SGOTM 13 - One Short Straw

[Mitchum]

I say refuse the demand and move on...

 

[mdy]

I just turned down his demand and he has gone to "We have enough on our hands" mode, so he will probably come for us at some point.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Well, on the plus side, any AI that attacks us who DOES NOT know Metal Casting can relatively easily have their entire offensive army sunk.

On the negative side, we may need to watch two areas of our empire.

On the crazy side, we don't even know which area of our empire that Joao could potentially arrive from!


My guess is that he came through Vicky's lands to meet us, though, since his Work Boat appeared to arrive from the east.

 

[mdy]

There's not much we can really do about Jao, unless we want to build yet another trieme in Stone at the expense of not having a barracks there when we revolt to police state. If we did this we would not change our builds till T161 so I intend to play out that far if there are no objections in the next half our or so and then pause for further discussion. We would also no what GP we got in the capital at that point, and have a better idea of what we may be able to trade with the AI for.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

There's not much we can really do about Jao, unless we want to build yet another trieme in Stone at the expense of not having a barracks there when we revolt to police state. If we did this we would not change our builds till T161 so I intend to play out that far if there are no objections in the next half our or so and then pause for further discussion. We would also no what GP we got in the capital at that point, and have a better idea of what we may be able to trade with the AI for.

If we're going to build yet another Trireme in Stone City, I'd prefer to do so after completing the Forge... so, we'd have at least that long until we'd need to decide on Barracks versus yet another Trireme (aka Trireme 5--with one of the 5 being dead).


It has taken Ragnar at least this long before attacking, so Joao likely doesn't have a fleet ready either (let's hope).

Also, the plan is to have a 3rd Trireme around the Iron, right? That's probably the best that we can do in terms of Joao for now, particularly without knowing exactly where he is located.

If you were to build anything new in the build orders, then I'd say build another Warrior before building a Barracks somewhere and place it on the Horse Island to the east of Iron Island.

It is still possible that Joao's Work Boat travelled far around the world before passing through Vicky's area, but "in the direction of Vicky" is the best that we have to go on for now.

 

[mdy]

I've played till 161 and uploaded the save for people to look at.


The tech trade situation does not looks, and William has gone off to research machinery. Fortunately we got a GS in the capital so we can research machinery next.

I scouted Ragnar's capital a couple of turns ago and he had 1 more catapult there and nothing else.

In the circumstance I'm thinking of keeping our builds the same despite the Jao situation.

I'm also thinking of hiring an extra scientist in marble by starving it to boost our research a little, we may need it.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I can't look at the saved game until a few hours from now, but I'll try and make some comments based on what you said.


EDIT: Ignore the following spoilered point, as my next message gives a different recommendation (based on me having looked at the real game while writing my next message). How do you guys do those "strike-through" lines through text? I don't see such an option the on-screen text editor.

Spoiler :

The tech trade situation does not looks, and William has gone off to research machinery. Fortunately we got a GS in the capital so we can research machinery next.

So, I am assuming that we have yet to complete research on Compass, right?

If Willem is researching Machinery, shouldn't we delay researching Machinery for as long as possible, so as to get a minor boost to research for 1 other AI knowing it?

I scouted Ragnar's capital a couple of turns ago and he had 1 more catapult there and nothing else.

Do you mean to say that Ragnar still has 2 Archers + 2 Galleys in addition to the Catapult? If I understand things correctly, that means that Ragnar has 2 Galleys that are full of Military Units (4 Military Units loaded) and will wait for at least 1 more Galley and 1 more land-based Military Unit before heading out to attack with 3 fully-loaded Galleys.

At least we can rely on the fact that an AI won't attack with a partially-full Galley. Silly AIs.

In the circumstance I'm thinking of keeping our builds the same despite the Jao situation.

Which circumstances are those?

Either Ragnar doesn't have Galleys in his capital anymore and only a Catapult (I think that this belief is a mis-interpretation of what you said but I am not sure),

or Ragnar is currently planning to fill-up at least 3 Galleys, meaning that things can quickly get pretty dicey (aka pretty random-number-generation-luck-based) if we only have 2 Triremes to deal with him.

I'm also thinking of hiring an extra scientist in marble by starving it to boost our research a little, we may need it.

I don't mind if you empty the Foodbox, but please try not to starve down enough to lose a population point, as doing so is rather costly. I'd prefer to have the extra 45 Hammers from whipping than to lose a population point outright.

