General
Diplomacy 7->7 [+1]
Salt so much salt!
Economy 7->7
Spend 4 Economy building the Saltern.
Spend 1 Economy Studying Health
Gain 3 Economy from Baby Boom
Gain 1 Economy from Divine Stewards.
Gain 1 Economy from the Saltern completion
Stability 1->2 (optimistic)
Spend one Kicking the Saltern, gain one from starting the Saltern for health.
Gain one from Divine Stewards at completion
Art 4->5
Gain one from Canal Megaproject bonus
Mysticism 7->8
Gain one from Canal Megaproject bonus
Prestige 5->6
I wonder if there is a Prestige cap...
Land of Opportunity
You welcome all, offering food and shelter if they will contribute to your community. Sometimes these newcomers behave badly, and sometimes they bring strange new ideas, but in general they strengthen your community, especially in the long run
Pros: Enhanced absorption of new ideas, +1 social value from current or historical neighbours, whenever a neighbour suffers a stability drop, have the option to also suffer a stability drop in exchange for a large boost to Econ and technological and social advancement by absorbing especially large numbers of people
Cons: Many think you weak, not accepting the needy can cause stability drops, sometimes you get values you didn't expect
@Academia Nut
Forgot to update this to the new version.
Ancient Saltern
Gives an initial bonus to Econ, +1 Diplomacy every turn until the invention of currency, grants access to the Salt Gift action, and the Saltern extended project action, when acceptable sites for construction or expansion can be found
Holy shit this is amazing. If we build it they will come!
So much diplomacy!
With the new potion developed requiring salt, and salt being required for so many things anyway, the king carefully listened to his council and then authorized that significant resources be directed towards the construction of a new major project along the coast in Northshore. There was a place along the coast where what appeared to be an old riverbed had once run, producing an area where the tide came up unusually high but where a plausible wall could be built as a sort of wall.
Dried up estruary is quite convenient for one. Unusual find to be sure. It does save a shitload of digging.
The biggest trick would be how to create a gate that could let the sea in when the structure needed to be filled, but keep it out when they wanted the water collected to disappear beneath the sun. They surveyed the land and got to work planning things out, sending workers to the location even as they started to fill wagons with cut stone and fired bricks and food for those who would actually do the job. It was massively disruptive to internal trade and supplies and actually getting the usual work done...
And yet, somehow, everything just came together all at once and a frenzy came over those working at the project.
Let us play the song of our people, the Symphony of the Ymaryn!
Something that was projected to take generations to get working properly instead only took years, and while there were setbacks and delays, the first walls built were better able to withstand the sea than any might have expected, and the crumbling of the gates gave quicker insight. Bricks and glazed tiles to make the collection of salt simpler came in faster than initially expected as the People threw personal effort into getting the project done. By the time the first children born after the announcement of the project were taking their rites of adulthood, the first batches of salt were already being scraped up.
Ooo, so THAT's the Symphony bonus, people ignoring their job allocation quota to dedicate excess personal time to making it happen.
Dead Priest healers: "You know, normally you'd have to whip slaves half dead to get people to work this hard..."
Legacy Gained!
Rush Builders: Extended projects cost more per turn but complete faster
New Concept: Extended projects are somewhat like megaprojects in that they require a commitment of actions beyond what one could usually develop in a single turn, but are less involved than megaprojects so they can be done with secondary actions and do not cause social disruption to stop part way through. Some may, however, suffer loss of progress is ignored
Oooo, Miniproject!
Perhaps some of the frenzy was the fact that the gift from the Xohyssiri was paying off quite well, in that the lessons and knowledge of their healers and Book of the Living, while gruesome, were also incredibly valuable for dealing with injury. Many shamans could set bones, and some of the Carrion Eaters knew the secrets of releasing the demons from the skull of a man suffering a head wound, but when given a sharp knife and fire the butcher priests could amputate a limb faster and more cleanly than any of the People. If a woman perished in childbirth then they could even sometimes cut the babe from her belly so that both would not be lost. It was unclean, spiritually dangerous work, but it was exactly the sort of thing the Carrion Eaters were for, and with the reduced number of workers being outright killed in accidents or dying from disease, the projections of the chiefs were perhaps overly pessimistic, hence why things completed so quickly.
