That galleon chain is going to cost us a turn to invade Cathy with 3 boats.
There are two options right now:
1. Heal our units except for a couple of minor cuts and scrapes like 1 Treb that will be short by 0.1 Health off of full Health* (which means that it could just be one of the bombarding Trebs when capturing the first City) and get all of our Galleons in place to be able to attack on T + 3
OR
2. Attack on T + 2 with several wounded units and with only 2 Galleons attacking each of Cathy's Cities--both in the north and the south
Medics will not make a sufficient difference in terms of option 2--we'd still be attacking with wounded units and with only 6 wounded units landing at each location.
Option 1 gives our units a chance to heal, gets to use the Great General for free, and allows us to attack with 3 Galleons in both of the north and the south.
Option 2, while it happens 1 turn sooner, goes in with less units to Bombard and with several wounded units. This smaller and wounded stack means that we will either take heavier losses or, more likely, will just spend an extra turn before we capture each of Cathy's initial 2 Cities. So, in the end, we'll capture her Cities on the same turn but will risk taking more casaulties due to having less Bombarded City Defences, due to having wounded units attacking, and due to attacking with City Raider II units instead of City Raider III units.
* It is easy enough to tell because there is one Treb that takes 3 turns to heal and another one that takes 2 turns to heal, while there is a 0.1 difference in Health between the two of these Trebs.
So, yes, on the surface, it appears to be frustrating that we can't just go ahead and attack on T + 2, but our troops will face considerably better odds by attacking on T + 3 and can probably take down the first two Cities on the first turn of having movement points as a result, meaning that Moscow and St. Petersburg will be captured on the same turn in either scenario, but scenario 1 also gives Cathy 1 less turn of being at war to build Walls/Castles/units in these Cities and in other Cities.
We have seen the effects of her being at Peace--having far less units than she would have while at war, so every turn of peace counts, especially if we won't capture her Cities any sooner by declaring war 1 turn sooner.
The mace in Hague needs to be upgraded to medic 1. Otherwise we're wasting a good opportunity to heal more. Same goes for mace 9 in Utrecht -- it should get a combat--medic upgrade.
Maceman 9 (Paris) in the south (inside of Utrecht) I agree with upgrading to Combat I + Medic immediately.
Without upgrading Macemen 10 (Marble) in the north (inside of The Hague) to a Medic, Trebuchets 2 (Gold) and 6 (Stone) will be at 3.9/4 Health using Option 1, above.
With upgrading Maceman 10 (Marble) to a Medic, it means taking longer for Maceman 10 to self-heal after its next battle, meaning getting to Medic III slower if we follow my above approach for the Great General.
A third alternative, which I like slightly better than the above two options, is to, on T + 0 (i.e. before ending the turn), cancel Maceman 6 (Marble)'s movement points. Right now, it is E + E of The Hague but is set to move into The Hague on T + 1. In this way, Maceman 6 (Marble) would actually replace Maceman 10 (Marble)'s upgrading in the stack of units that get upgraded by the Great General.
So, in terms of the Great General plan, we'd instead send Maceman 6 (Marble) to the south on T + 1. We won't be able to do so if Maceman 6 (Marble) completes its auto-moving, so as long as we remember to cancel his auto-movement before ending the current turn, then we'll be fine. After cancelling Maceman 6 (Marble)'s planned auto-movement, we can do as shyuhe suggested and upgrade Maceman 10 (Marble) to a Medic I.
So, we'll have two Medic units--Maceman 9 (Paris) in Utrecht and Maceman 10 (Marble) in The Hague--and will have one additional unit that will have the chance to become a future Medic III unit but will not actually take any Medic promotions yet--Maceman 6 (Marble)--he doesn't even need to take Combat I yet, even.
Let's build a mace in Amsterdam and whip it and send it to the gold hill to fogbust the north. This frees up the CR2 mace for Cathy.
I'm not very worried about Barb Units spawning next to a City that has a Military Police unit defender.
