prevent this doomsday scenario.


So, I would prefer to wait to attack her until Willem's old Cities have been given a chance to whip up an army.

Unlike versus an AI that does not have Feudalism, we actually care A LOT about every turn that the war drags on versus Cathy. If another AI whips an Axeman or an Archer, who really cares. But each Longbowman from Cathy makes taking her Cities considerably costlier, so much so that we'd actually LOSE a lot more turns by attacking before we have decisive numbers than we would by waiting to attack until we can strike hard in the initial blow.

I'm not saying don't attack Cathy. I'm saying let's take the time to build up an overwhelming force against her--which may come by sea and by land--before we trigger war with her.


In the meantime, Ragnar has presented himself as a convenient and in some ways, a crucial target while we wait for the army to DECISIVELY destroy Cathy has been raised from Willem's Cities.
a) We're already at war with Ragnar
b) Ragnar has learned Horseback Riding and can field War Elephants
c) Ragnar appears to be currently beelining Monarchy--he probably still hasn't been doing any trading, but Mysticism and Polytheism must have been pretty cheap for him--what, a tech per turn or every 2 turns?
d) Once Ragnar adopts Hereditary Rule, Ragnar will start to love many of the AIs. Ragnar can trade Ivory if he loves an AI enough. In particular, without looking at the game, I recall him having a high level of liking Cathy, which will increase with Hereditary Rule. Do you really want Cathy to be fielding War Elephants when we have started an early war that drags on because we can't decisively take down her Cities with their Longbowmen quickly enough that she has plenty of time to build more Longbowmen and War Elephants?
e) Once Ragnar learns Monarchy, Ragnar has the second highest preference for researching Feudalism out of any of the AIs, which is the highest out of the AIs in our current game
f) War with Ragnar has broken our "blocking" of Resource trades. Recall that we were trading him a Fish Resource and a Clam Resource. I forget which one, but one of those was a Resource that HE DID NOT HAVE. Therefore, as soon as he likes an AI enough to be able to trade him Ivory, that AI can trade him his missing Seafood Resource and the trade will happen immediately. This trap was potentially set up intentionally, but even if it wasn't, it is a trap that can definitely see the dangerous spreading of War Elephants abroad


As a side note, I am not even worried about Willem's Ivory, as it is not connected and he probably doesn't even have a Worker there to connect it. Given that we are not using our Workers, I really don't want to keep a City like Willem's Ivory City, since it would just mean taking on a useless City with few or no good squares to work, as well as no nearby Workers to improve it. Willem does not even have Horseback Riding ANYWAY, while his Ivory City is probably unproductive enough to not be able to build many units, so taking out his Ivory City is of low priority, especially compared to taking-out Ragnar's Ivory City.

We do not necessarily have to push the war against Ragnar any further (for now) than capturing his sources of Ivory--or at a minimum one such source so that he can't trade one source--but it will take a good number of turns before Willem's Cities will be whipping units, so, with our fast-moving Galleons, we might very well have a case for taking our Ragnar's other Cities.

On that note, it would probably help to build a Pikeman, so that we could garrison Ragnar's Ivory City with a Maceman + a Pikeman (or even also build a Crossbowman plus a Pikeman), since in the time that it takes to capture this City, then destroy Willem's Ivory City, then get back on boats and decide whether to go for Cathy or for Ragnar's other Cities (only if we have the time window to take Ragnar's Cities), Ragnar could counter-attack the Ivory City, and he'd be most likely to counter-attack with Chariots, Horse Archers, or War Elephants, making that Pikeman a strong investment, as long as we have a second unit (like a Crossbowman or a Maceman) to help defend against attacking Axemen.

If we don't have the Hammers to build a Crossbowman, overflow Hammers plus some manually-invested Hammers might get us an Archer, which could be upgraded to a Crossbowman using Gold.
 
Great turns et Shuye! It looks like we are in a really good position.


Looking at the balance of forces around Rotterdam I think we can attack next turn without waiting to bombard his defence. We can also land the 3 units on the galleon ouside Utrecht by the Hague next turn to start bombarding his defences down, reinforcements there by galleon as they become fully healed.

