SGOTM 13 - One Short Straw

Stone is better without whipping. It only has one food source so it takes forever to grow back, and it has a forge + decent base hammers. You will have to occasionally juggle mace builds with treb/galleon builds to make sure that overflow doesn't make the next whip a 1 pop whip. Paris will have to dump overflow into a mace every 2-3 whips.

We should put all of the trebs next to Utrecht onto the boats and dump them on T+1 next to Hague. Hague has at least 40% culture so the extra injured trebs can bombard and the full health trebs attack on T+2. I'd consider taking a third mace towards the Hague, to make sure we capture it on T+2. The sooner we capture it, the sooner it comes out of revolt.

For Rotterdam, I'd bombard with the wounded treb and attack with the other treb followed by maces. The maces are cheaper and we need to save those trebs for Moscow. I think we can capture the last Dutch city while we gather the other troops in Amsterdam (or Utrecht/Hague) to heal.

We can galleon chain the two workers near marble and add that to the Dutch worker near his gem city to build a fort (6 turns) on the pigs. It's not "faster" per se but it gives us a lot more flexibility on troop movements and definitely frees up our boats to go eliminate Willem before we proceed towards Moscow. It will also allow the Dutch cities to come on-line to start cranking out troops. The downside is that it slows our invasion down to at best, T+9 (I think), unless Willem has a bunch of workers in the Hague.

The goal of the two front war is that each set has its own base of boats, and we just need to whip units for each set. The four cities we take from Willem will provide plenty of reinforcements to eliminate Cathy, and we should probably take a city or two from Cathy to provide reinforcements to attack Izzy. Vicky is weak and only has 4 cities so should fall quickly - she's just a logistical nightmare to reach. As I mentioned, I'd like to start the western front with 4 galleons (5 trebs and 7 maces, or 4/8). We have one extra galleon from the west that we can send over so we need to build 3 boats and 12 units, for 15 total units spread across 6 cities. So we can build the necessary troops in 3 whip cycles. I want to do a more aggressive 4--2 whip cycle as we can use the culture slider now and we can build (whip) theaters in any cities that have too much :mad:

edit: The BIG advantage of hitting Cathy first for at least Moscow is that it gives us the GLH, which means more commerce and more slider happiness.

Two questions: (1) does anybody know if the GLH applies while a city is in revolt? And (2) do horse archers do flanking damage on trebs?
 
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.

That will take 16 worker turns-too long, I don't think having galleons in that position would be a problem as they could be used to transport our units further west after there assault on Moscow.

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…

I think delaying the assault on Cathy is a really really bad idea. There are 2 main reasons for this:

1) Shes the tech leader. She will have engineering in a few turns which means she is the only AI which will have the possibility of building castles-the sooner we take her on, the fewer castles we will have to face. She can also research CS next which would give her access to macemen, which would make attacking her significantly more costly.

2) The GL and Temple of Artemis. Capturing these will allow us to significantly boost the culture slider, allowing us to whip more units. This is absolutley critical as the limitation on our production is likely to be whip unhappiness. The sooner we get the GL, the more units we can whip earlier.

These 2 arguments are sufficiently powerfull that I would attack Moscow ASAP even if we can't hit St Pete for a few more turns.
 
Two questions: (1) does anybody know if the GLH applies while a city is in revolt? And (2) do horse archers do flanking damage on trebs?

1) Yes

2) Yes, but Cathy doesn't have any horses.

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?


I think so, focusing all our units on the same front is just too slow.
 
Another argument for grabbing the GLH ASAP:

We are about +12 gpt at 0% right now (last I checked), and it will only get worse with more units. We have 6 cities not in revolt, and a GLH trade route is worth 2 coins minimum, if not 3 (foreign). So each city with the GLH will bring in 4 extra coins or 24 gpt. I think that's a pretty compelling reason, since 24 gpt is worth 40% culture slider.
 
How many Galleys is Ragnar known to have? I see a stack of 2 of them... does he have a 3rd one sailing around (that we know about) or did we sink this 3rd one?


Also, do we know what kinds of units Ragnar has in his Ivory City? Can we use an empty Galleon to at least sail close enough to the City to see what units we would face there? If it's a stack of 7 units, then I will shut up about attacking Ragnar's Cities for now.


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.
The 30% retreat was not the main objective. It was getting 5 Maces with a 3rd promo. We don't even have to take the 30% retreat but could take 5 City Raider III Promos. I was just portraying that 30% retreat promo as an option.

