SGOTM 13 - One Short Straw

London is where we have a BFC mark, east of Hastings? If you're attacking this turn, I might send Galleon10 this turn, rather than waiting for the mace from Iron. That way it can make London on T+2. We should have enough troops to take it then. Vicky's done after losing those two cities.

Nicely done! Things are looking very good.

I say take Hastings next turn as you suggested.

Likely obvious things:

The worker by The Hague looks like it's sleeping. He can chop this turn.

Be careful of the two barbs near Amsterdam. One if about to pillage our corn farm.

Be careful of the wandering Russian archer near Moscow.

You can drop the slider to 0%. We get a in Gold, but if we work all three seafood we'll grow there at the same time and our gpt is actually higher. We also get +1 in Utrecht, losing the gem citizen but again, gpt actually goes up empire wide. However, since production is our limiting factor, maybe 10% culture is better so that we can work the gold and gems... I'm so used to optimizing commerce but in this game, production is king.

So... in Utrecht, maybe it makes sense to work a GHill mine rather than a grass cottage so that the pike becomes a 2-pop whip a couple of turns sooner.

shyuhe said:

@Dhoom:
The galleon can't pick up the worker - it needs to head straight east. Gold is building another galleon that can deal with the worker.

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That plan sounds fair.

shyuhe said:

For the south, I plan on leaving the wounded mace alone if Cathy doesn't send any counter-attacking stack.

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Fortune favours the bold, as Blubmuz loves to say.

shyuhe said:

Gold no longer has a at size 4 because of the dyes + gems

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Sweet!

shyuhe said:

Gold and stone should probably both whip galleons next (and maybe pig-fish and/or iron too). We can set up a nice galleon chain if we do.

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Sounds reasonable. We're talking about a Galleon chain going towards the east, right?

Do you have any suggestions from roughly where in the empire we should start this Galleon chain? For example, should we start it somewhere near the west end of our empire or should we isntead start it near the east end but then have 1 or 2 "roaming Galleons" that "pick up and drop off" units from other Cities and land them on Iron Island, so that these units can board the eastern Galleon chain?

If the latter, I might not even need to "land" the units and could just have them temporarily hook up with the Galleon chain, depending upon where the chain starts. I.e. The "roaming Galleons" could just move away from the start of the eastern Galleon chain by increments of "5 movement points," so as to be able to efficiently meet up with the start of the Galleon chain.

That idea is the idea, though, right? Only having a Galleon chain heading to the east starting from our core Cities, while leaving Willem's old area and Cathy's old area as the sole unit suppliers for the west?

shyuhe said:

I've scouted Cathy's remaining cities since I had a spare galleon. They're very lightly defended and shouldn't be an issue for the remnants of the northern stack.

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Thanks for doing so!

shyuhe said:

I've taken cease fires with Willem + Ragnar to make them stop spamming troops. Especially Ragnar.

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Okay, fair enough. I reserve the right to redeclare should I so much as see an AI Settler. For example, Willem has 2 of them that we know about and if he sends out a Settler Party then BAM, it will be war time again.

shyuhe said:

I took Yaroslav and razed the gems city (it was coastal but still worthless at size 2). I lost a treb assaulting Yaroslav but that's it for losses.

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You and Mitchum have set a high standard for success--I apologise in advance for my bad luck in combat.

shyuhe said:

I haven't ended the turn since we can start attacking Vicky on this turn (Hastings) and I wanted to put that issue up to the team. I think we should declare and unload this turn to capture Hastings on T+1. This will open up a canal to allow our second wave of boats to hit London quicker.

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Some thoughts here:
1. Okay, keepnig Hastings as a temporary canal can work, but if there isn't a Seafood Resource there, then that City will be junky, so we might want to consider losing this City later

2. After whipping the City dry, we could allow the Barbs to capture the City, since Vicky's island is large enough to spawn Barb units (we saw a Barb Warrior earlier in the game on her island)

3. We could probably be uber-tricky and, if we're done using the Hastings Canal but have a weakened AI remaining with whom we have taken a Cease Fire (Willem is one such example), and have not seen any Barb units, we could gift the canal City to that AI and then declare war. The City could be razed immediately with an amphibious assault (as the City would be empty) or within 2 turns if we just used a ground unit. Having whipped the City dry already, whichever poor unfortunate AI gets the City as a gift won't be able to whip a unit, either.

babybluepants said:

London is where we have a BFC mark, east of Hastings?

