We will get access to poppy seeds and cotton.
@veekie is concerned that we will suddenly lose the knowledge of what it looks like. This seems suspect to me? Shall we ask the almighty QM? Personally I think that even if we lose it now, we can still get it back later, for the reason that a medicinal herb, especially a painkiller, is valuable. With salt gift it makes sense to me that they may trade their own valuable things to us, like poppy, without our asking. [4]
Correction on a few factors:
-We do not actually know what Poppy looks like. We have a second hand description written down of a magic flower that eases pain, possibly of how it might be used, but without an actual sample, it's going to vanish into our anal retentive mountains of records of curiosities. The only certain way to preserve that knowledge based on Ymaryn's culture is to find a practical application for it. Furthermore, writing is imprecise with intangible elements like pain, and colors, which historically tended to shift meaning over time.
-Secondly, the Highlander god of poison is not well loved. I suspect they might not consider it a good thing per se to offer. Not a certainty, but more chancy than I'd like, because Opium is the last piece of the chalcolithic medicinal tech tree. If we get it, we have literally the best possible medicine.
--If additional persuasion is needed, recall how opium was presented in the Odyssey. An island of poppy eating people, who are alive, but do no work but laze around eating magic flowers. You really don't want to lose the info of what it's good for. It just sounds like poison otherwise.
More seriously metal helps with our infrastructure and that is of course a core part of our civ. We can expect to see run on effects to grabbing it for the next couple of centuries. It specifically helps the Megaprojects we are doing right now. Finishing those quickly would let us do other things. Like planting trees. [2b]
For this element, keep in mind that we are likely to finish the Garden megaproject immediately, with or without metal. While doubtlessly useful, I would like to highlight that the losses from getting it next turn versus getting it this turn are minor.
The crux of my concern is claiming that "this is our last chance to safely send a trade mission" is being not entirely accurate. I think it is more accurate to say "this is our last chance for the next 3 to 5 turns to safely send a trade mission". The Lowlands will always go to war, but I think we should also internalize the flip side of that cosmic truth, that the Lowlands will always become temporarily peaceful. [3b]
I would also highlight that the last peaceful period in the lowlands was close to 10 turns ago and only lasted two turns.
Lowland trade windows are small, and should be taken advantage of where possible.
Additionally, with our high Diplomacy, it is possible to insist on keeping trade open regardless of who they war with, as with the Saltern, we have enough trade power to make it so that refusing our traders even in war time is selfdestructive.
We don't actually know for sure- the azurite shows the copper on the surface isn't mixed with arsenic, but it's entirely possible the copper deeper beneath the earth has arsenic in it.
Tin is very much a long shot, though, we are probably going to have to trade for it unless we're insanely lucky.
Mmm, well, generally in one mine you tend to get the same mineral, at least with copper age technology. We are doing open pit mining at present, no ability to dig and maintain prospecting mineshafts. You need pumps to do those.
But as with much of the Bronze age, it's down to trade for metal. The advent of Bronze really made the trade powers of the era flourish, as due to the sheer demand for the metal, and the limited number of sites that produce both Tin and Copper, that elaborate trade networks were established to haul metal.
Which of course, the pre-bronze trade powers shamelessly leveraged into getting dominance. Hence how the various Greek citystates without major native metal production sometimes do better than the metal producers in prosperity. It doesn't matter what you make unless you have all the parts for it.
):
<- Azurite