It looks like we don't have a medic 1 unit next. i think we should promote the unpromoted 3XP mace outside Rotterdam to combat 1, use it to make the final assault on that city and promote it to medic1.

I think it might be worth bypassing Williams final city on Ragnar's continent for now to allow us to assault cathys capital next. She can research engineering now, and we definitely do not want to fight longbows behind castles. Capturing the GL would also allow us to raise the culture slider further for more whips.

2 galleons transporting units in 2 waves should be enough to enable an amphibious assault on Cathys capital. As we would have to take the long way around to get there I suggest sending the 2 galleons south and east of Hague there immediately. 2 of the galleons near Utrecht can head back to our core to support the second front, and the third can join them once the Hague operation is over.

Four our second front I think we should go after Vicky: She is in the opposite direction to our main front, she is further away than Jao, and her terrain looks like it will take longer to conquer than Jao. Her stronger economy also means it would be preferable to take her down earlier.


Ragnar is willing to offer 40 gold + 1gpt for peace. Perhaps we should take this, it would free up our triemes for exploration duties?
 
It looks like we don't have a medic 1 unit next. i think we should promote the unpromoted 3XP mace outside Rotterdam to combat 1, use it to make the final assault on that city and promote it to medic1.
Hmm, I haven't looked at the saved game, but I thought that most of our Macemen promotions were going to be up the Combat line. I didn't see anyone say anything contrary to this suggestion... are you saying that we've been going up the City Raider line? If yes, I'd prefer to see a greater balance of Combat Macemen for future promotions.


I think it might be worth bypassing Williams final city on Ragnar's continent for now to allow us to assault cathys capital next. She can research engineering now, and we definitely do not want to fight longbows behind castles. Capturing the GL would also allow us to raise the culture slider further for more whips.
Assuming that by saying "research engineering now" you mean that she recently learned Construction, then she's likely a good number of turns away from Engineering. You saw how long it was taking Willem to learn it.

Assuming that she is still running Caste System, attacking prematurely would actually be the cause of her building Castles, as she'd be able to whip them.

Also, I'd rather face 2 or 3 Longbowmen per City behind the odd slow-built Castle than face 6 Longbowmen per City with some of the Cities having no Castles but some of them getting whipped Castles.

It's going to be a very fine line as to determining exactly how much force to use against Cathy versus when to attack her, but I think that our current forces are insufficient for the task.

Recall that Production and not Commerce is our bottleneck. Sure, extra Trade Routes would be nice, but would the extra Commerce from additional Trade Routes really make up for the logarithmic rise in Hammers that we would need in order to take on an AI that feels threatened into whipping a ton of Longbowmen?

That's the stumbling block that we're up against: ensuring that we invest sufficient production before starting the war so that we won't be required to invest a significantly higher amount of production after the war has started.


2 galleons transporting units in 2 waves should be enough to enable an amphibious assault on Cathys capital.
That may be. However, I don't think that capturing her capital will be a big enough bonus to make up for the future production costs of having to take down her other Cities being loaded with Longbowmen.

Let's be prepared to strike at 3 or more of her Cities when we go to start the war with her. We'll quickly come to regret it if we leave her with large-sized, productive Cities for more than a couple of turns after starting the war.


Ragnar is willing to offer 40 gold + 1gpt for peace. Perhaps we should take this, it would free up our triemes for exploration duties?
Let's be sneaky bastards here. We should not accept Peace under any circumstances. If we want to stop hostilities, we should take Cease Fire agreements.

What good is 40 Gold plus 1 Gold per Turn?

We can easily grab that 1 Gold per Turn by re-selling a Resource to Ragnar after taking a Cease Fire, and if we want that 40 Gold, we could sell him a tech.

These kinds of "gains" are trivial compared to having the flexibility to declare war on a whim.

So, I think that we'd be better served by having a policy of taking Cease Fires.

Now, that leaves the question to be: should we take a Cease Fire with Ragnar? I would opt for "no" until AT LEAST he is down to only 1 source of Ivory (so that Cathy won't get the other source of Ivory) and preferably "no" until we have captured all of his sources of Ivory.
 