Essentially, "0 Food or more" is fine, but please stay out of having negative Food.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

So, it looks like:
We do not have a Warrior on Ragnar's island, so we will have no advance warning of him setting-out with his Galleys. However, we do have a Warrior on the SW Horse Island that is spawn-busting for Barb Galleys.

Marble City's Cultural Borders will expand in 4 turns, too, giving us further anti-Barb-Galley coverage in that area.

As such, I suggest the following:

Proposal #1: Adjusting the positioning of our Triremes
"Trireme 1" should move to a position that puts it NE + NE of Nidaros (1N of Ragnar's Plains Iron).
"Trireme 2" should move to a position that puts it NW + W of Marble City (S + S of Gold City's Fish and 1N of Marble City's western Clam).

In this way, we can effectively block Ragnar.

Should Ragnar's Galleys move towards us, the fastest path to us will have them move NE + NE + NE out of Nidaros. On the following turn, they can move N + N + NE (or some combination of NW + NE = N + N... whatever).

The point is that at this stage, Ragnar's Galleys will be ONE SQUARE AWAY from the only effective "blocking position." The "blocking position" is S + S + S of the DesH Iron and is circled in the image below with a light-orange-coloured circle and is labelled "HERE IS OUR 'BLOCKING POSITION.'" The "blocking position" is 7 squares away from Nidaros... while Ragnar can only move 6 squares in 2 turns.

Thus, Trireme 1, upon seeing Ragnar leave his capital, will see Ragnar's Galleys being 1NE of our Trireme 1. Of course, Ragnar's boats could go after another player, but let's not worry about that possibility for now. At this point, Trireme 1 goes NE (on top of Ragnar's Galleys) + N + N (SE of the northern Grassland Jungle Dye and NW + W of the non-Magical Fish).

On the same turn, Trireme 2 will move SW + SW + SW, which puts it SE + E + E of the DesH Iron and NW + W + W of the GHorse.

On the second turn of Ragnar's Galleys moving, assuming that they are beelining towards us, they will move N + N + NE (or some combination of moves similar to that path). At this stage, we can still block them, as he will either be on the yellow-coloured circle that is labelled "RAGNAR GETS BLOCKED HERE" or will be 1W of there.

Next, we move our Triremes:
Trireme 1 moves NE + N and skips its turn.
Trireme 2 moves W + SW + SW, arriving on the same square as Trireme 1.

At this point, after having moved our Triremes, we can declare war on Ragnar.

That way, we will have 2 Triremes positioned between Ragnar's fleet and our empire.

I have no idea if Ragnar will attack us with his fully-loaded Galleys, if he'll unload his units on land and then attack us with his empty Galleys, or simply try to go around us by going the long way around his island (which buys us a TON of time, by the way). Regardless, we'll be in an excellent position.

We do NOT want to try any heroics like we did with the Barb Galley... attacking with a Trireme is going to be risking bad news, while defending with Triremes is going to be the best thing that we can do. If we were to attack and end up losing, then we would be looking at facing a Combat II Galley as well as at least one (probably at least 2 more) fully healthy Galleys, and only 1 Trireme between us and certain doom. So, we want to fight this war defensively, and the above method is how we would go about doing so (playing defensively with the Triremes).


EVery other position along the way has 2 adjacent Coast squares, so only that one location, with it's "narrow path" of a single Coast square is valid for blocking Ragnar, and with proper planning, our Triremes can be in place to effectively block him.



Proposal #2: Stick with Machinery -> Compass for our Research Path
It's going to take Willem around 13 turns to research Machinery. Meanwhile, it would take us 4 turns at 100% Science to research Compass and 7 turns to research Machinery (and we seem to have a ton of Gold saved-up so we can stay at a 100% Science Rate for a while). So, it will take him too long to learn Machinery (13 > [4 + 7] -> 13 > 11), thus, sure, we can go for:
Machinery -> Compass, with the hopes that Compass may come up in trade during the time that it takes to learn Machinery.



Proposal #3: Do stuff with our Workers
We have 2 Workers sitting idle on Iron Island. The least that we can do is finish building Roads on every square except for the Iron there.

It would be particularly nice if our Galley could beeline that area to pick up one of the Workers and bring it to Marble island, where the Worker can build a Workshop.



Proposal #4: Stone City should switch the DesH Mine to the GWorkshop
This way, we can grow in 1 turn and then work both squares on the following turn.