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That is my understanding, too.

babybluepants said:

If you're attacking this turn, I might send Galleon10 this turn, rather than waiting for the mace from Iron. That way it can make London on T+2. We should have enough troops to take it then. Vicky's done after losing those two cities.

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Okay, I'll take a look at the saved game and will do my best to incorporate this feedback.

Mitchum said:

The worker by The Hague looks like it's sleeping. He can chop this turn.

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Ooooooh, there shall be no sleeping Workers on my watch! Even a Robinson-Crusoe-like island-bound Worker must build himself a Road. A Road to nowhere.

Mitchum said:

Be careful of the two barbs near Amsterdam. One if about to pillage our corn farm.

Be careful of the wandering Russian archer near Moscow.

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Yikes! Okay, I'll take a look-see.

Mitchum said:

You can drop the slider to 0%. We get a in Gold, but if we work all three seafood we'll grow there at the same time and our gpt is actually higher. We also get +1 in Utrecht, losing the gem citizen but again, gpt actually goes up empire wide.

However, since production is our limiting factor, maybe 10% culture is better so that we can work the gold and gems... I'm so used to optimizing commerce but in this game, production is king.

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Considering that both the Gold and Gem Resources offer us Commerce, if the difference in Gold saved by running a lower Cultural Slider is small, then it may be worth "paying" for these extra Hammers (3 Hammers from the Gold Mine and 1 Hammer from the Gem Mine for the difference in total Gold empire-wide) by running a slightly higher Cultural Slider.

What sort of a margin is considered to be worthwhile for gaining more Hammers at this time of the game?

Note that late in the game, when units won't be able to reach the front lines, we won't care about extra Hammers, but every Hammer now could mean something... if we could, say, get 4 Hammers for a difference of 8 or less Gold, then I think it's a worthwhile tradeoff.

Mitchum said:

So... in Utrecht, maybe it makes sense to work a GHill mine rather than a grass cottage so that the pike becomes a 2-pop whip a couple of turns sooner.

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I haven't looked yet, but if we have the opportunity to 3-pop-whip anywhere (in a large enough City), is there any major reason not to do so? I think that we'd lose one half of a Hammer... i.e. we'd only get 56 Hammers for the 3rd whipped populatoin point instead of 56.5 + 56.5 coming to an even number with a 2-pop whip, meaning that the two sets of 0.5 Hammers would probably be counted for a 2-pop-whip due to them adding up to a whole number. In exchange, we'd still only receive 1 Unhappy face.

I don't think that a Pikeman could become a 3-pop-whip, since it costs 90 Hammers and we get 45 * 1.25 = 56.5 Hammers per whipped population point, so the question probably doesn't apply here, but I was asking more in general if there was any other reason (besides missing out on a potential 0.5 Hammer) not to consider making a 3-pop-whip if one was ever available without removing citizens from working "good squares" in the process.

We can use Hastings as a canal and just leave it to the barbs eventually. We really only need it for a few turns. You CANNOT raze a city that has any of your culture in it. So if we conquer Hastings and let its borders pop, we're pretty much stuck with it. I think the turns saved are worth it -- we just have to make sure the English don't re-capture it at any point.

I'm ok with skipping the iron mace and instead sending galleon 10 towards London. As bbp pointed out, it can let us start the assault on London a turn earlier (great!).

As for the galleons, I wouldn't even bother chaining. We should make a fleet of three galleons and send them after Joao. The English front won't need back-ups so we should go ahead and be more aggressive on our overall front.

The ex-Dutch cities should prepare a small army (2 boats?) to finish off Willem and start on Ragnar's western holdings. If it turns out that we need more troops for Izzy, we can re-route them that way after finishing off Willem.

Also, Vicky has a city 2E1S of the marble. We should keep London so that our boats can sail into that lake -- Vicky's fourth city is on the eastern side of that lake. Her 5th city is probably to the east of London (ugh).

I don't care about the slider -- as long as we maximize our whipping cycles (Dutch cities get whipped every other turn), I'm happy. This game really shouldn't last more than another 20-30 turns. It's unfortunate Izzy and Joao spammed so many cities though

Also, please raze Novgorod. We don't want to burn a unit as military police there.

Cathy also has a roving axe/spear in her territory too. I'm hoping it won't join the forces in Novgorod but we'll see.

