SGOTM 13 - One Short Straw

[Dhoomstriker]

If it is not too much to ask, would you might putting Signs on the map (Alt + s) overtop of or next to AI Cities that you uncover in Willem's and Cathy's areas? Specifically, I'd be interested in recording text in signs that states the number and types of units that are garrisoning the Cities.

 

[mdy]

I've played till T166 and we need to decide whether to start our golden age on schedule next turn. I'll post an analysis of our tech situation later. Fortunately both Cathy and William have calendar, and we can trade with either of them.

Interestingly Cathy won't trade construction, but will trade calendar despite only one other Civ knowing both these techs. Does anyone understand this behaviour?

Unfortunately I made a mistake and put the trieme watching for Ragnars galleys leaving his capital into "sentry" mode, thinking it would alert me as soon as the galleys left. Unfortunately this only appears to work for units belonging to AI's you are at war with. This meant that Ragnar was able to slip 3 galleys past us. I saw the third galley moving into his capital when the trieme arrives, so presumably it has picked up the catapult there.

Fortunately as Shuye points out AI galleys with troops on them will not attack other units, so we can still block him, it just needs a bit more MM.

More bad news: William got a prophet and used it to bulb theology, so we may have to face CG2 longbows when we go after him

 

[mdy]

If it is not too much to ask, would you might putting Signs on the map (Alt + s) overtop of or next to AI Cities that you uncover in Willem's and Cathy's areas? Specifically, I'd be interested in recording text in signs that states the number and types of units that are garrisoning the Cities.

I've added them to the map (though only after I uploaded the save).

As of T166 the Hague has 2 archers ( 1 at CG1).
As of T165 Amsterdam had 2 C1 axes, and 1 CG1 archer.


Nidaros had a pair of archers in it as of a couple of turns ago.

 

[mdy]

By my calculations if we started our golden age next turn as planned we will be able to generate 2264 beakers by T176. This assumes a research rate of 100% which we should be able to get as we only need 46 more gold to do this.

As we can trade for calendar, at worst we need to research the following techs (costs take account of discount for knowing pre-requisite techs, but not the bonus for other AI's knowing the techs, so we might have 20-50 beakers more than the above figure suggests).

Compass: 773
Aesthetics: 585
Construction: 683
Civil-Service: 10

Total: 2051
Spare beakers: 213

At this point we would be 4T away from theology or 2T away from drama on T176.

Construction looks like the tech we are most likely to get in trade, although I would like to know why Catherine won't trade it to us despite the fact that she won't trade it to us now given that she will trade calendar with just one other AI knowing it.

This suggests that we should tech compass-aesthetics-CS(after astrobulb) finish aesthetics next.

If we could trade for construction we would be an agonising 97 beakers short of theology at this time. The bonus for AI's knowing a tech could make up some but not all of that. So the question is: Do we want to risk delaying the golden age by 1T in the hope that we might be able to revolt to theocracy on the final turn of the GA. Or is this bonus big enough it would be worth delaying it by 4T, so we would have a 100% chance of being able to make that revolt?

 

[babybluepants]

Haven't been following everything - why do we need Aesthetics? For HE?

 

[mdy]

Haven't been following everything - why do we need Aesthetics? For HE?

We need aesthetics so we can lightbulb engineering for trebuchets.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

The forum just ate my message. Okay, let me try again by summarizing the points that I wanted to make before you go offline.

1. What's the exact situation with the boats? Can you give us a screenshot detailing your plan?

2. Delaying the Golden Age? I say "no" unless you do some extensive re-testing.

3. Construction is going to be really tough to get in trade. It has to do with the Monopoly-tech-trading code digging that I was doing earlier. It is a tech that unlocks both buildings and Military Units. There is also AIs that are "currently plotting war," which may or may not increase its Monopoly value... I don't know if that affect applies only to selling Construction from one AI to another AI that is plotting war or if it also affects our cost.

4. How accurate are your Flask values? A Forge rarely produced a 25% bonus, nor does a Library generally produce a 25% bonus. The same point applies to bonus Flasks on Research.

If you haven't done so already, I would suggest that you set up a test game where you make the same amount of Commerce and Flasks on the same turn as one of the turns (it's easiest to calculate, say, for the next turn in the real game, since you can see those Flask and Commerce values) and then see how many final Flasks you earn on various techs in the test game... reload the test game to that same turn and then try for different techs. Need I say be careful about which game you are reloading? Then, use the actual amounts from the test game and compare them to your estimates in order to get a relative offset factor.

