In the east, we now have 3 galleons, 4 maces, and 5 trebs built. Next turn, we will get a galleon and two maces, bringing our total to 4 galleons, 6 maces, and 5 trebs. So we need to move our fleet east and get ready to set sail.
So, do we have time to shuttle the Worker that is south of Marble City to the SW Horse Island without delaying the eastern front or is the answer: "no, we won't have time"?
Hague (mace--archer--mace). Maybe mace--mace--archer (didn't calculate overflow).
Well, if the overflow looks to be too much for a Maceman at the time, then you could consider getting a Treb as the second build item, if doing so will let the Treb remain as a 2-pop-whip.
Utrecht (treb--mace--archer)
If we aim to build a Galleon, then we can Galleon-chain the units to the 4th Galleon, saving a turn on arriving at Isabella's area. If it appears that we might have more than sufficient land troops (12) to fill 4 Galleons, then doing so would be my suggestion.
Culture 0% this turn, 100% next two turns to pop Dutch cities.
Do we really need 100% for 2 turns?
I think that the goal should be to have a high enough Cultural Slider on the first turn to expand the borders of The Hague and Utrecht in one turn... the two eastern Cities can optionally wait a couple of additional turns, since they do have Confucianism and won't be high-population-Cities that don't have sufficient squares to work.
Also, I realize now that I made an error: I forgot to count Trade Routes in the Commerce. So, it's likely that a Cultural Slider closer to 80% for 1 turn could work.
For the second turn, I'd prefer to keep the Cultural Slider high enough to avoid population loss, but not necessarily go any higher. That way, we could potentially sustain this Cultural Slider value for a couple of turns, until the population points get used-up, rather than spending 2 turns at higher-than-needed values only to risk running at lower-than-needed (to prevent population loss) values on future turns.
Northern troops:
T+0: promote Moscow mace to C2.
T+1: All but C2 mace board boat (assuming Cathy shows no troops).
T+2: Unload troops north of Yaro.
T+3: Conquer/raze Yaro.
I'm assuming that you'll also promote:
- The City Raider II unit that has 8/8 XP--Maceman 3 (Paris)--to CRIII
- Pachacuti (our GG) to Medic III
Wouldn't we rather that at least the 7/8 XP City Raider II Maceman take the time to heal under the guidance of our Medic III?
The soon-to-be Combat II dude--Maceman 6 (Marble)--could get on the boat alongside the soon-to-be CR III dude--Maceman 3 (Paris)--giving us 2 Macemen on our Galleons, alongside our Trebs.
T + 1: We could take one of the Galleons that has a wounded Treb loaded onto it and unload that Treb by moving our Galleon directly into The Hague, where the Maceman 5 (Gold) would join the party, leaving the slightly-wounded Treb to act as a Military Police unit.
Assuming that you want that Treb back in your hands as soon as we have a replacement whipped Military Police unit in The Hague (or even if you wanted to take its whipped replacement from The Hague so that the veteran Treb could go to Isabella), then:
T + 1: We'd move one Galleon [the one that didn't go into The Hague out of Galleons 3 (Pig) and 4 (Iron)] to be relatively close to Yaroslav' (although maybe not too close so that the City is not threatened?) so that after that Galleon unloads, it can return towards The Hague to be able to pick up the Treb that we dropped off or else its whipped replacement.
That plan gives us a chance to make use of our Medic III unit as a temporary defender of Moscow and allows it to heal the City Raider II unit, while still having 3 Maces to attack Yaroslavl'.
Southern troops:
...
Looking at the map, I'd be ok spending 3 turns razing the gems city before heading towards Madrid too.
We have 4 Macemen, one of which is severely wounded and is currently residing in St. Petersburg.
We lose nothing by still doing the following:
T+0: promote mace to C1 and garrison St. Pete.
On T+1, we'll probably want to go by land instead of by sea to hit the western Gem City.
So, here's the gambit:
Since we only have 4 Macemen in the area, we can finesse 3 of them to go to the western Gem City, while leaving the extremely-wounded City Raider unit to defend St. Petersburg.
To do so, we'd first move 1 unit onto the GHRiver Sheep, to see if there are any incoming units from the NW, and if there are, then just keep the C1 unit in St. Petersburg but march the wounded City Raider unit into battle.
If nothing appears, then we have the option of sending the C1 unit into battle and leaving St. Petersburg poorly defended.
Actually, I just looked again, and that extremely-wounded unit only has 0.8/8 Health--it would probably die if it lost even 1 dice roll--so, no, it's not a good candidate to bring with the stack.
So, we might as well not bring that extremely-wounded City Raider with us. Instead, it will just be a decision between bringing the C1 unit or going west with only 2 Maces. I'm leaning towards leaving the C1 Maceman defending St. Petersburg while the City Raider Maceman heals there. Being 1 dice roll (10% of its Hitpoints) away from death makes the City Raider Maceman pretty bad at defending--no point risking losing a Maceman AND the City.
While we'll only have 2 Macemen going to the western Gem City, we WILL have 4 Trebs, which, given that it was a later-founded City, should be sufficient units to capture the City.
I guess the question is whether Izzy will research feudalism within the next 7-10 turns or not.
It will be nice to take down the Gem City, to reduce the pressure off of a counter-attack on St. Petersburg and to give ourselves a bit more time to gather troops for Isabella. We don't really have enough troops to fill 3 Galleons yet even, anyway, so we might as well put our troops to use by marching on the Gem City.
As I stated earlier, T + 2 we'd want to move onto the Grassland Road instead of onto the Plains Hills Forest square, so that our units will be able to board Galleons without needing to move for a turn first. If our stack gets counter-attacked, it will probably be a good thing, since that could mean one less defender in the Gem City.
If we really want to speed up the attack on Isabella, then get an extra Galleon out of Utrecht (say, instead of the initial Treb build a Galleon), so that we can have a 1-turn Galleon chain.
We will probably want to sail more troops towards Isabella anyway, so it's not like such a Galleon will go to waste.