I would prefer to keep Hastings than give it to an AI. We should be able to afford the cost, and we would only have to go to the trouble of capturing it again later.

The units currently on the boats heading towards Victoria look like they will proably be enough to take her down. Should we direct our future core production towards opening another front with Jao?

shyuhe said:

We can use Hastings as a canal and just leave it to the barbs eventually. We really only need it for a few turns. You CANNOT raze a city that has any of your culture in it.

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mdy said:

I would prefer to keep Hastings than give it to an AI.

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Hmm, I was thinking more along the lines of "well, we need to keep Hastings in order to have it serve as a canal, but once we're done with the canal, we won't need it anymore."

However, combining together what the two of you have said, nothing stops us from gifting Hastings before it receives any of our Culture if we can gift it to an AI that we have Open Borders with and will declare war on soon (but not sooner than needing the canal).


I wonder exactly how much of our own Culture would count. There are two possibilities based on what shyuhe has said:
1. We can't have ANY of our own Culture in the City
OR
2. We can't get 15 or more of our own Culture

Nothing stops us from whipping the City right before we gift it--and if we can't have more than 0 Culture, the City could be whipped but the build item never completed, so that the inheriting AI won't have a large-sized City.


Anyway, it's worth a test game just to see what our options are.

mdy said:

We should be able to afford the cost

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shyuhe said:

Also, please raze Novgorod. We don't want to burn a unit as military police there.

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Well, if we can afford the cost of Hastings, surely we can afford the cost of Novgorod. Novgorod has multiple Food Resources and one is even a Lake-side Clam (5 Food or even 6 Food if we are lucky enough to capture a Lighthouse).

With a City that is kept this late, it might only produce 2 or 3 units, so it could be worth not leaving a Military Police unit there but still keeping the City to use the City's high population and large amount of Food Resources to pump out a couple of units.


I don't see us capturing and keeping many other Cities... maybe London, as was suggested, and perhaps another English City if it is large-sized.

We'd aim to raze all of Willem's Cities, Cathy's off-continent Cities, and probably most or all of Ragnar's Cities except for his Ivory City (+1 Happiness and blocking him from resettling the area if we have to divert our troops towards Isabella, as was suggested might be necessary), probably most or all of Isabella's Cities, then probably most or all of Joao's Cities.

Near the very end, we might just keep a City or two of an AI's if we are super low on troops (say, at Joao or Isabella) and think that the City can come out of revolt in time to help with building 1 more Maceman, but other than this low probability, I guess that we'll raze most or all of the captured Cities of Isabella's and Joao's.

mdy said:

Cathy also has a roving axe/spear in her territory too. I'm hoping it won't join the forces in Novgorod but we'll see.

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On balance, it shouldn't matter much (no Fortification bonus and no City bonus if we Bombard all or most of the City Defences away) and it might be even easier to kill in the City than by fighting it in the field, since we could use collateral damage on it, too.

No, we should not gift Hastings. We will have to come back to capture it later if we do. I propose capturing it and leaving it empty. Vicky can't grab it and if the barbs do, it doesn't matter.

Keeping Novgorod has nothing to do with cost. It's just that it will take an extra mace garrison and the northern stack barely has enough maces to go conquer the remaining cities as it is. We really can't afford to drop off a mace as military police/garrison there.

It's better to raze any cities going forward except for those that we need to serve as canals.

As I mentioned, I'd like to use the new troops forming in the core to go after Joao.

As to your culture razing question, it should be 1.

shyuhe said:

As to your culture razing question, it should be 1.

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So, if we get even 1 Culture in the City and then gift it away and then recapture it, we will not be able to raze it?

shyuhe said:

Keeping Novgorod has nothing to do with cost. It's just that it will take an extra mace garrison and the northern stack barely has enough maces to go conquer the remaining cities as it is. We really can't afford to drop off a mace as military police/garrison there.

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Well what I suggested was not garrison the City. I'd rather get a couple of pop-whips out of the City and have the units appear in an area where we will have Galleons leaving every so often anyway, even if the cost is a lost population point on the turn that the City comes out of revolt.

As opposed to previous times where we ran into this immediate unhappiness issue, we're now talking about the difference between razing outright or getting a couple of pop-whips, as opposed to getting more versus less pop-whips.

shyuhe said:

It's better to raze any cities going forward except for those that we need to serve as canals.