Basically, we can get the really-strong City Raider III promo on 5 units or we can take 1 better-than-normal Medic plus 1 City Raider III unit.

Well, the problem with Galleon warfare is that you can put your units on Galleons and end the Galleons' turns in Neutral territory, which is already quite superior in healing compared to healing in enemy territory. You can even move the Galleons into a Friendly City, which will do as much good as a Medic III unit in Enemy territory... and yet you can do so without any Medic promotions at all... and you can do so for ALL of your units in different areas of the world at once! Having even one Medic I promo in the odd stack makes things even better.

If we're going up against Longbowmen, particularly if we have time between AIs to gather our forces, our units will likely be healed anyway. I'd rather have 5 City Raider III units than have a few units be able to heal slightly faster.
 
Stone is better without whipping. It only has one food source so it takes forever to grow back, and it has a forge + decent base hammers.

I can't see how whipping isn't better than working working a desert hill and grass hill. When working the stone and fish, we're at +5 food. It shouldn't take more than 10 turns to grow from 2 to 4 pops for another whip cycle. If we whip at the right time, we'll grow to 3 right away, such that we'll almost always be working the grass hill too, which gives us 8 base hammers or 12 hammers with the forge + police state bonus.

We should put all of the trebs next to Utrecht onto the boats and dump them on T+1 next to Hague. Hague has at least 40% culture so the extra injured trebs can bombard and the full health trebs attack on T+2. I'd consider taking a third mace towards the Hague, to make sure we capture it on T+2. The sooner we capture it, the sooner it comes out of revolt.

OK, so this ties up 2 of our galleons for the next two turns: the one with the units on it now and the one that will get the three trebs loaded onto it this turn. I'll have to figure out how to use the remaining galleons to start sailing units toward Moscow.

For Rotterdam, I'd bombard with the wounded treb and attack with the other treb followed by maces. The maces are cheaper and we need to save those trebs for Moscow.

Neither treb near Rotterdam is wounded. Do you really thinks it's worth it to barbard with just one treb? I'd be more inclined to attack with both... but I'm open to what the team feels is the best approach.

I think we can capture the last Dutch city while we gather the other troops in Amsterdam (or Utrecht/Hague) to heal.

This is an option. On what turn was there only an axe there? Was it recently or a while ago? We can decide on this after the next two turns, which should be almost enough to take Willem's other two cities.

We can galleon chain the two workers near marble and add that to the Dutch worker near his gem city to build a fort (6 turns) on the pigs. It's not "faster" per se but it gives us a lot more flexibility on troop movements and definitely frees up our boats to go eliminate Willem before we proceed towards Moscow. It will also allow the Dutch cities to come on-line to start cranking out troops. The downside is that it slows our invasion down to at best, T+9 (I think), unless Willem has a bunch of workers in the Hague.

At least mdy would prefer to sail around the continent. If others on the team like this idea, we can explore it further.

Vicky is weak and only has 4 cities so should fall quickly - she's just a logistical nightmare to reach. As I mentioned, I'd like to start the western front with 4 galleons (5 trebs and 7 maces, or 4/8). We have one extra galleon from the west that we can send over so we need to build 3 boats and 12 units, for 15 total units spread across 6 cities. So we can build the necessary troops in 3 whip cycles.

We are currently building 6 trebs. I can change the one in Stone to either a galleon or mace, which would give us 5 trebs. I'll then build up the 7 maces and 3 galleons. We can fine tune the numbers once we get futher along.

I want to do a more aggressive 4--2 whip cycle as we can use the culture slider now and we can build (whip) theaters in any cities that have too much :mad:

I prefer to work the high-yield tiles (i.e. food, gold, iron, stone) and then whip such that these tiles are always worked. Dhoom also likes this approach. What do others think?

edit: The BIG advantage of hitting Cathy first for at least Moscow is that it gives us the GLH, which means more commerce and more slider happiness.

Let me start planning this out. Standby for my Cathy assault plan.
 
I took out 3 Ragnar galleys total during my set, including one from the stack of 3. The two you see are the remnants of that stack--I didn't attack because I didn't like the odds and I wanted to heal the galleon instead.
 
OK, here is the proposed plan with the galleons:

Galleon 6 (has treb on board) and Galleon 1 (Paris): Use on Eastern front

Galleon 4, Gallon 3 and Galleon 2: Set sail toward Moscow. They can pick up troops just north of The Hague on the turn before we declare on Cathy and attack Moscow.

Galleon 1 (Pig) and Galleon 5: Use for The Hague -> Nijmegen (Willem's last city) -> St. Petersburg.
 
Another argument for grabbing the GLH ASAP:

We are about +12 gpt at 0% right now (last I checked), and it will only get worse with more units. We have 6 cities not in revolt, and a GLH trade route is worth 2 coins minimum, if not 3 (foreign). So each city with the GLH will bring in 4 extra coins or 24 gpt. I think that's a pretty compelling reason, since 24 gpt is worth 40% culture slider.
Okay, but here's the REAL issue:
It's not about NOT grabbing The Great Lighthouse. It's about ensuring that when we hit Cathy, we do so in force.

Production is by far our bottleneck. Even if we get a bit more Commerce from The Great Lighthouse for a higher Commerce slider, we still:
a) Need to allow our Cities to regrow
b) Probably can afford 1 more free round of whipping

But, the fact is that we can get b) regardless of whether we capture The Great Lighthouse on T + 0 or T + 15. We'll still get the same benefit.

One difference is the Commerce gained over the intervening period of time. The other difference is the amount of Hammers that Cathy will expend into the war effort, which includes Walls, Castles and Military Units. A lot of that production will come from her existing population via whips.

Let's look at it this way:
Every Longbowman that she builds will likely cost us 1 more Maceman or 1 more Treb, and at a minimum, it will cost us 1 more Military Unit for every 2 Longbowmen that she builds. That's not a trivial cost. It's actually a pretty high cost, considering that after our free round of whipping, we won't be able to get any additional production out of ownership of The Great Lighthouse.

So, what does The Great Lighthouse give us? At maximum, we get 2 more Foreign Intercontinental Trade Routes in every City that is not in revolt.

For now, that's 6 Cities x 2 Trade Routes x 3 Commerce = 36 Commerce per turn. We have 0 Gold multipliers and we aren't spending our Commerce on Science, so that's a maximum of 36 Gold at a 0% Cultural Slider.

Actually, let's just count them now and be accurate with the math: 19 Foreign Trade Routes from Vicky, Isabella, and Joao. Let's be really generous and give them each 1 more City, so, 22 Foreign Trade Routes.

Well, our Core 6 Cities would require 24 of them, so really, 2 of our Core Cities' Trade Routes are just going to be Domestic Intercontinental Trade Routes, bringing us down to 34 Commerce.

After Willem's 4 Core Cities come out of revolt, that's an extra 4 Cities x 2 Trade Routes x 2 Commerce = 16 Commerce.

Now, that gives us a total of 34 + 16 = 50 Commerce per turn. However, we have 0 Gold multipliers. We don't care about spending Commerce on Science, so we're stuck with 0 multipliers. In fact, here is the kicker:
The Cultural Slider DOES NOT CARE how much Commerce we pull in. The Cultural Slider actually wastes a portion of our profit.

Anyway, let's assume a 20% Cultural Slider, giving us 50 * 0.2 = 10 -> 50 - 10 = 40 Gold per turn.


Each round of Cathy whipping units, whipping Walls, whipping Castles, and investing Hammers into build items will give us a profit of only 40 Gold to try and counter-act her production with. You please tell me how we're going to translate 40 Gold per turn into a pile of production that will take on her army.

I just don't see it.


And, it's not like we're ignoring Cathy. We'd just be missing out on, say, 8 turns' worth (a total guess here on the number of turns) of that 40 Gold.
8 * 40 = 320 Gold.

In exchange, Cathy would not be spending 8 turns building units, Walls, Castles, and would definitely not be running Slavery.

Every population point that she whips COSTS US DOUBLE in terms of production: It means having to build more of our own units AND it means that we can't use those population points to whip our own units.


Wouldn't you pay a cost of 320 Gold in order to make the war go considerably smoother, so that we'd have a ton less units to face, as well as a ton less Walls and Castles?


I don't see how keeping Peaceful relations will encourage her to build Castles. It's her capital--that's her Wonder Centre. She's even proven it by building The Temple of Artemis. We're still giving her Marble, giving her a good shot at The Parthenon. We don't care about capturing her Wonders, just that her Hammers are tied up in projects that won't help her in a war. However, it is clear that with her SEVEN Cities, given a war status and time for her to whip, whip, whip, she'll definitely throw up many Walls and Castles.


How much experience do you guys have playing BtS games? Unlike Vanilla and Warlords, the non-warmongering AIs run a low Military Unit count but will spam Military Units like no tomorrow once a war starts. Soon after declaring, we will see her Cities filling-up with units that are hiding behind strong defenses.

Strike hard at multiple targets when we declare war. Doing so is going to be one of the biggest and most important decisions of this game. Let's not flub it by putting our focus on the "big shinies" aka the Wonders instead of on the military strategy that will allow us to have a more effective and far less costlier war.
 
We aren't trading marble to Cathy any more - I stopped that deal during my set since we didn't need the health. Two of her cities are new and can't have more than 1, MAYBE 2 defenders. 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.

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).

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.

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?

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."
 
I don't think we want to do any civic changes right now, but I haven't done the math.

If we agree on the next two turns, I can play them out. I don't think Dhoom is against sending three galleons around to Moscow; he just wants us to hit multple cities on the same turn. I agree and that can be finalized in several turns once our Moscow fleet is almost in place.

So, can people give feedback on the next two turns, at least? Or do we need to get agreement on these longer-term items before I play? Personally, I'd like to cross Willem of the list so that we can concentrate on Cathy and the Eastern front buildup.
 
OK, here is the proposed plan with the galleons:

Galleon 6 (has treb on board) and Galleon 1 (Paris): Use on Eastern front

Galleon 4, Gallon 3 and Galleon 2: Set sail toward Moscow. They can pick up troops just north of The Hague on the turn before we declare on Cathy and attack Moscow.

Galleon 1 (Pig) and Galleon 5: Use for The Hague -> Nijmegen (Willem's last city) -> St. Petersburg.

I think Moscow should take 4 boats worth of troops, to make sure we can capture it quickly. So I'd send galleon 6 west.
 
Mitchum said:
Stone: 4 -> 2, always working fish and stone
The big question here becomes whether or not to work the DesH Mine instead of a Coast.

Spoiler The Math :
With the Forge + Police State, we get a +50% bonus on Hammers.

Without the DesH Mine, we make 8 base Hammers, so we only get 1 bonus Hammer from working the DesH Mine, as opposed to the 2 bonus Hammers that we get from working the GH Mine.

Still, that DesH Mine is essentially worth 4 Hammers per turn.

Okay, so our Foodbox at Size 4 fills up at 42 Food.

When we whip at Size 4, we should have Size 3's half-filled Foodbox, right? So, that should be 39 / 2 = 19.5 rounded to 19 Food.

At Size 2, we'll need 36 Food to grow. At Size 3, we'll have 36 / 2 = 18 Food from Size 2's Foodbox and will need 39 Food to grow.

SOOOO...
Let's say that we were to whip in 3 turns from now. We have 35 Food, which would put us at 41 Food. For these 3 turns, we'll just work the DesH Mine, so that we can take them out of the comparison and can just compare a full cycle.

So, we've whipped and we have 41/36 Food. That's 1 turn without the GH Mine and 1 turn without the DesH Mine.
The next turn, we will have 5 more Food and will have kept 18 in the Granary, giving us (41 + 5) - 36 + 18 = 46 - 36 + 18 = 10 + 18 = 28 / 39 Food. This turn, we will lose out on working the DesH Mine.
28 + 4 = 32 / 39 and 1 more turn not working the DesH Mine.
32 + 4 = 36 / 39 and 1 more turn not working the DesH Mine.
36 + 4 = 40 / 39 and 1 more turn not working the DesH Mine.
Now we're back up to Size 4 and we can choose to work a Coast or the DesH Mine.

But, before we look at those numbers, let's see what we have lost and gained so far:
We gained 45 * 1.5 = 67 Hammers (rounded down from 67.5)
We lost: 1 Food + 6 base Hammers for 1 turn and lost 4 turns of 3 base Hammers.
So, that's a loss of 1 Food and 6 * 1.5 = 9 Hammers plus 4 * (3 * 1.5) = 4 * 4 = 16 Hammers -> 1 Food and 25 final Hammers

So, it does seem like whipping helps us in Stone City.

Now, how about the regrowth portion, though?

We can either make 4 final Hammers per turn while working the DesH Mine and grow at a rate of 2 Food per turn, or we can make 0 Hammers per turn and grow at a rate of 4 Food per turn.

Well, where did we leave off?

40 - 39 + 19 = 20 / 42 Food
2 Food per turn would put us at 40 Food after (40 - 20) / 2 = 20 / 2 = 10 turns
4 Food per turn would put us at 40 Food after (40 - 20) / 4 = 20 / 4 = 5 turns

We spent 1 turn at Size 2 and 4 turns at Size 3, meaning that spending an extra 5 turns working a Coast would allow us to assign half of the value of the whip, since (1 + 4 + 5) = 10 and 5 is 50% of 10, to the time that we're working a Coast at Size 4.

So, those 5 turns working a Coast are 5 turns not gaining 4 Hammers per turn. They cost us 20 final Hammers.

The whip is worth 67 final Hammers. 50% of that amount is 33 Hammers. Since 33 > 20, then we will gain by working a Coast instead of a DesH Mine at Size 4 and whipping sooner.


Now, just to be fair, let's go back and ensure that if we only count HALF of the whipped Hammers versus the turns at Sizes 2 and 3 that we still will see a gain.


Being at Sizes 2 and 3, we lost 1 Food and 25 final Hammers. Half of the whip's value is 33 final Hammers. I think that it is fair to say that (1 Food + 25 final Hammers) < 33 final Hammers, so yes, the whipping action is still a gain.



Thus, we have 2 gains here:
1. We gain more Hammers by whipping in Stone City from 4 -> 2 than by not whipping. This fact is independent of the fact that we cannot work another Mine at Size 5, but the case for whipping becomes even stronger simply because we do not have another production square to work at Size 5
2. We can gain more Hammers by working a Coast instead of a DesH Mine at Size 4 and then whipping from 4 -> 2. Of course, we want to work the GH Mine at Size 3, since that square is really strong (it gives us 2 bonus Hammers plus half of the Food of a Coast plus 3 base Hammers--a Coast won't beat it).

So, yes, the math supports 4 -> 2 whipping in Stone as long as we have infinite Happiness, and since Stone City has not been whipping, it essentially does have infinite Happiness.

In fact, the math supports working a Coast instead of a DesH Mine at City Size 4.


The Micromanagement
Ideally, though, you will perform a bit of micro: since we are at 35 / 42 Food, you'll want to get 2 Food for 1 turn (by working the DesH Mine) and 4 Food for another turn by working a Coast, bringing us up to 35 + 2 + 4 = 37 + 4 = 41 / 42 Food, which will be an ideal place to whip (40 Food will also work for future whipping cycles).

So, after 1 turn, you should switch the DesH Mine to the Coast, and after 2 turns, you should whip in Stone City.

Skip that turn of working the DesH Mine. Just work the Coast instead of the DesH Mine square immediately, then whip the City after 1 turn. With Mitchum's point about us getting twice as many Hammers from whipping, it looks like working the DesH Mine is silly IN A CASE WHERE WE HAVE RELATIVELY UNLIMITED HAPPINESS, like we do in Stone City.
 
So, can people give feedback on the next two turns, at least?
Sorry that I'm going slowly working through things, but I am working through them. As you see, I just came up with a suggestion of what to do in Stone City for the next 2 turns, but it took me a long time just on that one single point.
 
I think Moscow should take 4 boats worth of troops, to make sure we can capture it quickly. So I'd send galleon 6 west.
We really need to be clear on the overall strategy. For example, I see 6 Galleons 7 Galleons.

I see 2 of Ragnar's Galleys. I see 2 of our Triremes. If we fight Ragnar's Galleys and one of our Triremes loses, it would be nice to have a Galleon to help out.

A lot of points are inter-related.
 
We're guaranteed to get a Great General from fighting Willem. Do we have a Galleon that can pick it up before the war on Cathy? It could feasibly spawn in any City (unless someone knows the algorithm that the game uses to decide which City to spawn it in--it's probably like Religion-founding--certain factors are involved like City size, but then a random number factor probably gets thrown in, too).
 
T0: Move wounded stack inside Utrecht to heal.
shyuhe said:
We should put all of the trebs next to Utrecht onto the boats and dump them on T+1 next to Hague. Hague has at least 40% culture so the extra injured trebs can bombard and the full health trebs attack on T+2. I'd consider taking a third mace towards the Hague, to make sure we capture it on T+2. The sooner we capture it, the sooner it comes out of revolt.
I think that I'm with shyuhe here. Let's think about it:
One Maceman is already in Utrecht. He can stay there since he HAS NOT MOVED on the current turn and will health to full health in 1 turn.