For example, you might find that you would have expected to get, I don't know, 68 Flasks, and really you only get 66 Flasks. Then you could adjust your numbers by multiplying them by 66/68 = .9705 and rounding down.

5. Can you give us any updates on other things that went on? Did Willem agree to giving us his 70 Gold? Have other AIs made any Demands? Have you spotted any Barb Galleys?

6. I can try and do a calculation for Construction in terms of how many AIs need to know it, but it's a rather complicated tech to figure out... I think what makes more sense is just to give the tech to various AIs in a test game. I'll start with the understanding that Cathy and one other AI knows it, but if that understanding is wrong, please correct me.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Oh, I forgot to retype my point about a test game... it's easy enough to "fudge" by taking an existing turn from a test game where you are in the right Civics... then use the World Builder to add additional population points, as necessary. That way, you can work more Specialists or Coast squares in order to make up the difference from having started with a test game that isn't on a matching turn as the real game.

The turn number itself doesn't matter, but getting the same Flask and Commerce values does matter, as does giving/taking away techs to the relevant AIs for techs that you are trying to research.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

As for units, I will give you an idea of how I play. Play the way that you want, but here's my perspective.

I like to have at least one unit that needs to have its turn Skipped every turn. That way, an accidental Spacebar or Enter keypress can't advance the turn before you are ready to do so.

To me, that means leaving a Warrior unfortified, or, in the case of having a boat in a certain position, skipping its turn each turn. If I have another unit, like a boat, that needs to watch an area, then I can feel comfortable with fortifying the Warrior, since the Warrior wasn't really watching for anything and was only the "default" unfortified unit.


As for our boats, I would manually skip their turns on every turn. That way, I get visibility of the area for free, without having to scroll my screen to the scene.

Similarly, if I have a Settler sitting somewhere that is waiting to settle a new City location until either my economy can handle it or an AI threatens the area, I will manually skip its turn each turn.

To me, "Sentry" is a piece of garbage functionality and it doesn't really do what you'd want it to do--which is notify you of any units that come nearby. You'd EXPECT that the unit would wake up and tell you that "something is going on, come and look." But, it doesn't work that way, so I never use it and just rely on spending a bit more time having the screen scroll around and a bit more time skipping units' turns. It may be tedious, but then I can get a view of what's going on in the empire on every turn.

In a naval game like this one, I'd only ever see us "giving up control" of a boat if it's duty is:
a) Blockading
OR
b) Spawn-busting

For the b) case, it might apply to a Work Boat for the Crab might do if and only if it can 100% spawn-bust wherever it is going to sit. But, if there wouldn't be 100% coverage, then I would not dare to do anything but manually skip its turn each turn, so that I'd be able to spot any Barb Galley that appeared... and even manually move it 1N + 1S + Skip Turn on each turn, if doing so helped me to spot any Barb Galleys appearing that it couldn't fully spawn-bust.


Anyway, we each play differently, and I sympathize with you since I agree that the Sentry functionality seems to offer more than it really gives us. That said, I find that a good approach is just to take the time to Skip the Turn of multiple units (and I'd do so for all boat units on a naval map like this one--even for spawn-busting units just in case a Barb Galley spawned elsewhere and sailed near to the spawn-buster over the course of a few turns), even though it can be admittedly a bit tedious.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I have a test game set up where all of the AIs match the real game and where I even have Ragnar "plotting a war" in it... although I couldn't get a second AI to be plotting a war... so, I should be able to approximate the number of AI that would need to know Construction... but I also need to know which AIs that Cathy knows.

From what I recall, Willem has met everyone, and those two AIs are the ones that are most likely to give us such a tech in trade, so I can just have everyone "meet" Willem in my test game... but if you can tell me how many AIs currently know Cathy, then I'll be able to give a relatively accurate value (although I'm not sure if the lack of one AI plotting a war will affect the results or not).


EDIT: All that I really need to know is: have Cathy and Vicky met each other yet?

 

[mdy]

Construction is going to be really tough to get in trade. It has to do with the Monopoly-tech-trading code digging that I was doing earlier. It is a tech that unlocks both buildings and Military Units. There is also AIs that are "currently plotting war," which may or may not increase its Monopoly value... I don't know if that affect applies only to selling Construction from one AI to another AI that is plotting war or if it also affects our cost.