Of course, on the following turn, you'll want to ensure that the new citizen works the DesH Mine instead of a Coast.



Proposal #5: Keep an eye on both Willem's and Cathy's Gold per Turn values
Right now, Willem is offering 2 Gold per Turn as a tradeable item.

Next turn, our Stone <-> Willem's Pig deal can be cancelled at any time.

Since Willem has not expanded to another City (although it looks like everyone else has done so), he shouldn't have Stone by now.

So, for future turns, keep an eye on the F4 -> RESOURCES screen to see how much Gold per Turn Willem is offering. If that value is greater than 0, you should be able to cancel the Stone <-> Pig deal and get Stone <-> "Pig + some Gold per Turn."


Similarly, the Marble <-> Cow deal with Cathy could be renegotiated for Marble <-> Cow + Gold per Turn as soon as Cathy offers up any Gold per Turn value.

If you are paranoid, then wait until the Crab is hooked up, but at a minimum, from that point onwards, please plan to watch for any Gold per Turn values from either of these two AIs so that we can renegotiate to get this Gold per Turn "for free" as part of our Stone and Marble deals.



Proposal #6: Let's take advantage of our current Pleased relationships
Right now, only Willem is Pleased with us. Have you made a Demand out of him yet? If the answer is "no," then I do not think that we should delay doing so any further.

Our Solders value is 97000. The highest AI Soldiers value is 161000.

The F9 GRAPHS page shows our relative Powers having a ratio roughly of: 112 to 189. Using that ratio, his Power would come out to around 163000, which is "close enough" to 161000 for my minorly-imprecise pixel-gazing effort. So, either he IS the top AI in Power or is very close to being the top AI for Power (maybe tied for first place or close to there).

Right now he has 70 Gold.

The sooner that we make a Demand, the sooner that we'll be able to Demand a second time.

So, I propose that we make the Demand now.

Using the (currently-not-quite-accurate) calculation method, he would be willing to give-in to a Gold Demand of:
({([161 - 79] + 50) * 2} * 97000) / 161000
= ({(82 + 50) * 2} * 97000) / 161000
= ({132 * 2} * 97000) / 161000
= (264 * 97000) / 161000
= 25608000 / 161000
= 159

My testing shows that you should "fudge" that number somewhere between 81% and 89% of it. But, let's be ridiculously cautious and use a "fudge factor" of 70%.

That would mean that we could safely Demand:
159 * 70%
= 111 Gold

Since 70 Gold is less than 111 Gold, I say that we should "go for it" and just take the money (all 70 Gold) and run. Sure, Willem might get more money if we wait, but he might also spend what he has... and the longer that we wait to make the Demand, the chances of being able to Demand twice from him in this game go down.



Proposal #7: Let's watch for future Pleased relationships with other AIs
We seem to be racking up the negative Diplo modifiers, but if any other AI gets Pleased with us, then we should strongly consider making a Gold Demand out of them at that point in time.

Our Power level is still low (and will be for quite some time), so we don't really have the luxury of being able to make a successful Demand from any AI that is not Pleased or Friendly towards us.


In other news:
Willem seems to have Monarchy. Did he self-tech it?


Cathy seems to have completed The Temple of Artemis a few turns ago.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I'm also thinking of hiring an extra scientist in marble by starving it to boost our research a little, we may need it.

If doing so causes the Great Person comes early (I did not check if it might), I would suggest that you do not alter the date on which you plan to launch the Golden Age.

The Golden Age timing is pretty precise, so it's not really worth messing with that timing unless you're prepared to do some extensive re-testing with a test game to validate that launching the Golden Age earlier wouldn't mess up our Great-Person-Generation plan.

 

[Mitchum]

Good job, mdy!! Things are going according to plan as much as we can control them.

I'm away from my game machine until Wednesday, so I won't have a chance to look at the save. Dhoom's comments/proposals seems to make sense (even without seeing the save ). I'll add my two cents when I can but things appear to be under control.

BTW, by the time Joao is ready to attack us for refusing his demand, we should already own his capital!!

 

[mdy]

The Golden Age timing is pretty precise, so it's not really worth messing with that timing unless you're prepared to do some extensive re-testing with a test game to validate that launching the Golden Age earlier wouldn't mess up our Great-Person-Generation plan.

I completely agree.

We do not have a Warrior on Ragnar's island, so we will have no advance warning of him setting-out with his Galleys. However, we do have a Warrior on the SW Horse Island that is spawn-busting for Barb Galleys.

