SGOTM 13 - One Short Straw

I think we can save the second promos until the trebs land next to Moscow/St. Pete. We can see how stiff the defenses look before deciding on accuracy vs. CR2.

Playing now. I can build a galleon as I haven't advanced the turn yet. We'll need it anyway for our war in the east.

We never really figured out where Ragnar's Galleys might go. Oh well--just keep an eye on them and try and plan things based on where he moves his Galleys so that both of your Triremes will be able to attack his Galleys on the same turn as each other.

Bonus points go out to you if you can time things so that a Galleon (the 8th one maybe? the 7th one?) will be near enough to attack should one of the Triemes lose.

Minor detail that probably doesn't matter: I don't think that the 2 Galleons that you are loading-up should even move on this turn, since, if I recall correctly, they have 0 and 1 movement points respectively, while, again, if I recall correctly, using-up 1 movement point would just risk ending a Galleon's turn dangerously inside of a City.

OK. Both The Hague and Rotterdam fell on T+2 with no losses. We've caputured the worker in Rotterdam and there is another worker north of The Hague that we can catch this turn if we want.

The turn before I took The Hague, there were 2 settlers in the city but no boats. On the turn I took it, the settlers were gone but there was a trireme in the city... I don't know where the settlers went. They could be in the fog of war or on a galley...

Willem settled a city with 2 archers in it 4W of Utrecht. It won't cause us much issue and I suggest that we capture it later. We can't afford to damage any more units before we've attacked Cathy, right?

We got a GG in Paris and I have a galleon in Stone that can shuttle him toward the west this turn.

A barb galley appeared on this turn to the NW of fur city island. Our galleons/triremes should be able to take care of him.

Both of Ragnar's galleys are now sunk!

Catherine and Willem just learned Engineering!!

Victoria adopted Pacifism.

Should we sign cease fires with both Ragnar and Willem? Should I capture the worker first (I have a unit with movement left).

Should we shuttle the GG west now? My guess is yes.

Anything else before I play on? Does anyone want to see the save?

We should stay at war with Willem so that we have the quickest sea route available to Willem. Or will he OB with us after we take a cease fire? I guess we can just re-declare war if necessary... Can you post a screenshot of the area?

If we're not going to build a fort, we should NOT attack the worker since it'll just be unnecessary unit cost.

How is the core whipping going?

Here is the area around Willem. I don't know if he'll sign OB with us, so I'm fine keeping the war going with him.

I think that we should build the forts as backup for later. Plus, there are a ton of forests to chop in Willem's old lands that need chopping. I think we could really use another worker.

I think we should sign a CF with Ragnar. He has just 40 gold and 0 gpt. At peace, he should build fewer units.

I've whipped in every city but Iron (next turn) and Paris (next turn after revolting to Bureaucracy this turn). All whips have been for 2 pops.

-3 gpt at 0%. Looks like we will need that GLH

Mastricht will pop borders in about 7 turns -- he just settled it as those archers don't even have fortification bonuses. If we have any units with >90% odds in vicinity that can reach it in 1 or 2 turns, I'd go kill it now for the extra XP. Otherwise we can let him be.

Sounds like the build-up is going well in the east. I think we need two more whip cycles to build enough units to set sail?

The missing 2 Settlers of Willem's is an interesting issue. I guess that a Cease Fire therefore does not make a lot of sense.

As to whether Willem would Open Borders... we'd need him to be Cautious with us and he might not want to Open them since they were cancelled recently due to the war (there is a minimum amount of time that you have to wait after Borders are Closed before you can reopen them). So, I don't really think that he will Open Borders for a while.

Ragnar only needs to be Annoyed with us and will Open Borders, so he would do so at any time, given that it's a been a while since our Borders with him were Closed.


As for promoting our Trebs or not, we'll want to check how many turns it will take for them to heal. That extremely-wounded first Treb in the stack that is highlighted in the attached screenshot almost might as well take a promotion now (since it is so wounded) and I recommend taking Accuracy. Any other Treb that can heal in time can wait before we need to decide.


Willem has the Creative Trait so his western City will quickly expand its Cultural borders and steal back his Clam Resource. We have 8 turns before Utrecht would use its 9-square radius and 9 turns before it could feasibly use its big fat cross, so there is time to delay in capturing that new City (the one called Maastricht).


Nice news in terms of the Great General... do you think that with any sort of Galleon chaining, it will arrive in time to be able to distribute promotions to units? Note that we'd need a turn where units could stand away from other units... probably on a Road just outside of a City.


As for Willem's Worker, I would capture it. If nothing else, it can continue to do what Willem was doing with it--Chopping Forests (although I suggest that you do not finish a Forest Chop until the nearby City comes out of Revolt--since Willem was already Chopping, be sure to check the Worker's Chopping action display to ensure that we aren't already one turn away from Chopping). I do not know if Chops made when a City is in revolt will "count" or not. I suppose that someone could test it out easily enough.


We can always disband a Worker later after it has done some helpful tasks (such as Chopping Forests and/or possibly building Forts and/or possibly building Roads).



In regards to a Cease Fire with Ragnar:
- He's less likely to build additional Cities while at war, and with only a core of 4 Cities, it's not necessarily a bad thing to have him build units. In fact, if he keeps "pouring off steam" by sending units on Galleys at us, then he really won't be accumulating anything and will just be pouring away Settler Hammers on futile Galleys loaded with troops.
- If we don't yet need additional Foreign Trade Routes, then given that he keeps sending units out on Galleys, there is no incentive to take a Cease Fire with him yet.



