Fair enough about Commerce, although I'd still prefer to not have it whipped; perhaps to size 8/9.
Well, I personally don't care about those cities too much
But if we can take them, let's go for it, although I'd be inclined to raze Durocorturm since it will be a crappy city until Biology and just be costing us a lot of money.
I think the idea is that we want to end this war as soon as possible so that it doesn't dent our economy too much.
Plus, the vastness of the land just means that it will take FOREVER to kill out Brennus. If we assume our units are going to take n turns to get to a certain point on the map, the galleon will get us there in 0.25n +2 turns (one to load and one to unload).
Since we will be aiming to take lots of cities in very few turns, there is a possibility we will not even see Brennus's stack! That's because the AI are REALLY bad at multiple fronts. (I've actually done this before, albeit on Monarch when I wasn't so good at Civ). It's very very effective since the AI don't know what to do and a unit spammer like Brennus will be confused as to where to send his units.
We will effectively be shortening the war by a very significant margin in my opinion. Our option to go by sea becomes stronger based on the formula I said above. If it takes 4 turns for our units to get from one coastal spot to the other, the galleons get us there 1 turn faster. A coastal city or one off coast will mean it's an overall tie. But imagine if the distance is increased to 5 turns or 6 or even 10?
For example: From Durocorturm to Bibicarte will take our soldiers 7 turns to take but by boat, it will take us a total of 6 turns. Edit: If we already have the galleons positioned correctly, we would actually have Bibicarte on t5 of the war whereas it would take us until at least t7 of the war assuming our units need more time to heal. Also, this means it will be more likely that brennus will send reinforcements over.
This continent is way too big for us to take it all by foot. If we are trying to just take a couple of his cities, in my opinion, that is inefficient play (because it will take too long and those extra turns we waste on war effort could have instead gone towards research) when we could actually take most of his cities within a handful of turns.
Obviously, it's not an area of comfort for most players (including me) since it requires a lot of micromanagement of the army we will build and can be very complicated and may not work as well as planned but I still think it will regardless be better than just doing the normal war which is screaming inefficiency to me! This method that I have will probably require less units as well and will not give Brennus the chance to get lots of units out.
Plus, researching Eng for Trebs unlocks quite a bit of stuff for us. Notre Dame which is an AMAZING wonder in a Sushi game and having Eng first means we are more likely to build it.
Anyway, my vote will still be for Engineering first as it will let us formulate a reasonable plan, and will result in less casualties. CR3 Trebs have around 40% odds against fortified riflemen in a city after all. I'd MUCH rather have those than suicide cats which is once again, very inefficient play. It may win us the war, but all those hammers went to waste. Trebs are more likely to survive and when they do, they can easily be upgraded to Cannons and CR3 cannons are very powerful.
