Plan: Make Friends and Acquire Sweet Mediterrean Treasure v1
I'm thinking we could do this either next turn or the one of the turns soon afterwards
My reasons for the first:
There's only so much time before the remnants regrow. While it would be nice if the remnants went in a different direction, the nobles and warriors there have already tasted blood and gotten way too attached to slavery as a model. They know the model works, as long as the climate is within your favor, so they'll probably start trying to cheese that strategy again.
The worst possible situation is them rebuilding, vassalizing us, and learning enough to avoid the ecological collapse pitfall and becoming an empire that sweeps over everything around.
Right now, I want to kick them while they're down and
take their lunch money free the slaves and incentivize the artisans to come with us.
My reasoning for the second:
Ecological management has been one of our BIGGEST sources of strength and it helped preserve us through those bloody droughts and floods. The more we do it, the more resilience we have.
Managing and expanding coastal forests would give us more wood to build ships
- for fishing,
- For the golden goose that is naval trade, not just in the Mediterranean, but elsewhere. This was one of the strategies that allowed the Phoenicians and their Descendents to become the rich naval powers that they were. We'd be able to acquire resources that we simply can't find in our lands at the moment. The main thing is we'd have to avoid cheesing trade to the point of severely depleting the valuable resources and disrupting distant ecologies, otherwise that golden goose will stop laying eggs.
My reasoning for the third:
It synergies with the second task in the sense that it'll help encourage the building of naval infrastructure that will get us to become a glorious mediterranean power one day in the future. We expand our sources of food, more shipbuilding will be done which means statistically there'll be a number of builders who experiment and find different techniques to build better ships, and more people fishing will mean they'll become more and more familiar and better with handling the winds and currents in the nearby seas. All it'll take then is for one of our traders to be wowed by the speed and range of travel that boats get you, and sooner or later, we'll get that sweet sweet mediterranean trade.