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Also except for exceptions like Ragnar's Ivory City, where we could get +1 Happiness out of the deal and also have the City serve another purpose (blocking Ragnar from resettling the area, should we go after Isabella with those same troops before finishing Ragnar's Cities).

shyuhe said:

As I mentioned, I'd like to use the new troops forming in the core to go after Joao.

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That's fine. We have 1 Galleon already which can drop off the Worker on the Horse Resource next turn (it seems that you already have the Galleon in place to do so).

If I am really sneaky, I can use one of the 4 Galleons designated for Vicky to come back and pick up troops for Joao.

We will have 11 troops going towards Vicky, so 2 of them (or less, if some die) could be left at Hasting temporarily (say, to heal) while the remaining 3 Galleons sail on towards London and beyond. Once a Galleon unloads at London, it can pick up the 2 remaining units (or less if some die in taking Hastings), meaning that we won't really need 4 Galleons at Vicky at all.



So, here are some "big issue" points:
1. We will have 11 land units going to Vicky (6 Maces and 5 Trebs). If you think that number won't be enough (she has 5 Cities according to shyuhe's last screenshot), then let me know

2. If that amount of land units will be sufficient to challenge Vicky, then we will already have 2 (empty of units) Galleons available to prepare for a war on Joao. How many land units would we like to aim to have? Let's say either 9 or 12... if you have a preference, let me know, and I'll aim to shuttle units into Galleons based on whichever number that we pick. For example, if we say "9 units," then a City might end up with an extra Treb or Maceman in it that won't be going in during the first wave of attack

3. Are 8 units (4 Maces and 4 Trebs) sufficient to start the initial assault on Isabella? That's the quantity that it looks like I'll be able to launch with on T + 1

4. Are we okay to send 3 Trebs at Isabella as the next full Galleon or should we wait 1 extra turn to make it 2 Trebs and 1 Pike (or even change the Pike to a Maceman)? I prefer to go 1 turn sooner, as I will aim to get another Galleon headed her way soon thereafter, to give us a greater mix of Maces/Pikes relative to Trebs. Having lots of Trebs early on in the war is nice, but eventually we'll lose Maces and with only 4 of them, we could easily find ourselves unable to capture Cities without a 5th Galleon worth of troops going to her.

5. Which Cities are the priority targets in Isabella's empire? The larger-sized ones, like Madrid (her capital, which is on a Hills square) and Barcelona (pretty large-sized with two 6-Food Resources)?

6. We can Open Borders with either of Ragnar or Willem. I'd like to Open them with Ragnar but keep them Closed with Willem, since Willem has 2 Settlers that are just begging to be given a chance to settle somewhere (such as Cathy's ex-Gem-City location)

7. We can bribe Ragnar into a war against Vicky (now or after we declare war for a likely lower price) or Willem. I don't see much value in doing either and I'd like to keep him as dumb as possible, but the option is there if anyone wants to push for it

8. When we do go to war with Willem, I'd like to do it in "one fell swoop," meaning attacking both of his remaining Cities simultaneously. He has an Archer poking around the Moscow area, so I'd rather not give him much of a chance to capture one of Cathy's ex-Cities due to us having spent sufficient time at war with him in the next war for him to be able to threaten one of our Cities

9. If Novgorod keeps its Lighthouse upon capture, I'd like to keep the City, since that would mean one 6-Food square, one 5-Food square, and one 3-Food square all being within the initial 9-square-radius of the City. If the Lighthouse gets razed, then I'll probably only keep it if Cathy hasn't reduced its size between now and then

Another thing: it looks like we have just enough movement to move next to Hastings on the current turn (nice work!), although for some reason the Galleons ended their movement. Fortunately, I double-checked that the Galleons still have 1 movement point remaining, so we should be able to declare war on T + 0 with 2-Galleons-worth of troops (3 Maces and 3 Trebs with full health and full movement points)--more than sufficient land units to take on 1 Swordsman and 1 Axeman.

I don't think that I can do anything about the Barb Warrior that is on our Grassland Corn Farm. shyuhe appears to have already moved a Maceman in its direction and we'll get a new Maceman on the following turn, but if that Barb Warrior wants to Pillage after the end of our turn, he will do so. We'll just be relying on its AI programming as to whether or not it Pillages or whether it comes towards our City.