And we immediately see great dividends in the improvement in surgical technique. We've discovered how to amputate cleanly, cauterization and ceasarian sections in one go!
Also vaguely spooky that our administrative math includes a "percentage of workers going splat in an unfortunate accident" tally and it was thrown off by better healthcare.
The healers also told of a rare flower that the People might be able to trade with the Highlanders for that made dealing with painful sickness and injury - it came from somewhere in the south-west, but there were traders who occasionally wandered up from that direction who might be able to be contacted through intermediaries. The Xohyssiri had routes even further to the south that the People had never heard about that bypassed the Highlanders and the Southern Hill Folk, but one of those two would probably have to be a go between for the People if they were interested. A mission to the Highlanders might also be useful as the civil war had ended swiftly and decisively, with a new king rising to prominence and apparently beginning a project of consolidation and inscription of the law inspired by tales from the People.
Then again there was a rumour along their trade routes that the Metal Workers had discovered something interesting, or perhaps more ties with the Thunder Horse - who were apparently starting to refer to their term for 'king' of Thunder Speaker for their whole people - would give further insights into their conflicts with their eastern cousins. Or maybe they might take the relative peace of the western lowlands to send a mission to the Xohyssiri, who as far as anyone could tell the People had never actually fought and most stories were just ancient tales of monsters in the south-east. While they did things that the People disapproved of, so did basically all of their trade partners in one way or another, and maybe going to their homelands would give actual insights instead of fourth-hand stories and ancient campfire tales to scare small children.
Highland Kingdom has Poppy and thus opium. They have a new King and he's starting The Law.
Xohyssiri has whole new trade routes. We can try to get Cotton, Gold, at the least. There's also learning more about their culture proper rather than learning of them from their enemies.
Thunder Horse also developed a King as Thunder Speaker, but are only dealing with their cousins.
Metal Workers have discovered a shiny. It might be Bronze, it might not. We probably have time to do this since we don't even have a copper mine yet.
Choose an Econ action
Free Main action this time!
[] Expand Carrion Eaters (-1 Econ, -1 Mysticism, +1 Martial, many more Carrion Eaters, additional effects)
Extremely useful, I don't know if we'd have the time to dedicate to this again any time soon, but with the DP lore this means we have a lot of surgeons we can apply to any injuries on projects.
[] Study Stars (continues chain) + Survey Lands
Continues our Study Stars streak of 4 into 5 and try to find more ore again. We'd still break the chain next turn if we segue into Garden though. So don't make it a high priority
Survey Land might still find something, but it's a Secondary, so don't expect too much.
[] Begin work on the Garden (-1 Econ, starts megaproject)
Starts the Garden. However, we can already finish this in one turn without taking it here.
Choose a trade mission target (-1 Diplo)
[] Highland Kingdom
-Opportunity to influence the new HK laws while they are being written by bringing copies of our laws. Urgent.
-Opportunity to influence the new regime in our favor. Urgent.
-Access to painkiller drugs. Not urgent.
[] Metal Workers
-Check out what shiny they've discovered. Not urgent
[] Thunder Horse
-Check out what's up with the OTHER Thunder Horse. Not urgent.
[] Xohyssiri
-Check out what they're really like.
-Gain access to Cotton
-Gain access to Gold
-Opportunity is time limited. They'd be in war again soon with everyone.
So my choice:
[X] Highland Kingdom
[X] Expand Carrion Eaters (-1 Econ, -1 Mysticism, +1 Martial, many more Carrion Eaters, additional effects)
The HK is the most urgent opportunity here. We can insert our laws into theirs if we intervene now and send a caravan with a slate of our laws for them to use as a basis. If they reference our legal code while writing theirs then...they'd be picking up our traits
