I took a good long look at the state of play last night (and
d a little), but I think following Lanz's plan (on p.18) is pretty sound (some specifics of what I'm considering below). I also had a quick go at doing the trading, and got roughly similar results as suggested, so that's no worry.
A lot of the town-builds are fairly screwed up with respect to food/shield balance: e.g. Oslo has 3f+5s in its boxes, and is slowly building a Settler (7T, but grows to Pop7 in 2T, at which point the town may well riot without LUX%). If I switch to a Worker now, it will build in 1T, but Oslo will drop back to Pop5 with 6f in the bin, making the pump-setup more awkward (unless e.g. I build Wealth for 2T). Cash-rushing the Settler next turn would cost 80g.
(Note to the world at large: this is NOT how a 4T Settler-pump should work!).
Alternatively, I could carry on with the Settler, but work the nearby (but unroaded) Forests, getting it to 2FPT+6SPT -- which should build the Settler in 4T (wasting 1f),
provided Oslo gets at least 1s extra as it reaches Pop7 (I think it will, but I'm not 100% certain). That will drop it back to Pop5 with a full Gran and no food stored. Getting 5FPT+5SPT for 2T-Workers (Pop5-6) should then be feasible, but if not, then 2T of Wealth would get it back to Pop6, where 5FPT+5SPT definitely works (and the extra GPT/CPT is nice as well, right?)
Only problem is that while Oslo's working 2SPT+0CPT tiles, at SCI%=100, Feud would arrive in 10T instead of 9T -- but that should improve again once Oslo goes on Worker-pumping duty (when it can work more roaded tiles for lower SPT, higher CPT) -- and getting more towns settled should also help add CPT...
Meanwhile, back on the Fur-ranch (Trondheim)... I can actually get 11s over this IBT, before short-rushing CH and switching to Market (at 10SPT), then a Settler in another 3T (will waste a lorra lorra food, but that can't be helped). OTOH, if I can get Bergen onto Settler-pump duty instead of Trond, and Oslo doing Workers instead of Bergen, that does seem like a better option than holding Trond at Pop5-7 and continuing to build Settlers/Workers out of it, especially given our current unit-support costs (just getting Trond to Pop7, would cut those costs by 4GPT -- or 10%)...
Question:
if Trond were to go off Settler-duty, and we're anyway planning to grow it by Worker-joins after Pop7, could/should I already start mining its irrigated tiles (to build a Rax -- then units) -- and sell off its Gran? Or should we wait until later to do that?
Cope and Reyk both need Ducts, yes, so I'll switch Reyk straight off. Cope will fill its Pop6-Gran this IBT and then stall -- too much food and no extra shields to be had for another couple of turns, means there's nothing I can do to speed up the 'Duct and avoid food-wastage at this point, short of cash-rushing (though spinning a 3rd Settler off, as Spoonwood suggests, seems like it might be worth it, just to avoid wasting all that food). Given their current position, it will be at least 4-5T before any Catapults can be disbanded into Duct-builds in either of those towns, so in the meantime I'll need to road+mine all their remaining unimproved tiles as well (especially if they're going to build Raxes and/or mil-units after the 'Ducts are done). Birka also needs shields to finish its Harbour for the seafood, then should probably also start a Duct, given how shield-poor it is at present...
Our military currently consists of 3 Spears, 4 Cats, 3 Archers, and a Warrior. I think I'll station the Spears in our western border-towns for now, and let the Dutch do our fighting (they're already building Horsemen, so I'd rather they threw them at the Arabs than us...). And if we're going to trash the Cats, then we will need to get some offensive replacements built. Stockholm's currently building an Archer, so getting its Plains irrigated for growth, and a Hill or 2 mined for shields, is also a high priority. Stavanger will get its Rax chop-finished in 2T (though some of the chop-shields will be wasted without MM), and will then also have time to build some military before it needs to start on its Duct...
On which subject, also rather annoyed at other apparent Worker (mis)management I can see here: e.g. the roaded Tobacco-tile near Trond
still hasn't been mined (Cope could have used that shield!), yet Trond's high-commerce, high-shield river-Forest has just been chopped (into the Market we didn't need), leaving us with a completely unimproved Grass-tile with 2 Workers sitting on it! (One's just started a mine; I'll set the other to road, then help finish the mine in 4T instead of 5T.) Meanwhile, there's Workers doing things they don't need to on the fringes, like building a road to... Kufah(?), or roading a Forest(!?!) near Oslo -- when Aarhus still needs to get hooked, and its Floodplain irrigated.
We also (still) have an irrigated Grass and a mined BGrass near Cope -- should if anything be the other way round, so we get 3 FPT to support the Hill-mine, for more (GA-)shields (iGrass + mBGrass = 0 + 2(+1) = 3 GA-shields; mGrass +iBGrass = 1(+1) + 1(+1) = 4 GA-shields) -- or both should be mined (mGrass + mBGrass = 1(+1) + 2(+1) = 5 GA-shields...). If we're going to build 70-shield Zerks, we'll need all the SPT we can get! -- so if I have Worker-turns to spare after dealing with Cope/Reyk/Birka, I'll also make a start on fixing those issues.
Once my 2- (or 3) initial Settlers are ready, I would like to found the 2nd-ring Blue and Black Tundra-towns ASAP -- seems much more important to get those (near-)core towns up than a(nother) disconnected eventual 4th-ringer way over on the west coast (even if it
does snag us 2 Wheatfields, that does us little good if all it can then build is 10T Warriors/ Workers...). The 2nd-ring Tundra-towns can get Grass-Forests chopped into Harbour-builds, then start building Galleys (or Ducts now, Galleys later?). Founding the first of those towns will also get us the FP-popup, but I guess we'll wait for a handy MGL to do that...
If I/we do carry on Settler-pumping from Trond, and it's safe to push further west to the Orange Sugar-town spot (and the Wheat, if the Russians don't beat us to it), I guess those would be the next-best sites to Settle; if not, then the 3rd-ring Pink and Red Tundra-towns...
This is going to be sooo much fun...
Personally, I'm still too disgusted to play this game again.
I can understand that, but hopefully you will feel better about taking over my save instead...
That's the spirit! Good on yer, me ol' cobber!
And what I just realize: during Alexander's and Caesar's times, the scale of operations (both in terms of "number of men involved" as well as in "geographic extension") was much smaller, so it was still possible to have unified leadership. However, in Napoleon's times that was no longer possible. Military actions stretched from Madrid to Moscow, and the involved armies were probably 100 times larger than at Caesars times -- too much for a single man to handle without errors. (If the Roman Empire had to fight at opposite ends of its empire, e.g. in Gallia/Germania and at the Persian border at the same time, they had separate "leaders", who more or less operated independently of each other?!)
The least evil is probably to set it up like this:
