Mitchum said:
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 idea is a neat one. If nothing else, we can build Forts so that our Galleons can sail back quicker, after having initially sailed around the northern route.
However, are we even certain that the northern route is not blocked off?
Even if it is not blocked off, could we save some turns of not sailing around with empty Galleon by using this Fort idea?
There is 1 Worker by Rotterdam. We could feasibly cancel our Forest Chopping with our 2 Workers and load them up in the nearby Galleon. We could then form a Galleon chain with our Galleons that do not need to sail around the northern Coast, in order to get those Workers to the front lines immediately.
Forts CAN be built in neutral territory.
Forts take 15 turns to build. We could either:
Build a Fort on Willem's Pig, then later build 2 other Forts on the nearby Cottages (later forming a 2-Fort-wide passage plus Pasturing that Pig later, but for now just putting a Fort on the Pig to get it done faster)
OR
Spend twice as many Worker turns up-front (but less overall since we wouldn't later need to rebuild the Pasture) by building 2 Forts initially.
In the interests of speed, I'd probably say:
a) Bring both of our Workers there by cancelling their Forest Chopping and bring them to the action using a Galleon Chain
b) Aim to build a single Fort on the Pig if we only have our 2 Workers + 1 Worker from Rotterdam
c) Instead aim to build 2 Forts if we can capture at least 2 Workers from The Hague
We definitely lose turns that WE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO GAIN BACK by sailing our Galleons around the northern Coast. If we don't do so, then we can:
a) Bring our Workers into the action using a Galleon chain
b) Bring more land-based troops from the mainland using a Galleon chain
c) Have the flexibility to actually send 4 Galleons towards Moscow
d) Do it all in roughly the same amount of time that it would take to sail around the northern Coast
e) Speed up our victory slightly by getting Ragnar's Ivory City (+1 Happiness = more whipping sooner) with the time that we aren't spending sailing empty Galleons around a wide continent
f) Have a reasonable chance to finish-off Willem's last City at the same time
So yes, with a bit of planning (i.e. stopping our 2 Workers' Forest Chopping actions and Galleon-chaining them to Willem's area), this plan sounds far preferable to sailing Galleons around the northern Coast for a number of wasted turns.
Ideally, we could form a Galleon chain that would allow Workers to unload inside of a City, saving them a turn of movement as compared to manually losing a turn to unloading from a Galleon.
Let's see how it would work.
1. T + 0: our 2 Workers would stop their Forest Chopping.
2. T + 1: Galleon 6 would move SW + S + S to pick up the eastern Worker and then head west to pick up the western Worker. Other Galleons would get in position for a Galleon chain that would start on the following turn. In particular, we'd have:
a) The eastern "Galleon 1" (aka Galleon 0) can move 2 squares west
b) Galleon 4 can move 2 squares SW (i.e. SW + SW)
c) Galleon 3 can move SW + W
In these positions, on T + 2, our Workers can arrive inside of Utrecht with Galleon 3 having 0 movement points. The Workers would unload inside of the City. The Workers would have 0 movement points themselves, so even if we forgot to unload them on this turn, we'd still be able to unload them on the following turn with no change.
Thus, on T + 3, our 2 Workers will be able to move. If we own The Hague by that time, the 2 Workers can immediately begin to build a Fort--probably on the GPig, but ideally on a Grassland Cottage 1S of the GPig if we are able to capture a few Workers in The Hague.
By then, we should hopefully own the Worker from Rotterdam, too, giving us a minimum of 3 Workers (which would take 5 turns to complete a single Fort).
EDIT: Of course, this Galleon chaining means delaying when we pick up our Great General, but I think that we'd still be able to send the 7th Galleon back to the west to pick the Great General up from wherever it spawns, but only after we'd shuttled our Workers to the west. This Fort idea seems worth it to delay getting the Great General, and we don't even know where the Great General will spawn (hopefully in Utrecht, if we could only be so lucky).