I plan to stop the Worker SW of Amsterdam from building a Farm--Amsterdam does not need another Farm, as it already has 4 squares that offer 3+ Food as well as a Grassland Hills Copper Mine--more than sufficient improved squares. Utrecht could potentially use a Farm, but it already has these squares to work:
Utrecht
Grassland Pig
Grassland Hills Gem Mine
Grassland Dye
Grassland Dye
Grassland Hills Mine

A Grassland Farm could potentially replace that Grassland Hills Mine for a 5->3 pop-whip cycle.

Rotterdam could steal Amsterdam's Lake, which counts as an Oasis with the Lighthouse, giving it:
Rotterdam
Magical Fish
Grassland Gem Mine
Oasis-like Lake

So, Rotterdam could certainly use a Grassland Farm for a 4->2 pop-whip cycle.

The Hague, as long as we're okay with working a Grassland River Village (4 Commerce) instead of a Grassland Farm (i.e. replacing one of the Villages with a Farm), won't need further improvements, since it has:
The Hague
Grassland Pig
Clam
3 Grassland River Villages
1 Grassland Hills River Mine

The Hague could probably make do with a 4->2 pop-whip cycle.


As for Amsterdam, if that Grassland Corn's Farm gets pillaged, improving it will take top priority, then each of Utrecht and Rotterdam could get up to 1 Grassland Farm each.

After that, our Workers at Willem (all 2 of them) can just revert to Forest Chopping.


The Worker that is currently Farming can continue Farming (just at different locations than where he is already).

Before Farming with the other Worker, I'll probably just Chop the Forest that this other Worker (the one by The Hague) is already standing on, since the Chop is almost done and there is no Road on the square. After that, there is a Roaded, pre-Chopped Forest to the NE of The Hague that would get Chopped, which gets our Worker back on the Road network, after which he can participate in the Farming activities.

Stealing, updating, and adding to Mitchum's pop-whipping chart, we have:

Proposed whip cycles per city:
Paris: 6 -> 4, always working 2 clams, corn and 1 Grass Hill
Gold: 6 -> 4 (or 5 -> 3), always working fish, 2 clams, and gold (but running a 5 -> 3 whipping cycle if our Happiness isn't high enough and thus skipping the Gold every time that we are at Size 3 for 1 turn)
Marble: 4 -> 2, always working 2 clams
Stone: 4 -> 2, always working fish and stone... and presumably only Coasts instead of the GH Mine, since we're working a Coast now instead of a GH Mine and working the Coast lets us grow 1 turn sooner, only possibly working the GH Mine if we're at Size 4
Pig: 4 -> 2, always working fish and pig - optionally working a Desert Hills Mine at Size 4 if we are really low on excess Happiness
Iron: 5 -> 3 (or 4 -> 2), always working 2 clam and iron (since we seem to be at Size 2 now without working the Iron)
Amsterdam: 4 -> 2, always working the Corn and Flood Plains Town, then working the Oasis and GH Copper Mine
Utretcht: Probably 5 -> 3 or maybe even 4 -> 2, always working the Fish + GH Mine, then working the 2 Grassland Dyes as the City grows. If we raze Willem's City to the west, then we could go "always Fish + Clam" then add the Gem and finally the Dyes (optionally skipping the last Dye). Once we get a Grassland Farm, the Grassland Farm would replace the first Dye
Rotterdam: 4 -> 2, always working the Fish and Lake, growing into the Grassland Farm (once it is built) and the Grassland Gem Mine
The Hague: 4 -> 2, always working the pig and clam, followed by working up to 2 Grassland River Villages


In Paris under Bureaucracy:
a) 14 Hammers invested in a Maceman in Paris (91 Hammers needed to complete it) = 2-pop-whip
b) 16 Hammers invested in a Maceman in Paris (89 Hammers needed to complete it) = 1-pop-whip

In a city with no forge, a whip = 56 hammers.
In a city with a forge, a whip= 67 hammers.

What would we gain by gifting Hastings, just a bit of gold which is totally useless to us as we should have more than enough gold for our needs even with the extra maintenance. Gifting it to the AI just means we will have to go to the trouble of taking it all over again later. What's the point? It would just create one more point where the RNG could screw us, and it would reduce our flexibility as it would mean we would need to allocate several units to that city which we could use elsewhere.

So, if we get even 1 Culture in the City and then gift it away and then recapture it, we will not be able to raze it?