Both Cathy and Ragnar have construction but no one else has.

I think we should make the trade currency+5 gold for clandar with William (as our chances of trading construction with him in time are 0, but we might be able to trade currencyfor construction with Cathy)

I think we should get the remaining gold we need to stay at 100% research by trading mysticism to Ragnar for 50 gold. I can't see him gettting feudalism in time even if we make this trade.

How accurate are your Flask values? A Forge rarely produced a 25% bonus, nor does a Library generally produce a 25% bonus. The same point applies to bonus Flasks on Research.

Other than neglecting the bonus for other AI's knowing the tech they are extremely accurate. We might lose/gain 1-2 beakers depending how rounding works with the 1.2 bonus from knowing a pre-requisite, otherwise they are accurate to the beaker, though we could choose to get more/less by altering our future strategy of course.

Can you give us any updates on other things that went on? Did Willem agree to giving us his 70 Gold? Have other AIs made any Demands? Have you spotted any Barb Galleys?

William gave us 70 gold on T161, Cathy demanded 160 gold which was refused, and she did not go into WHEOOH mode. We renegotiated the stone deal with William for an extra 2gpt. No barb galleys have been spotted. Victoria has a wine available for trade, but William still hasn't hooked up any gems.

I can try and do a calculation for Construction in terms of how many AIs need to know it, but it's a rather complicated tech to figure out... I think what makes more sense is just to give the tech to various AIs in a test game. I'll start with the understanding that Cathy and one other AI knows it, but if that understanding is wrong, please correct me.

Your understanding is correct, and that calculation would be useful, because if 4 AI's need to know construction the chances of us getting it in trade would be fairly low. In those circumstances would it be more realistic to research construction before aesthetics if we could trade for it when only 2 AI's know it?

The only AI's that are currenyl plotting war are Jao and Ragnar.

I have attached a couple of screenshots. I have to do something else now, but I should be able to post my plan for resolving the Ragnar situation in 1-1.5 hours.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Both Cathy and Ragnar have construction but no one else has.

4 AIs need to know Construction before either Willem (or Cathy not knowing Vicky) will trade it to us. I also checked the case where Cathy knows Vicky and it's the same.

Now, what I can't guarantee is that 2 AIs "plotting war" won't increase the amount of AIs that need to know the tech up to 5 AIs, but I can say for certain that we will need 4 AIs at a MINIMUM (and probably exactly 4 AIs, but I am not 100% certain) to know Construction before either Willem or Cathy will give it up... while the others won't give it up when 4 AIs know the tech.

I think we should make the trade currency+5 gold for clandar with William (as our chances of trading construction with him in time are 0, but we might be able to trade currencyfor construction with Cathy)

Here is my line of thinking on the subject:
The AIs are getting dangerously close to researching techs that we do not want them to:
1. Machinery
2. Metal Casting for other AIs
3. Feudalism

In addition to tech research, there is the whole "AI City Maintenance Costs preventing the AIs from REXing" factor to consider.

On this map, allowing an AI to get Currency is a HUGE boost that I think would be suicidal to our game. They'll be free to expand like mad-crazy. We have been really, really lucky that no AI has learned Currency yet. I think that we need to hold onto this Monopoly for as long as possible.

It's bad enough that the AIs are exapanding on our way to Astronomy, but if an AI gets Currency, the REXing will explode like there is no tomorrow.

We need to think "bigger picture" in terms of tech trading. Therefore, I do not want to give Currency to any AI no matter what.


Now, we said that Code of Laws was our primary tech-trading tech. Remember that we not only have Code of Laws but also Philosophy as tech-trading chips.


Also, Code of Laws has the same value as Calendar. That means that we'd have to throw in some Gold or another tech if we wanted to make the trade. Here is some thinking along that line:
As time passes, more AIs will learn Calendar or will get it in trade. As time passes, the AIs are far less likely to learn Code of Laws (although it looks like Vicky has it--was that through self-research or did we give it to her?). Thus, over time, the relative value of Calendar will decrease compared to the value of Code of Laws.