However, I don't see how emptying Amsterdam of a planned-Military-Police unit will avoid the City shrinking--the Unhappiness level on the F1 screen is really high right now and probably the only (economical) option for getting this Unhappiness down sufficiently to avoid City shrinkage while staying at war with Willem is to have a Military Police unit and a modest rise in the Cultural Slider.
The City Raider II unit that you are talking about is Maceman 7 (Gold). It can stay where it has ended its turn for T + 0, but will need to act as a Military Police unit in Amsterdam on T + 1.
I don't mind replacing a City Raider II meant-to-be Military Police unit with a new Military Police unit (be it a Treb or a Maceman) that gets created, but we'll still need a Military Police unit next turn. The only other units within range ALSO have 2 promotions or at least 4 Experience points.
The only low-Experience unit that we have is Maceman 8 (Pig Mmm Fish), but since it only have 0.3/1 movement points remaining and is in Utrecht, it can't replace Maceman 7 (Gold) as the Military Police unit for Amsterdam on T + 1. On T + 2, therefore, Maceman 7 (Gold) would not be in position to board any of our Galleons. Therefore, Maceman 7 (Gold) will just have to wait for a future round of Galleons, while Maceman 8 (Pig Mmm Fish)--who can probably just be a City garrison unit for St. Petersburg, what with it having 2 Experience Points for Combat I--and thus Maceman 8 (Pig Mmm Fish) should plan to board the initial southern Galleon fleet. I see no reason not to completely empty Utrecht of land-based units, since doing so means brining more units to bear on Cathy.
So, yes, certainly, we could plan to send Maceman 7 (Gold), the eastern City Raider II unit to the front lines, but he won't be going in the initial attack. In fact, he probably won't be going shortly after the initial attack, either, as we're shortly going to need 3 Military Police units (one for Rotterdam and one for Utrecht) and he will probably end up being the one for Utrecht (which puts him closer to the front lines but not yet being part of the fighting). I don't see us being able to create 3 Military Police units out of Amsterdam in time, so for a little while, Maceman 7 (Gold) will be needed on "homeland security" duty, at least until we have created 3 new Military Police units.
Even those Military Police units will be temporary and will themselves aim to eventually leave, with Archers replacing them.
On that note, we might even plan to build a Galleon or two out of Utrecht, after building the initial Trebuchet there (as per my above suggestion to swap Utrecht's and Rotterdam's Macemen and Trebuchet build items--unless we have a good reason for the Maceman in Utrecht--I suppose that if Willem counter-attacks us, a Maceman is better than a Treb, so yeah, we could stick with the current unit build queues in these two Cities afterall), so that we'd be able to have a mini-Galleon chain to bring new forces to whichever AI gets attacked next using our western troops (I am assuming that it will either be Isabella or else Willem + Ragnar's Ivory City followed by Isabella).
Also, I think it's pretty clear that we need a medic 3 more than CR3 maces right now -- we're losing unnecessary turns healing.
I have not counted turns, but of our northern Galleons, one is lagging behind the other two, so given the timing of the arrival of the 3rd Galleon, we aren't losing any turns healing here at all.
I'm not saying that we don't need a Medic III, but I am saying that in this case, one would not have helped us--having two might have helped us, but not one.
Unfortunately, Great General #2 is a long way off--we probably won't get him in time to be of much use before the game ends unless we have a Galleon chain that happens to be set up from a City near to where he gets spawned.
edit: don't forget to whip pig-fish this turn. The
isn't an issue since it will just mean that the city is unhappy at size 4 in the next cycle.
Pig Mmm Fish will grow in 2 turns. I thought that we were aiming to whip when Cities were 1 turn away from growth, in order to maximize the value out of each of our Cities.
I don't really see us being at a point where we are whipping the very last unit for our eastern front, so I'm not sure what we benefit by whipping a turn prematurely.
I'd also like to see Gold City going back to a 6 -> 4 whip--it is painful to be at Size 2 and only working 2 of our Seafood Resources there. We should soon get the Gem and Dye Resources online, and in the intervening 6 to 7 turns can use the Cultural Slider to help carry us through.