Should we consider picking a different Espionage target now that Willem's back seems to be mostly broken? If so, who? Probably someone that hasn't spent a lot of Espionage Points against us, so that we'd learn something from our passive Espionage investment within a reasonable timeframe. I haven't looked at the game yet, so I don't currently have a suggestion.
 
are you saying that we've been going up the City Raider line?

Yes we have.

Assuming that by saying "research engineering now" you mean that she recently learned Construction, then she's likely a good number of turns away from Engineering. You saw how long it was taking Willem to learn it.

Assuming that she is still running Caste System, attacking prematurely would actually be the cause of her building Castles, as she'd be able to whip them.

Fortunately Cathy is still in CS. Unfortunately she will only offer 80 gold to us fro engineering. She would want 170 gold+engineering for literature, which means she will probably discover it in the next 3-4 turns. Fighting longbows is not that bad provided they are not on hills, you have trebs and bombard down all the cities defences, but castles+longbows make everything take a lot longer. To me this suggest we should attack her ASAP before she has time to build too many castles.

If we want to win as quickly as we can I don't think we can afford to have lot's of units sitting around idly waiting for an even bigger stack, when they could be used in action right now.

Now, that leaves the question to be: should we take a Cease Fire with Ragnar? I would opt for "no" until AT LEAST he is down to only 1 source of Ivory (so that Cathy won't get the other source of Ivory) and preferably "no" until we have captured all of his sources of Ivory.

I'm not remotely bothered about Ranar's ivory. One pike in our stack will be enough to protect our stacks from an attack, and war elephants are easier to attack in cities than longbows. If Ragnar traded Cathy his ivory I would therefore regard it as a good thing. Ragnars' weak, I can't see him getting feudalism before the end of the game even if he makes a direct beeline. He should be the last AI we attack.
 
I'm not remotely bothered about Ranar's ivory. One pike in our stack will be enough to protect our stacks from an attack, and war elephants are easier to attack in cities than longbows. If Ragnar traded Cathy his ivory I would therefore regard it as a good thing.
Unfortunately, these two points don't connect-up very well:
Attacking Cathy ASAP
and
Hoping that she'll be able to build War Elephants

We don't currently have any Pikemen, so I don't think that it would be wise to hope for her to get Ivory in trade.


I'll have to take a look at the saved game myself later, but what would be your overall plan for attacking Cathy? We would want a plan that is greater than just capturing a single City.


Besides, if Cathy is only a couple of turns away from Engineering, then I am even MORE convinced that we should wait to attack her.

What's to convince her to build additional City Walls and Castles in favour of building Courthouses or Aesthetics-based Wonders? Only one thing: declaring war on her.


So, the moment that we declare war on her, we start the ticking of a timebomb on having to face Cities defended by Longbowmen plus Castles. Taking one City early, only having to face multiple Longbowmen behind Castles in most of the other Cities does not sound like a preferable strategy to being able to capture multiple Cities without large stacks of Longbowmen and Castles by attacking with a co-ordinated, multi-City attack in the first turns of war.


The point is that we wouldn't have units "sitting around" because they'd be going after Ragnar's Ivory City and Willem's Ivory City. If we STILL had time to kill while building up sufficient forces to strike at Cathy, then we'd only be a couple of Galleon movements away from Ragnar's next City.
 
I'm not remotely bothered about Ranar's ivory... and war elephants are easier to attack in cities than longbows... Ragnars' weak, I can't see him getting feudalism before the end of the game
So, if Ragnar isn't going to get Longbowmen before the end of the game, then the comparison is whether Ragnar will build War Elephants versus Archers, right?

I'd rather see him building more Archers (or even Axemen and Swordsmen) than building War Elephants.