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Does this include the free culture you get on a cities tile that you own. With the need to use the culture slider I don't think we could avoid getting at least some additional culture in there anyway.

mdy said:

It would just create one more point where the RNG could screw us, and it would reduce our flexibility as it would mean we would need to allocate several units to that city which we could use elsewhere.

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Well, the idea would be that we'd gift it to an AI and then declare war on the AI immediately afterwards, recapturing the empty City.

mdy said:

With the need to use the culture slider I don't think we could avoid getting at least some additional culture in there anyway.

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The other half of the equation is that we'd thereby need to gift the City on the turn that it comes out of revolt.


As you say, all that we'd save is Gold, so if our finances are in good shape, this option can be off of the table. Anyway, I won't execute it without pausing play and getting consensus on the issue, so let's not focus too much on it, okay? Treat it as a low probability of happening kind of issue that we'll get consensus on before even implementing... I'm more interested in feedback on the other plans, such as whether we feel that the troops going by Galleons to the various AIs will be sufficient and, in particular, how many to plan to initially send against Joao.

There are some extra Russian troops running around Novgorod. I don't think it'll be safe to leave it ungarrisoned. This is mostly why I want to raze it.

The English front will need the boats -- it's much faster loading and unloading than it is to walk to each city, since cities 3 and 4 are accessible from the lake. We will probably have to walk to city 5.

I'd rather not OB with Ragnar as we have very little to gain from it.

I think we have enough for Vicky and Izzy. Willem will probably need 3 units for his mainland city and 3 for his offshore island. We will want 3 or 4 boats to start on Joao. Probably 3 since he has less power than Vicky (and more cities!). We can use the boats from the English campaign to set up a galleon chain after we take out 4/5 of Vicky's cities.

As for Vicky, how about we do the following:
2 Galleons can unload troops next to Hastings on T + 0. On T + 1, we'll Bombard and capture the City. Units that have their movement point remaining can walk into the City and then immediately reboard a Galleon. The unit that caputured the City will also board a Galleon (unless Vicky has a unit within reach of being able to recapture the City--I'll have to see if there are nearby Roads and watch out for such a possibility).

The third Galleon will catch up and then all 3 Galleons will be able to land troops by London. Those troops which Bombarded can be picked up afterwards as soon as possible and then brought along with the rest of the troops.

Meanwhile, on T + 0, we'll have the 4th Galleon sail a bit to the east, steal a Treb off of the 3rd Galleon's boat, and then aim to land 2 Maces + 1 Treb on the Marble. Those units can march overland for 1 more turn and arrive next to the City that you said was SE + E of the Marble (it looks like it is there--and if it is there, then its Cultural Borders have not yet expanded so it's probably a weakly defended City that won't need any Bomarding--thus 2 Maces + 1 Treb should be able to take it down easily).

After dropping off its payload, Galleon 4 will be free to sail back to get troops for Joao.

Once that Marble + Cow City is razed, the survivors of the 2 Mace + 1 Treb mini-army can rejoin one of the 3 eastern Galleons after we capture London. By now, we'll have fought against 3 English Cities, so it is likely that we will have lost 2 troops, thus we will have only 9 troops in total and won't need the 4th Galleon.

How does that plan work for you?

shyuhe said:

There are some extra Russian troops running around Novgorod. I don't think it'll be safe to leave it ungarrisoned. This is mostly why I want to raze it.

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I can see about landing troops and placing boats in such a way (landing troops in 2 locations next to the City) that we'll have good visibility of the area. Should it look like the City will be threatened if we were to leave it undefended, then we can raze it.

shyuhe said:

I'd rather not OB with Ragnar as we have very little to gain from it.

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That's fine. He won't gain from us (he already has sufficient Open Borders agreements to get full value out of his Trade routes), but we'd only really be looking at +4 Commerce per turn, so it's not much of a big deal either way. Thus, I can just keep them Closed and if anyone later fights for us to Open them, then we can Open them on a future turn.


Is there any other real info that you want to see from me? I'm not sure what else to talk about... we've talked about the overall troop logistics, when to send out Galleons full of troops at various AIs, diplomacy (i.e. "don't Open Borders and, unless someone suggests otherwise, don't bribe Ragnar into war"), Worker actions, City citizen allocation and whipping timings, Cultural Slider (I have the liberty to use it and will favour Hammers over small amounts of saved-Gold)...

we have now discussed a few details of how to go about starting the next attack against Cathy and the first couple of attacks against Vicky...

is there anything else that I'm missing?