Yaroslav is way too far. The city west of Moscow, we can keep (blanking on the name). I'd check our economics before we decide though, as we're going to have to start razing pretty soon.
In terms of keeping or razing Cathy's Cities, they are all in the same area, so troops can come from any of them equally.
Which is more important--capturing a City that is large enough to whip 3 or 4 troops or capturing a City that is large enough to whip 1 or 2 troops but that is a couple of turns closer to Isabella? The choice is pretty clear: the one that can produce more troops. Why? Keeping a City that is small and/or has low Food is going to be a drain on our economy after it whips a couple of units and will take forever to grow into being able to build new troops, while keeping a larger-sized City that has Food Resources means a constant flow of troops.
There are really 3 main factors to look for in a captured troop-producing City, those being:
- initial population size
- location
- Food Resources available to that City
Yaroslavl' fits all 3, given that it is of reasonable City size, won't be whipped anytime soon (and thus will remain close to a reasonable City size when we capture it), given that it can be captured soon enough to get troops to boats based on its location and is also close enough to a number of other Cities that we will be creating troops from that it will be worth keeping and it's location is Coastal, while it has 2 Food Resouces in the City.
The City to the west is all but useless: assuming that it is on that 1 hidden square, it has a Shared Sheep for Food, meaning that it is already small, it's location is a bit closer to the southern Coast but it is not Coastal, it has no Food of its own, and its only redeeming quality is the access to Gem Resources, which will matter less the more that we have to raise our Cultural Slider and don't matter at all for an additional source of Happiness as we already have a Gem Resource available from one of Willem's Cities. It's a pile of junk in comparison to Yaroslavl' on all counts but being a couple of turns' of movement points closer to a Galleon chain--but if it can only produce a couple of units, then this bonus is meaningless.
Yaroslavl' also has the potential to work Hills based squares after it has been whipped dry.
Let's be sure that we're thinking "big picture" in terms of a City's location--being on another continent greatly reduces the value of the City unless it has a lot of other redeeming factors, but we're talking about Cities on the only multi-City island/continent that we own, which makes the location very good for either Yaroslavl' or the western City, but the other factors make the western City (unless it has been working both Sheep and has Farmed the Grassland squares and worked then and somehow grown)--and even then, if it does have some initial population points, there are no unique Food Resources, meaning that we could just give the Food Resources to the 2 neighbouring Cities (St. Petersburg and Novgorod) and raze the western City itself.
One quick question -- do we want to split our Vicky stack to hit London + her western city at the same time? If we do that and keep her western city, it will make a short canal around that stupid peninsula towards London.
It depends upon how many troops we have hitting her--if we can attack with 2 Galleons at each location, then sure, we can attack at 2 locations simultanously, particularly since Vicky went into Pacifism and likely hasn't been spamming troops as a result.
I would not keep her western City (Hastings). It has pretty much zero potential for giving us new units, what with it being Size 4 and only having a Plains Sheep Resource for a Food Resource (okay, there is one Coastal square that we cannot see--if it is a Magical Fish, we could consider keeping the City, but otherwise I'd raze it outright).
The minor savings of being able to save a turn sailing around the peninsula on the way back out of London (and that's only if we go to the west when I think that we'll probably continue on to the east or the north to find her other Cities, such as by that juicy seafood location in the north) is not worth keeping a City that likely can't even contribute one 2-pop-whip for a very long time.
Is there any way that one of our Galleons for the eastern front can drop off another land-based unit (such as a Maceman) near Vicky that can look for her other Cities before starting the war?
The trickiest thing to manage might be Utrecht. We will probably have to accept a 1 population point loss but we should probably build a unit OTHER than a Maceman, such as a Galleon or a Treb, since we're about to have that City Raider II as a Military Police unit. Let's not be lame by sailing away our City Raider Military Police unit immediately--it can sail away in a couple of turns' worth of time once there is a replacement Military Police unit to take its place, while the Galleon near there should go after Willem's Trireme that is near Rotterdam.
What I will suggest is 100% Cultural Slider on the next turn, which, if we can work all of the Commerce-based squares in Utrecht's 9-square-radius, will give us the 15 Culture needed for a border expansion. That's a difference of about 130 Gold in order to save us a couple of future population points of loss.
To reclaim those Hammers using Gold in another way, we'd have to spend even more Gold to upgrade a Warrior to a Maceman, so it is a worthwhile investment. It also means access to the DYE RESOURCE, which then gives us a global +1 Happiness, which is an investment, meaning that we pay for a high Cultural Slider for one turn in order to be able to run a lower Cultural Slider for future turns that much sooner.
Every whippable population point is a cultivatable Resource that we should strive to make the best use out of. Compare this fact to Size 3 or smaller Cities, where those population points are all but useless to use for whipping--they are the bare minimum of population points that we must "keep in the bank" for a particular City before the City's population becomes useful. For a larger-sized City, however, every population point is meaningful and is useful to use and abuse.
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