That said, my preference of targets is in order of:
a) Finish capturing Willem's 3 main Cities
b) Capture Ragnar's Ivory City (to block Cathy from potentially getting War Elephants)
c) As soon as we have sufficient forces to damage Cathy significantly within the first turns of war, hit Cathy--but if we are not ready to do more than capture a single City or two, delay by doing any of the other things until we are prepared for a multi-City (preferably 3+) attack on Cathy
d) Finish off Willem's Gem City (possibly razing, possibly keeping)
e) Finish off Willem's Ivory City (probably razing)
f) Attack any of Ragnar's other Cities
 
I can't even look at the save until tomorrow. If shyuhe wants to play a few more turns, I'm okay. Else I'll pick it up tomorrow.
 
The following teams are confirmed to be done playing:
Plastic Ducks
Phoenix Rising
T'dr'duzk b'hazg t't (honestly, the author of the book from which this name stems probably just randomly keyed-in characters on a keyboard, with one finger over top of the apostrophe key. The single vowel in there was probably an accident. ;))
 
The "7" in the screenshot (I still haven't found the time to open the game yet) seems to indicate that we'll get a Great General soon.

Should we build an Explorer unit to be a Super Medic?

I think that I would prefer to get a stack of 5 Macemen that already have 4 or more Experience Points and then spread 4 Experience Points to each of them. That situation will give us 5 Macemen with 3 promos each, which can primarily be City Raider promos. Other "newb" Macemen can focus on getting Combat I, so as to defend our stacks. The Great General Maceman should get the 30% retreat odds promo, which would allow him to later build up to getting the City Raider III promo.
 
The Great General Maceman should get the 30% retreat odds promo, which would allow him to later build up to getting the City Raider III promo.

I would prefer a Medic 3 GG ehich could speed up our advance by several turns. 30% retreat on one unit does not actually gain us very much.

Unfortunately, these two points don't connect-up very well:
Attacking Cathy ASAP
and
Hoping that she'll be able to build War Elephants

They do connect up. Ideally we would want Cathy to build as few units as possible, consistent with us attacking her ASAP, but if she does build units elephants would b better than longbows.

We don't currently have any Pikemen, so I don't think that it would be wise to hope for her to get Ivory in trade.

We will have the option of whipping one in Amsterdam in time for the assault on Moscow if need be.

I'll have to take a look at the saved game myself later, but what would be your overall plan for attacking Cathy? We would want a plan that is greater than just capturing a single City.

The galleons and our existing land units should be in a position to land outside her capital on T+9, this would be the turn we decalred war. Two trips with 2 galleons each can transport upto 12 units which should be more than enough to take her capital, and we should have enough units to launch this operation without relying on building new ones (in the likely event that Ragnar does not trade her ivory). Her capital should fall between T+10-12 depending how heavily it is defended.

We then mass whip Williams cities and use these units to open a second line of attack on St Pete. It is a fairly long overland march there so on second thoughts we may want to keep a couple of galleons in the area to speed up this assault. Hopefully this city should fall between T+12-15 depending how heavily it is defended. Our armies then march in 2 groups along wither side of her island, using galleons whereever possible to speed the advance.

That said, my preference of targets is in order of:
a) Finish capturing Willem's 3 main Cities
b) Capture Ragnar's Ivory City (to block Cathy from potentially getting War Elephants)
c) As soon as we have sufficient forces to damage Cathy significantly within the first turns of war, hit Cathy--but if we are not ready to do more than capture a single City or two, delay by doing any of the other things until we are prepared for a multi-City (preferably 3+) attack on Cathy
d) Finish off Willem's Gem City (possibly razing, possibly keeping)
e) Finish off Willem's Ivory City (probably razing)
f) Attack any of Ragnar's other Cities

Completely disagree, Ragnar should be last.
 
I agree with mdy about skipping Ragnar. He's dumb as rocks and far away from longbows. We need to go stop Cathy now before she builds a castle in Moscow. With the GLH in hand, we will be free to whip more from the culture slider.

I think Joao may actually be teching faster than Vicky as he built the GL and also got the music GA. We are probably going to be facing longbows against both of them unless we strike quickly :(

I was taking CR promos to increase the odds on our initial strike. Now that we have a few CR2 maces and trebs, we should take some combat promos on our units.

FYI, Willem only has 3 cities left.

I can play on a few more turns tonight but we need to decide what to do whipping-wise with our core and whether we want to start using the culture slider.