That was to ensure that we would not be flanked by barb galleys while we scouted Ragnars capital.

"Trireme 1" should move to a position that puts it NE + NE of Nidaros (1N of Ragnar's Plains Iron).
"Trireme 2" should move to a position that puts it NW + W of Marble City (S + S of Gold City's Fish and 1N of Marble City's western Clam).

If we adopted this strategy we would leave both crab and marbles fish potentially vulnerable to barb galleys. I could land our warrior currently here on Ragnar's landmass in 4T if we wanted continual spying on Ragnar's capital.

Unfortunately, unless Ragnar is going after Izzy we would not be able to tell whether Ragnar would be going after us or another AI until it was too late.

I can't remember any AI galley loaded with troops attacking another unit. We could keep 1 trieme there, and leave the other in a position to protect our nets against barb galleys.

2.Machinery -> Compass, with the hopes that Compass may come up in trade during the time that it takes to learn Machinery.

Proposal #4: Stone City should switch the DesH Mine to the GWorkshop

We seem to be racking up the negative Diplo modifiers, but if any other AI gets Pleased with us, then we should strongly consider making a Gold Demand out of them at that point in time.

Agreed.

Proposal #3: Do stuff with our Workers

If we built a warrior here before the lighthouse we could transport it to the island SE of iron to act as a Jao "early warning" when the galley went there to pick up the workers. With all the warriors built we would then be free to hook up the iron, and send 2 workers into our core.


What do you think it would be more useful for our workers to do? Pre chop a couple of forests, or build a couple of workshops which would be rarely used. I'm leaning towards chopping forests as it might allow us to start our first war earlier , and in the early stages of our military buildup we would probably want to have an extra food instead of a hammer in order to allow us to whip quicker.

Proposal #6: Let's take advantage of our current Pleased relationships

I'll do that now.

Willem seems to have Monarchy. Did he self-tech it?

It looks like he actually made a metal-casting-monarchy trade with Cathy. This is something we are going to have to watch out for in future, as Ragnar getting MC would be a disaster.

Do you mean to say that Ragnar still has 2 Archers + 2 Galleys in addition to the Catapult?

As of T159 (2 turns ago) he had 2 galleys + 2 archers + 1 catapult there.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

We do not have a Warrior on Ragnar's island, so we will have no advance warning of him setting-out with his Galleys. However, we do have a Warrior on the SW Horse Island that is spawn-busting for Barb Galleys.

That was to ensure that we would not be flanked by barb galleys while we scouted Ragnars capital.

It's probably a better location for the Warrior, as far as I am concerned.

Once Marble City's borders expand, that Warrior on the SW Horse Island will probably spawn-bust everything but 1, maybe 2, squares there, which is already pretty darned solid.

"Trireme 1" should move to a position that puts it NE + NE of Nidaros (1N of Ragnar's Plains Iron).
"Trireme 2" should move to a position that puts it NW + W of Marble City (S + S of Gold City's Fish and 1N of Marble City's western Clam).

If we adopted this strategy we would leave both crab and marbles fish potentially vulnerable to barb galleys. I could land our warrior currently here on Ragnar's landmass in 4T if we wanted continual spying on Ragnar's capital.

As I said, it looks like Marble City's borders will expand in 4 turns, so Marble City is a small risk.

For now, Trireme 2's position will be sufficient to defend all of Marble City's Seafood, at least until we need to move towards Ragnar.

Unfortunately, the Crab is placed in a tough-to-defend location no matter how we place our Triremes. I do not think that we can worry too much about it--we have a Warrior up on Fur Island that blocks a lot of the possible spawning and the few squares that are remaining are just a risk that we're going to have to accept. I don't really see a valid way to defend the Crab without completely dedicating a Trireme to the area.

What we could do is not net the Crab until we need it, leaving the Work Boat to spawn-bust the area to the north of the Crab... I don't have the game open right now, but maybe the Work Boat would be able to sit 2 squares away from the Crab and still be able to offer spawn-busting protection up there? If not, then we might as well just net the Crab and accept the fact that it may get "eaten" by a Barb Galley (although there's a small chance of a Barb Galley spawning up there).

Unfortunately, unless Ragnar is going after Izzy we would not be able to tell whether Ragnar would be going after us or another AI until it was too late.

I don't know about you, but Ragnar heading quite a ways to the NE and then finally doubling-back west doesn't seem as direct to Isabella's area as him heading slightly east, south, then west.