So, we can delay getting Calendar in trade until we absolutely need it, at which point we can get a better deal on a "Code of Laws + Gold <-> Calendar" tech-trading deal. Depending upon which AIs get Calendar via research or trading, we might even be able to give "Code of Laws + one other tech <-> Calendar."

Alternatively, since Vicky already knows Code of Laws, we could wait until the last minute and make a "Philosophy <-> Calendar" trade with her. Doing so helps to preserve the Code of Laws relative-Monopoly and would keep us from having to throw in Gold as part of the trade.

I define "the last minute" for learning Calendar as the date that we want to Lightbulb Astronomy. We don't need Calendar before then as we aren't going to try and build its corresponding Wonder, nor do we have any Calendar Resources that can be connected (we gave up on the Silk Resource when we settled Iron City in its current location).

I think we should get the remaining gold we need to stay at 100% research by trading mysticism to Ragnar for 50 gold. I can't see him gettting feudalism in time even if we make this trade.

Well, unfortunately, you'd be wrong. Try playing a game with Shaka, Ragnar, etc. If you keep them from getting Mysticism, they'll stay away from Feudalism for a long, long time. Give them even Mysticism and you'll see them trading-up so fast that you won't believe your eyes.

Another consideration is that you need to be careful to keep only 1 "dumb kid on the block." As soon as there are 2 "dumb kids on the block," then all heck breaks loose, as neither of those players counts as the "lone dumb kid on the block" anymore and AI-AI tech trading now happens between 6 AIs instead of just 5 AIs, at least until a new "dumb kid on the block" is realized after several rounds of AI-AI tech trading.

Isabella is awfully close to tying Ragnar for that honour (of being the "dumbest kid on the block"), which makes the situation very dangerous to give ANY tech to Ragnar.

Pretend that you are watching your favourite action-based cartoon and you see that the heroes are about to get ambushed. You shout "look out, it's a trap!" (well, maybe you might just think it in your head), but they don't listen. Sure enough, they do the equivalent of trading Mysticism to Ragnar and then they get themselves into a really terrible situation. Now, we're not part of a cartoon show here, so we don't really need to set up a plot that puts us in trouble in order for the game to be exciting, do we?

Other than neglecting the bonus for other AI's knowing the tech they are extremely accurate. We might lose/gain 1-2 beakers depending how rounding works with the 1.2 bonus from knowing a pre-requisite, otherwise they are accurate to the beaker, though we could choose to get more/less by altering our future strategy of course.

Construction won't come in trade. That's the assumption that we need to make, since it will be so hard to get.

Thus, I think that we have to give up on the idea of getting Theology before the end of the Golden Age.

However, I'd want to see more accurate Flask numbers if we really needed to make this decision (which I do not think that we need to do since you seemed to require us to get Construction in trade in time for it to work). We didn't just say that "The Pyramids will cost us 750 / 2.25 Hammers," we actually played out a test game to find out how long they would take to build. By the way, "750 / 2.25 Hammers" would have given us an incorrect value, since there were many, many turns where we did not have a multiple of 4 base Hammers in Paris.

Victoria has a wine available for trade, but William still hasn't hooked up any gems.

Can we Net our Crab and get her Wine?

If the answer is "no, she already has Crab" (I seem to remember early screenshots with her having a lot of Seafood Resources to the north of her capital and I think that Crab was one of them), then we'd simply cancel one of the 2 Resource Trading deals with Cathy and see about giving the Crab to Cathy for her Sheep or Cow, then giving the Resource that Vicky wants to Vicky instead.

Actually, when I looked at the saved game the last time, we seem to have combined the Resources into a single trade with Cathy, which makes things a bit more annoying for cancelling trades with her, but since we'll have 3 possible Resources to work with, we'll just have to check which 2 of the 3 she wants and make sure that Vicky will want the other one, and we should be fine.

Whoever has Gold per Turn, if either of them does, can get the Marble for a Resource + Gold per Turn.

Your understanding is correct, and that calculation would be useful, because if 4 AI's need to know construction the chances of us getting it in trade would be fairly low. In those circumstances would it be more realistic to research construction before aesthetics if we could trade for it when only 2 AI's know it?

Yeah, we're going to have to get really lucky (or unlucky, as the case may be) with multiple AIs learning Construction in order to get it in trade. I say "unlucky" since the second-worst tech that AIs can get after Feudalism is Construction, what with Catapults being very messy and with at least 2 Ivory being in AIs' hands.

