This SHOULD actually be the most difficult bit. Copper deposits are not so common that you find them even when they exist. Early mines tended to be where a deposit intersects a river or other erosive feature exposing them.
If we don't find it next to a river, then the second best chance is to find some while digging the canal.
This is the easy bit, especially once we do the canal. Our people know how to move rock and earth a LOT, and early mines are open pit excavation.
Short of the Metal Workers, we're as good as it gets.
This is the tricky bit, though working metal is not as hard as you think to access. Early metalworking is first, cold forging, hammering the material until it's the right shape. This is simple, but takes time to refine.
Next is using heat to soften and work the metal. This is less intuitive and may take some time, but we have high availability of charcoal and kilns, so not that long either.
Then it's advanced techniques. Casting, drawing, sharpening. These are the incremental qualitative stuff that are best imported from elsewhere.
Overall, not that difficult. Pretty much every culture got there.
I'm having a hard time taking this seriously. Copper weapons are inferior to stone in every element except ease of maintenance.
Bronze or meteoric iron weapons are a qualitative step up. But the main advantage of copper is that it's easier to shape into tools. Not weeapons.
In weapons it shows off that you're rich, that's all.
Noting that at least three said players have already stated the great difficulty of doing the Trade mission while dealing with the stability drop, the overpopulation and the Dead Priest threat...
One of these things have to burn.
Because the Nomads don't do armies. You move entire clans through our territory, into the southlands, where they stay to raid. Nomads bring the whole family along when they go raiding. It's a moving settlement, and why retaliatory raids are so hard.
), we can bypass nomads and their bullshit entirely, so that favour is kind of shit.