I would say that based on the geography, if Ragnar goes towards the NE, he'll be coming for us. Trireme 1's position will be able to ascertain which direction he moves by moving to the NE in advance of Ragnar's Galleys... if they also continue going NE on the following turn, then we have to assume that he's going to attack us.

At that point, we will "know" that he is coming for us. The suggestion given earlier was that we should proactively declare war on him.

I can't remember any AI galley loaded with troops attacking another unit. We could keep 1 trieme there, and leave the other in a position to protect our nets against barb galleys.

The way I see it, I'd much rather get the +10% defensive bonus on our side of the fighting instead of on Ragnar's side of the fighting. If he doesn't attack us and decides to "sail around his island" to try and get to us, then we can just patiently wait for Galleons before engaging his ships.

Also, moving 2 Triremes onto the same square as each other is only a temporary measure. Here's how it would work:
We'd follow Proposal #1. Then, we'd see what Ragnar does next.

If he attacks us, yaaa, we're in the money, as he's an idiot.

If he runs away, then we leave ONE Trireme there and we send the other Trireme 3 squares away to the NE. Ragnar will then either:
a) Move next to our Trireme, at which point we know that he is "courageous enough" to attack a single Trireme but not 2 Triremes. In that case, we'll have to leave 2 Triremes there. I'm sorry, but losing a couple of Seafood to Barbs is a minor irritant compared to having Ragnar landing troops next to our Cities (or even amphibiously assaulting the Cities directly with their Warrior defenders).
OR
b) Won't show up, at which point we'll know that 1 single Trireme is enough of a blocker to scare away Ragnar, at least until a couple of turns after he learns Metal Casting and can whip a Trireme. In that case, we can afford to move Trireme 2 back to its "TRIREME 2 GOES HERE" position, so that it can still "double up" with Trireme 1 if necessary (i.e. if Ragnar learns Metal Casting) but otherwise will be on "anti-Barb-Galley duty."

If you can spot another location from where we can defend, let me know--that one square--the "HERE IS OUR 'BLOCKING POSITION'" location--is the only spot that I could see on the map. It's like building a City Wall and parking a couple of Archers in a "chokepoint" City--the goal is just to delay the AI from attacking, or, if the AI attacks, to make it pay with all but guaranteed losses, until we can get our own military up and running.

No need to play the "hero" and try to attack--a loss of a Trireme would be pretty catastrophic, but playing defensive gives us such great odds that we'd be pretty darned safe.

So, while I agree that we should be able to try moving Trireme 2 away in case he does not attack, I think that we need to be prepared for him to try attacking and thus we should plan to have both Triremes in position on the "HERE IS OUR 'BLOCKING POSITION'" square right before we declare war on him, which gives us the least risk overall, while still allowing Trireme 2 to go back towards our empire if Ragnar runs away and then also "stays away" after having moved Trireme 2 away for one turn.

If we built a warrior here before the lighthouse we could transport it to the island SE of iron to act as a Jao "early warning" when the galley went there to pick up the workers. With all the warriors built we would then be free to hook up the iron, and send 2 workers into our core.

That's fine (Warrior before Lighthouse), but in the meantime, the Workers should at least be building Roads. What if an AI lands on Iron Island? It'll be nice to have flexibility in movement in case of such a landing.

What do you think it would be more useful for our workers to do? Pre chop a couple of forests, or build a couple of workshops which would be rarely used. I'm leaning towards chopping forests as it might allow us to start our first war earlier , and in the early stages of our military buildup we would probably want to have an extra food instead of a hammer in order to allow us to whip quicker.

Chopping is fine, but it is really painful to see them Sleeping. You're really making me regret sending both Workers to the same island.


Proposal #4 seems pretty straight-forward, so presumably, you'll be doing it, too.

It looks like he actually made a metal-casting-monarchy trade with Cathy. This is something we are going to have to watch out for in future, as Ragnar getting MC would be a disaster.

Gah, that's sucky. Fortunately, Ragnar is the "dumb kid on the block." From my experience, no AI will trade with him as long as he remains the world's biggest dummy. That's another reason not to give him Mysticism, in addition to discouraging him from trading-up towards Feudalism.

As of T159 (2 turns ago) he had 2 galleys + 2 archers + 1 catapult there.

Okay, that's pretty convincing to me: he's got 2 full Galleys and is waiting for more Galleys before attacking.