Aesthetics is also a relatively-tough-to-get-in-trade tech, as we'll need to see 3 AIs get it before Cathy or Willem will give it to us, but Willem is busy on Machinery.

One silver lining on being able to get Aesthetics in trade is that Joao was Friendly towards Isabella the last time that you screenshotted the F4 -> GLANCE screen. It thus might be possible for us to see a trade between those two AIs which helps to spread-around Aesthetics.

I have attached a couple of screenshots. I have to do something else now, but I should be able to post my plan for resolving the Ragnar situation in 1-1.5 hours.

I can't really tell if our Triremes have moved or if our Galley can get into position from the screenshot alone, so I can't really offer any feedback on the issue until I learn more.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Another thought:
What techs do we expect to get in trade at this point?

Calendar.

That's probably about it, unless we're willing to wait for quite some time in order to get Construction or Aethestics... which is possibly fine to do, in my mind, since delaying Research and then getting one or both of these in trade might be preferable to self-teching them at about the same time that enough of the other AIs learn these techs for them to be tradeable to us.


Therefore, we could certainly consider making the following trade immediately: "Code of Laws <-> Cathy's 140 Gold."

We're not likely to see such huge sums of Gold available many times in the game, except for maybe after a Wonder gets built, and we'd still have Philsophy as a possible tech to trade to her in the future.

The downside is that we'd probably need to trade "Philosophy <-> Calendar + some Gold" at some point, since Code of Laws' value would be even further decreased. But, seeing as how we don't anticipate getting many techs in trade, we're probably better off trading Philosophy for Calendar (later, at the last minute) than we are in letting that 140 Gold disappear and then trading "Code of Laws + some Gold <-> Calendar."

 

[mdy]

The Ragnar defence plan:

on T+1 Trieme 2 moves to a blocking position 2S 3W of marble. Trieme 1 moves 1N 2NE.

There will then only be 3 ways Ragnar can access our empire:

1) He will take a vey long way round via Siberia (ignored as is no problem)

2) He will go all the way around the horses island.

3) He will try to take the route via the gold clams tile.

If he goes for option 3, then on T+2 trieme 2 moves to 3S 2W of gold, and trieme 1 moves to 1S 4W of marble. We then declare war and Ragnar will be forced to loop around the island west of marble.

On T+3 trieme 1 can then move to 2S 3W of marble. Ragnar will then either go off via Siberia or will have to loop all the way around the horses island south of marble.

By leaving only one route around that island at a time we can keep his galleys trapped there permenantly. Both triemes would be assigned to this to give us flexibility should another enemy galley show up somewhere.

If he goes for option 2) we follow the same basic strategy, we just don't need to send a trieme to a temporary blocking position 3S 2W of gold.

The save has been uploaded for anyone who wants to look at it.

 

[babybluepants]

We could potentially give Willem Machinery for Calendar. How long ago did he start on it? I mean, can we estimate the extent of his progress on it? Otherwise, I'd be ok with the Currency trade. Let's not give away cash in trades.

I'd totally trade Myst for 50g.

Edit: xpost

 

[mdy]

Whilst the estimate for total beakers is accurate I forgot to include the beakers we still need to put into machinery. This leaves us 90 beakers short in total (excluding bonus from other AI's knowing a tech), fortunately we can make this up by hiring additional scientists.

As the chances of getting construction in trade look very low we have the following options.

1) Accept that we are never going to get theology on a useful timescale.
2) Self tech theology, and delay our golden age by 5T so we can revolt to theocracy in the golden age (this would also give us a bigger window for tech trades and avoid the need for starving certain cities).
3) Delay the golden age by a smaller number of turns and self tech part of theology after the golden age.

The question is: Would access to theocracy make up for delaying the start of our wars by 5T?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I would like to declare an Emegency Situation until Ragnar is dealt with.

To me, that means that I would like to see a turn-by-turn breakdown of what you plan to do, including all of your plans. When I say "all," I mean all: unit movements, tech trades, resource trades, etc.

The situation can VERY quickly blow up. We CAN avoid losing Cities to Ragnar, but it looks like it is going to take a lot of work.