We should also take a medic 3 mace with our GG as that is rapidly becoming the limiting factor. Heck we can take a free warrior -> mace upgrade.

I'm ambivalent about the Ragnar situation. His boats are more or less in limbo but tying up our two triremes in the process. So I'd prefer to make an assault on his galleys and then take a cease fire with him. I doubt we'll attack him within 10 turns but better to keep the option open (at the cost of 40/1 gold).
 
Taking the northern route around Willem's penninsula is about a 4 turn sail from Amsterdam to the doorstep of Moscow. I think it's worth sailing that way with our boats and sending our newly whipped units by land towards St. Petersburg. We can easily move our boats in place to get an armada of 4 or 5 galleons (our choice) to set sail. Thoughts?
 
:goodjob: shyuhe.

I'd prefer no peace treaties, but CF, like Dhoom said. I would take CF - no sense in keeping him in unit spam mode, if we don't need to.

Attacking Cathy asap sounds right. We should just take the two remaining Willem cities on that island, and leave him with the fifth, then get to Moscow as soon as possible.

I don't have much experience with a game this whip heavy at such a late stage, so I can't comment on city management without spending some time on the math.

GG: medic is fine, though it seems that we may be splitting our troops quite a bit here, rather than running a serious stack. It can still hang with some biggish stack, I suppose. Should that go on the eastern front?
 
The whip math is as follows:

In a city with no forge, a whip = 56 hammers.
In a city with a forge, a whip= 67 hammers.

A mace is 105 hammers, a treb 120, and a galleon 120.

I have no idea what the whip math is under bureaucracy.

I'd like to conquer Willem's last city within 5-6 turns so that we don't lose any population to motherland unhappiness. A treb + 2 maces should be able to conquer it as last I checked, it had a single axe in it (and he may whip an archer).

How about we send 4 galleons of troops towards Moscow (all but one of our trebs and fill the rest with maces), one galleon to mop up Willem (treb + 2 maces), and then start building three more boats (total 4), 4 trebs, and 8 maces for Vicky?

The boat that takes out Willem can stay around that area to help shuttle troops from Willem's former cities towards St. Pete's when we open that front.

I think we should keep the core of Willem but raze the ivory city. If Willem whips the gem city down to size 6, then we might as well raze it since it'll be size 5 when we capture it and not have much food.
 
How about we send 4 galleons of troops towards Moscow (all but one of our trebs and fill the rest with maces), one galleon to mop up Willem (treb + 2 maces), and then start building three more boats (total 4), 4 trebs, and 8 maces for Vicky?

The boat that takes out Willem can stay around that area to help shuttle troops from Willem's former cities towards St. Pete's when we open that front.

We would need 2 galleons for an amphibious assault on St Pete. Moscow probably only needs 2 galleons as it can transport the units in 2 waves, how about we re-direct one fo the 4 Moscow galleons to St Pete.

Given that we will probably lose a couple of units taking Rotterdam/The Hague we probably can't attack his final city immediately without delaying the assault on Moscow. As she can research CS for macemen after engineering, I think we need to make this attack ASAP. With the slider we should not lose any pop in Amsterdam due to motherland unhappiness. If we are not going for ivory his final city can be cleaned up with Ragnar.

I think we should keep the core of Willem but raze the ivory city. If Willem whips the gem city down to size 6, then we might as well raze it since it'll be size 5 when we capture it and not have much food.

I'd still keep it, with gems it should turn a profit for us, and we could still whip out a couple of units there.

I'd prefer no peace treaties, but CF, like Dhoom said. I would take CF - no sense in keeping him in unit spam mode, if we don't need to.

I agree.

4 trebs, and 8 maces for Vicky?

That should be enough to wipe her out as long as she does not get feudalism before/in the war.
 