So, we should have a window of time to get our Triremes into position, but, of course, on your way SW with Trireme 1, do move the Trireme 1 square at a time, just in case Ragnar has sent out his fleet within the last 1 or 2 turns.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Note that the island to the SE of Iron City has a Forest on it. You know, in case you wanted to Chop it.

 

[mdy]

I've been looking at Dhooms plan in more detail and the situation in gold is better than I though, because barb galleys cannot travel through ocean tiles within your cultural borders. This means only the crab net would be potentially vulnerable, and if we delay netting it till we need it and use the galley to transport our workers to chop the forests in that area, then we can defend it with the galley for most of the time.

 

[mdy]

How long do you think we will want to keep our barb busting/early warning warriors in their current positions?

If we go ahead with the planned deployments we will be short of 1 garrison in stone and iron. We can build warriors as garrisons for them before we start our buildup in marble and gold, but this would mean delaying the hook up of our iron, so we would have to keep 1 worker on that island, meaning a lot more wasted worker turns.

Apart from this potential issue I think I am now ready to play on.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

How long do you think we will want to keep our barb busting/early warning warriors in their current positions?

If we go ahead with the planned deployments we will be short of 1 garrison in stone and iron. We can build warriors as garrisons for them before we start our buildup in marble and gold, but this would mean delaying the hook up of our iron, so we would have to keep 1 worker on that island, meaning a lot more wasted worker turns.

Apart from this potential issue I think I am now ready to play on.

If the tradeoff is between one Worker staying on Iron Island versus not having enough Warriors, then I'd say just keep one of the Workers on Iron Island and delay connecting the Iron until later.

While each additional unit will soon start costing us Gold per Turn, that situation is going to be inevitable, and I'd rather have a few extra Warriors that can act as future Military Police than have to use Axemen/Macemen/Pikemen/Trebs as Military Police units--the units would cost us the same in terms of Gold per Turn costs but the Warriors would be cheaper Hammer-wise.


If a Worker is mostly used for Forest Chopping, then one versus two Workers doing the job won't be that much different in terms of efficiency, given that we only have one Galley. Thus, I'm okay with only using 1 of the Workers for Forest-Chopping duty.


It wouldn't hurt to finish Roading Iron Island everywhere except for the Iron square, though.

 

[shyuhe]

Sorry been a bit busy...

The only thing I can add off the top of my head is that AI galleys will NOT attack a naval unit (not sure if a WB counts) if it is loaded with troops. Back in SGOTM9 or so (the original Russian nuke one), Murky had the ingenious strategy of forcing enemy boats filled with troops to turn back because the only "passable" tile was a tile occupied by a galley.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Good to know, so the idea will likely work.

Still, I don't want to change the idea to only having 1 Trireme there... what if Mr. Sea-faring Ragnar decides to send some non-empty boats along with any such attack? We can't really know... so, best to stick with the plan and play it safely by doubling-up the Triremes and then sending 1 away on the following to see if Ragnar "stays away" or "comes back."

If he stays away, then according to what you said, probably all of his boats will be full of units, which, if we leave Trireme 1 parked on the "HERE IS OUR 'BLOCKING POSITION'" square, we should be able to delay our conflict with Ragnar until after we have Galleons in the water.


Of course, what we don't know is whether or not Ragnar will have empty boats or will decide to unload his units and thus "create" empty boats if he is blocked... so, play it safe with the 2 Triremes stacked on top of each other when declaring war.


Even better, of course, is if Ragnar loops to the east then south, in which case we won't need to declare war at all and can laugh at Isabella.

 

[shyuhe]

I believe an AI invasion force will always come with "escort" ships that don't have any troops on them. Normally the AI uses triremes, caravels, and the such as escort naval units. So we should assume that Ragnar will bring 2-3 galleys with troops + 1-2 escort galleys.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

So we should assume that Ragnar will bring 2-3 galleys with troops + 1-2 escort galleys.

One thing that I've always wondered is: if you have excess Galleys or Galleons in a stack, but the strongest Galley or Galleon (say, the one with Combat I while the others don't have any promotions) has troops inside of it, which boat defends? An empty boat or the Combat I boat that has troops in it?

Also, if a boat with units in it loses, do the troops get sunk or can they "automatically transfer" to one of the empty boats in the same stack? "Swim for it!" Hehe. Actually, it's more like "okay, while the enemy is destroying this ship, we'll sneak out the back across the gangplank to a different ship." Of course, this ability might not be supported in the game, which is why I'm asking.