Isabella now has 8 Cities, yikes.

Note that Joao, like Ragnar, while in war mode, does not appear to have been doing any expanding. So, there is a reasonable incentive to have AIs waste their Hammers on pre-Longbowmen troops in favour of additional Cities.

All looks good so far. Unless WW is beginning to become a problem I think we should stay at war with William, we can attack and raise Masstricht with units on the way to Russia.

What is our happiness situation? With all the whipping we have done I would have thought it would be pretty dire when the slider is at 0%. Fortunately with 680 gold and the GL a few turns away we can afford to raise it. We may want to consider whipping some courthouses/markets at some point to keep costs under control.

I'd grab that worker. we can always delete it when there is nothing useful to do.

A quick test shows that in BtS (it's probably in Vanilla and possibly in Warlords where it doesn't work), a Forest that is Chopped into a City that is in revolt will still "count." However, it should be noted that we won't get the + 50% bonus Hammers for the Forest Chop being within our Cultural Borders, so we really should wait to finish Forest Chops until the relevant Forest squares are within our Cultural Borders.

I'm not sure if I can get the GG to the east in time, but I'll try to set up a mini chain from the west back east. This chain can carry the 3 trebs and then the GG the rest of the way.

I'll keep wars going with both Ragnar and Willem for now. I will also capture the worker. I'll be sure not to finish any chops.

I'll give the treb accuracy as you suggested. For many units in the two battles, I didn't have to give any promtions, so those units have two promotions available.

Can I go ahead and play on? I'll stop before we have to decide what to do with the GG so that we have enough time to move units where they need to go.

All I'll be doing is moving the galleys toward Moscow and whipping the core.

mdy said:

What is our happiness situation? With all the whipping we have done I would have thought it would be pretty dire when the slider is at 0%. Fortunately with 680 gold and the GL a few turns away we can afford to raise it. We may want to consider whipping some courthouses/markets at some point to keep costs under control.

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I've been able to keep the slider at 0% the entire way so far. Gold just got its first unhappy citizen. Raising the slider actually makes our gpt go down, so I'll keep it at 0% for now.

I plan to revolt to Bureaucracy on this turn too...

As for Maastricht, there is a balance, in that we'll want to bring more than 2 Macemen (just in case one loses) and in that we'll hopefully have enough time for these Macemen to unload, attack the City, load, and heal in time to attack St. Petersburg. I'm not sure that there is time remaining to do so.

Attacking with a Treb or two would also give such a Treb extra Experience Points, but I'm not sure that we have any Trebs that could use +1 Experience Point nearby.


Another thought: if a Maceman or a Treb can gain a promotion from +1 Experience Point, then it's probably worth attacking, as the unit that attacks (assuming that it wins) can use the promotion to heal a good part of its lost Health. Other units that cannot get promoted from such a fight might just end up remaining wounded for when we attack Cathy, which would probably not be a worthwhile tradeoff.


So, the possibility of gaining by attacking Maastricht before the war with Cathy is a situational thing that will depend upon the timing of unit logistics, Health levels, and Experience levels of our nearby units.

I'm inclined to leave Maastricht alone. We can easily pick it off after we've taken Moscow and St Pete. Units built 20 turns from now in Willem's old core could do the trick quite well... EDIT: Why risk losing a unit?

I see that Amsterdam is set to an Archer. Perhaps we should build Trebs/Macemen as our first build items and then only use overflow Hammers for Archer defenders, to avoid having to make 1-pop-whips.

Unlike Vanilla, I don't think you have to "set" the build item before the City comes out of revolt in order to avoid losing Hammers, but you might not remember to change it later.


It might be worth mapping-out exactly where you think that the Great General can meet up with our troops. A Great General needs at least a partial movement point remaining in order for it to be able to "join up" with an existing Military Unit.

If we think that we can use the GG before the war, then we should plan to have some Macemen nearby, but if it's too tight then I guess that we'll just have to use him when our units are inside of one of St. Petersburg or Moscow, but doing so could be tricky as we'd want to use him when Trebs weren't on the same square as the Macemen... unless we only had 4 Macemen at that location and wanted to include a Treb as the 5th unit... whatever, it can be tricky, so it's best to know in advance how we could feasibly use the GG and then put a plan in place.


EDIT:

Mitchum said:

I'm inclined to leave Maastricht alone.

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That's fine. I just gave some guidelines where, outside of those guidelines, we should avoid the attack. If you don't think that you want to implement the attack at all, that's okay, too. You're the one who knows the current situation the best.

By the way, does it look like Engineering was traded? I.e. did one of either Cathy or Willem get a different tech at the same time, perhaps trading a partially-researched Engineering tech as part of the bargain?

When I captured the cities, it asked me for a build order right away. I don't recall that happening before... In any event, I picked a treb for a build in The Hague and Rotterdam. I'll change Amsterdam as well.

I'll figure out the GG. If it's going to be close, I'll pause and ask for advice. It may be worth delaying the war by a turn, no?

Workers might also be useful for laying down some Grassland Farms, to help support whipping in our captured Cities.

Dhoomstriker said:

By the way, does it look like Engineering was traded? I.e. did one of either Cathy or Willem get a different tech at the same time, perhaps trading a partially-researched Engineering tech as part of the bargain?

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They both got Engineering on the same turn an no other techs changed for anyone.