I'm a little hesitant to send only two galleons to Moscow because we don't have the troops to fill 2 boats (6 units) for St. Pete right now. Amsterdam comes out of revolt in 5 turns, so it can whip on T+6, T+8, and T+10 for 3 units. Utrecht comes out of revolt in 9 turns so it can whip on T+10, T+12, and T+14. So we won't have 6 units to assault St. Pete's until T+14. On the other hand, our troops can finish off Willem's core in 3 turns and then sail around to Moscow (6 turns I think from Utrecht, probably less if the troops board ships from north of Amsterdam). So we can start assaulting Moscow around T+10.
 
Got it. I'm looking at the save and reviewing everyone's comments now. I'll put a PPP together shortly.

Aw shucks. I was hoping to exterminate Willem!

The two boats near Utrecht have movement points left, as do some of the units south of Utrecht. For the ones on land, they can march towards Utrecht at the same speed as getting on a boat and getting off next to Utrecht, but they avoid the danger of Willem counterattacks by hopping on a boat (not that he's even tried to attack once!).

I was sending the Vicky warrior south to make sure we don't miss any Joao boats heading in our direction. That's about the only thing that can really torpedo our game right now. That and going broke :lol:
 
I propose that I play a mini two turn turnset, which should find us just about done with William.

Things that still need to be agreed (note: I created this list after writing my PPP below):

  1. Force to send toward Moscow and when. Many votes for ASAP. I’m on the fence.
  2. Take William's last city or leave it be?
  3. Force required to attack St. Pete’s on the same turn we attack Moscow?
  4. When to direct production toward the eastern front (i.e. Vicky/Joao)?
  5. Leave Ragnar for last (after sinking his fleet) or attack him sooner?
I think most of you have expressed your opinions on these items, so I’ll re-read the thread in a minute.

Proposed whip cycles per city:

Paris: 6 -> 4, always working 2 clams, corn and 1 Grass Hill
Gold: 6 -> 4, always working fish, 2 clams and gold
Marble: 4 -> 2, always working 2 clams
Stone: 4 -> 2, always working fish and stone
Pig: 4 -> 2, always working fish and pig
Iron: 5 -> 3, always working 2 clam and iron​
William Campaign
T0: Move wounded stack inside Utrecht to heal.
Move galleon 1 and drop off 2 maces + treb on The Hague’s pig resource.
T+1: Attack Rotterdam (C1 axe + 2 archers) -> no bombarding -> CRI Treb 5 has 81.5% vs. C1 axe -> CR1 Treb 6 should have > 65% vs. wounded archer -> 4 maces all have > 85% odds vs. wounded units. Give final mace C1 promotion with the plan of giving him a medic promotion next.
Start bombarding The Hague. Load units from Utrecht into galleon to be dropped off at The Hague on T+2. Composition of units will depend on what is in The Hague.

Leave last city alone for now.​
Ragnar Campaign
Leave Ragnar for last. He is weak and very close to our capital, so he can be taken out near the end of the game. Sink his two galleys once they are within range with our two triremes with galleon backup should we lose a battle. Sign cease fire with Ragnar.​
Cathy Campaign
Depending on how many workers we get from William, I would like to build a fort canal which would allow us to sail on Moscow as opposed to sailing around the continent. If we said around the continent as suggested, it will take many turns and put too many of our galleons way out of position. If it takes many turns to get the canal done, I suggest that we go down on Isabella next. Yes, she’s weak, but we can hit her before she gets Feudalism. We can whip her cities to build an even larger force against Cathy once we’re ready. Maybe someone else has a better idea, but I just don’t like sailing the long way around the continent if it can be avoided. I’m not opposed to leaving Cathy until the end. She is in the middle of the map and we could hit her from all sides with a huge army of veteran units…

In any event, I agree with Dhoomstriker that we should target Moscow and St. Petersburg at a minimum on our initial attack.​

Victoria/Joao
Switching gears and going east from our core toward Victoria/Joao will take many turns to build up for since we’ll need a separate galley chain going east. Is it worth it to do this? If so, we should send our the units we’re building right now west and then start building up a fresh army of galleons, maces and trebs to head east. I guess if we do this, then a large portion of our existing galley chain can go away since we won’t be sending any more units from our core cities to the western front. If that’s the case, maybe we can spare 2 to 4 galleys to start the long haul toward Moscow…​
 
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