The most important things to remember here are:
a) It is turn-based strategy. We can take as much time as we need to plan things out
AND
b) You have a team here to help you make good decisions, but we can only help if you let us. More screenshots or more uploading of the saved game on a turn-by-turn basis plus each turn planned out ahead of time will allow us to help you

Since Ragnar's movements can be unpredictable, I suggest that you only need to plan out "the current" turn plus "the next turn" at a time and then pause, but when executing "the next turn," you'd pause play before ending the turn, in case there are other things that we will need to do.

 

[mdy]

I agree that we can afford to delay trading for calendar. Trading for calendar with COL will set us back 125 gold, and we don't have 125 spare gold. If we traded currency to Cathy at the last moment, and we made her our first target she would not have much time to make use of it.

If we don't trade for Ragnar'g gold where else could we get it? He may be more likely to research feudalism once we gift it to him, but given his relatively slow tech rate I don't think we would have too much to worry about.

 

[mdy]

Since Ragnar's movements can be unpredictable, I suggest that you only need to plan out "the current" turn plus "the next turn" at a time and then pause, but when executing "the next turn," you'd pause play before ending the turn, in case there are other things that we will need to do.

Given that we barely have a month left I'm not sure we have time to do this. Blocking Ragnar with 2 triemes is not that difficult as long as you are carefull and don't leave triemes on sentry.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

The Ragnar defence plan:

I'm sorry, but I don't really see what you're doing here as being a solution.

on T+1 Trieme 2 moves to a blocking position 2S 3W of marble.

That location is NOT a blocking position. There is a Coast 1 square to the north of there. Ragnar can simply sail around you with no loss in movement points.


What we really need to do is:
1. Rally all of our boats (not counting Work Boats, although we don't have any Work Boats yet) to deal with the situation
AND
2. "Stay ahead" of Ragnar as much as we can with Trireme 2
AND
3. "Get ahead" of Ragnar, if at all possible, with Trireme 1

Since point 3 is going to be very unlikely, we'll need the other 2 boats to help support us.

Ragnar will have a target, which is likely our capital. However, he still needs to have SOME sort of a route that he can map to his land target, otherwise he will switch targets. So, every movement of every boat will count and each movement will be extremely crucial to get correct if we're going to survive this situation without losing Cities.


It appears that 3 of our 4 boats have already moved this turn.

The first thing that we need to do is send our eastern Trireme 3 squares to the west.

That Galley has to stop moving east and has to move to the west on the next turn.

By leaving only one route around that island at a time we can keep his galleys trapped there permenantly.

I don't actually see anywhere on the map where you can currently accomplish this feat with only 2 boats. However, even if we were to "trap" him, we'd have to be careful that he couldn't then reach a different City, as he would change his target City. As long as he has a direct path to his target City (which we're just going to have to assume is our capital), he'll keep sailing around and around until he can land his troops there. That's about the only fact that we can possibly abuse to avoid losing Cities at this point, which is why we need some turn-by-turn plans.


I'm very strongly also against Currency or Mysticism trades, so I'd like to see clear turn-by-turn plans so that we know what we're agreeing to.

The Machinery <-> Calendar trade is an intersting one. However, if we DO NOT plan to make this trade, then we should stop research on Machinery with 1 turn left to go. There is no need to complete Machinery as soon as possible, while doing so just speeds-up Willem's Research on Machinery.

So, either we'll plan to trade Machinery <-> Calendar or else we'll plan to stop research on Machinery with 1 turn left to go and switch to Compass.

It is hard to tell, but at this point I am thinking that we will not be able to make a "Machinery <-> Calendar" trade and would end up having to make a "Machinery + Code of Laws <-> Calendar" trade, as Willem will probably know too much of Machinery to give us Calendar for the remainder of his research.

As such, what we could do is:
1. Research Machinery until there is 1 turn left to go on it.
2. Start researching Compass until Willem has about 4 turns left to go on Machinery
3. Switch back to researching Machinery
4. Immediately trade Machinery + Code of Laws to Willem <-> Calendar

Both triemes would be assigned to this to give us flexibility should another enemy galley show up somewhere.

Barb Galleys should be the least of our concerns right now. As of right now, if Ragnar is going to attack us (and it doesn't look like he's heading towards Isabella so we have to assume that we are the target), he has pretty open access to our empire. If, and only if, we bring in our Galley + 3rd Trireme, we might be able to save our Cities.

Barb Galleys are not a threat that we can even be remotely concerned about if we want to come out of this situation without losing at least 1 City.