Every other unit that is 1S of Utrecht will have to move on the current turn. That means that by next turn, they will not have healed.

So, technically, every unit that is 1S of Utrecht right now should move into Utrecht and board a Galleon on this turn. Although it may cost us some Unit Supply Costs, I would then move those 2 Galleons (Galleons 2 and 5) plus the third Galleon with troops in it (Galleon 1) into the Lake to the north of Utrecht. That way, on the off chance that Willem counter-attacks Utrecht, our units will still survive in that Lake... if they end their turn inside of Utrecht, then there is a tiny danger of a counter-attack whiping out our fleet.

So, sure, land the troops from Galleon 1 on this turn, then on the following turn, the 5 units (3 Trebs and 2 Maces) from 1S of Utrecht will be landing to support the 3 troops from Galleon 1. Yes, some of those troops are wounded, and, of course, a wounded Treb should be used to bombard instead of a fully-healthy Treb.

Depending upon how many troops we see in The Hague, you may or may not appreciate having these extra Macemen (even though they are wounded Macemen), since Trebs cannot kill units.

If you want to be REALLY efficient, your plan will be flexible, in that you will first drop off the 3 troops in Galleon 1 in order to see how many defenders there are in The Hague. If there are 3 or more defenders, then take all of the units that are 1S of Utrecht into Galleons 2 and 5. If there are 2 or less defenders, then you probably don't need to take all of those wounded Macemen and could perhaps leave a second Maceman in Utrecht to heal.
 
I can definitely see us sending Galleons 3, 4, and the eastern "Galleon 1" (there are two Galleon 1s--I suggest renaming the eastern one to "Galleon 0" to help avoid confusion, since one of them was an upgraded Galley and the next self-created Galleon will get the name "Galleon 7") around the northern ex-Willem's Coast so that troops can be picked up from The Hague and sent towards Moscow.

Will three Galleons be enough? They should be, if we time the start of the war correctly.


I still see us having an opportunity to take down Ragnar's Ivory City while we wait for those 3 Galleons to sail around the northern Coast.


If we do take a Cease Fire with Ragnar, I'm in support of first trying to sink his Galleys. Sunken land units are units that we won't have to face on land.

I'm still in favour of grabbing Ragnar's Ivory. Everyone seems to think that he is a soft target. Well, great! While our forces are gathering to take on Cathy, scoop up his Ivory City. He will take a Cease Fire AT ANY TIME, so why not take it immediately after we capture his Ivory City? Then we won't even have to leave a unit there to garrison it, assuming that we plan to take a Cease Fire with Willem or else raze Willem's last City. That's very little investment for what should be free kills and an immediate Cease Fire, plus we don't even have to commit a City defender! That Ivory gives us War Elephants and +1 Happiness and takes those things away from Ragnar.

I'd rather have a War Elephant than a Pikeman, as War Elephants are not vulnerable to Axemen and yet they serve a similar purpose in terms of being anti-Horse-Archer and anti-Chariot while having an identical cost (90 Hammers).

I'd also rather have a PURE +1 Happiness instead of a Happiness point coming from the Cultural Slider, since a +1 Happiness Resource does not cost us a margin of our Gold from Commerce.

We don't really have a "spare" Galleon to scout Ragnar's Ivory City for now, so I think that when the time comes, we'll just have to arrive on his shores and be willing to give up on the idea and instead raze Willem's Ivory City, should Ragnar prove to have 7+ defenders in his Ivory City.


The only problem with sending 3 Galleons immediatly towards Moscow is that we won't have support for our Triremes versus Ragnar's Galleys. So: don't lose the Trireme versus Galley fights! ;) Seriously, though, we have greater than 91% odds, so even if we lose 1 battle, the surviving Trireme should be able to clean up the other Galley on the following turn. Just try to keep the Triremes close to each other, so that they can support each other in the fights versus the Galleys.
EDIT: I just saw that we actually have 7 Galleons, so even by sending 3 Galleons towards Moscow, we'd still have another Galleon that could temporarily unload its Trebuchet on an island and support the fight against Ragnar's Galleys.
 
But, before we look at those numbers, let's see what we have lost and gained so far:
We gained 45 * 1.5 = 67 Hammers (rounded down from 67.5)

Since we're whipping 4 -> 2, don't we gain 2X what you've listed here (i.e. 90 * 1.5 = 135)? This only makes the case for whipping even better than what your calculations show...
 
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