Honestly, I feel that building at least one wall would go a long way to learning how to construct a dam/canal. It would also be a great defensive multiplier for our civ (even more if we factor in the home defense bonus from our traits) in case we have to deal with any attacks during our mega project (which will take a few turns to complete).
At the very least we should dedicate our main action to Improve Trails in order to get the best possible roads. It'll greatly simplify moving large amounts of material around when we get to starting a mega project, not to mention the huge increase to our trade influence and centralization tolerance.
Step Farms seems like a great way to boost our food production as well as make us more resistant to droughts. Expand Fishing will achieve the same thing to a degree, but it might also open up sea trade with other villages as well as incentivize developing bigger boats.
On the other hand, domesticating snails is super important. Having that would greatly increase our dye production as well as eliminate the possibility of over-hunting the snails.
I stand by having Trails as our next Main Project since I did start that point as well as Step Farms.
I recommend Snail Domestication though as having both farming and fishing would push us into Food Waste again and it gives us a durable Luxury trading good.
I stand by having Trails as our next Main Project since I did start that point as well as Step Farms.
I recommend Snail Domestication though as having both farming and fishing would push us into Food Waste again and it gives us a durable Luxury trading good.
Nishiphur was uncertain about this land. The river here was wild and dangerous, and the land hilly and broken, but it was as far from the lands of the dead priests and the lands of the demons, so it was as safe as they could find. There was evidence of other people living further up the valley, hence why they had not pressed their luck and continued on. There were distant tales of strange people in these hills, but Nishiphur's clans had come from the southern part of the dead lands and had been avoiding outsiders, lest they draw the attention of the dead priests, so he knew little of who might live in these parts. With any luck they would be primitives who knew nothing of farming and thus could be driven off with numbers.
Still, for all that he hoped for safety, this land was not good, and farming it was going to be hard. Getting through the badlands between the dead lands and here had been a hardship, and while they had some reserves since when they had broken off from the last community, they needed at least one good harvest or this was not going to work out.
It was thus with a sinking feeling in Nishiphur's heart when someone called out that strangers were approaching. Grabbing up his demon club from where it lay on the floor of the hut, he rushed outside and saw that there was a large group of men approaching from upriver, the ones in the lead clearly armed, and the ones in the back leading some sort of strange contraption like a square canoe on potters wheels hauled by aurochs, which if he was not seeing it with his own eyes he would have proclaimed an absurdity if anyone had told him about it. Still, as the women screamed and fell back Nishiphur managed to try to rally the men to form a proper line of battle to screen from the newcomers.
Eyeing up an appraising these men, Nishiphur had a mixed opinion of them. The ones in front, the warriors obviously, carried themselves well and were distinctly larger than the ones in the back, but their equipment was distinctly primitive looking to Nishiphur, the designs of the clubs and spears not particularly advanced - although he did note a proliferation of spear throwers and bows over slings. As the strangers came to a halt well away from the village, he did notice the warriors on the opposing sides were eyeing up the larger weaponry he and his men had available to them, although the brightly coloured cloth the enemy wore was also causing his men to shuffle worriedly. Finally a single man dressed in splendid clothes and wearing a bull horn headdress decorated with shells and black feathers came forward, out of the group and half way across the gap. Evidently he wanted to talk.
Everyone looked to Nishiphur expectantly, and after a moment he tamped down his nervousness with his courage, and strode forward. Let not the gods call him a coward when confronted with the end!
The foreign chief watched him carefully, his eyes clearly watching the demon club bouncing on his shoulders. When he was within a few strides, the man held up a hand to gesture to stop, his face wary but passive. When Nishiphur did so, the man then laid his staff carefully on the ground next to him, although curiously enough he had it pointed towards the village rather than lengthwise, separating them. Nishiphur wasn't quite sure what to make of this, although from the man's gesturing he was hoping that Nishiphur would do the same.
The warrior patriarch was torn over what to do. On the one hand, this disarmament screamed at him that this man was weak and foolish and he should take advantage to rush forward and smash his skull in... but on the other, this man was clearly not foolish enough to not have a skirmish line backing him up and Nishiphur would surely die in the action. Evidently he wanted to talk. Still... laying down his club...
Nishiphur took his club from off his shoulder and planted it upon the ground, his hands resting atop the hilt but not actually around it. He fired his face to hardness, but made no further move to advance. While obviously perturbed, the foreign chief nodded after a moment and then began to talk. It was awkward and pantomiming, but he obviously had some experience with this as his point started to get across. Well, mostly, since Nishiphur soon grew confused. He got the idea that this chief considered this land theirs, and that they considered Nishiphur's clan intruders, but... Nishiphur was sure that he had to be confused. These people wanted to teach his people how to farm? That didn't make a grain of sense!
Seeing the confusion, the chief gestured for some of his warriors to haul something off of one of their land-canoe-things, which turned out to be an actual canoe. Another man who appeared to be some sort of subordinate of the chief stepped forward along with a team of rowers, and the chief stepped forward with his hands close together. Blinking a few times, Nishiphur realized that they wanted him to go with them, and were offering their chief as a hostage to demonstrate good will. Again, his brain tried to work out why all of this was a thing, but he came up blank, other than they wanted to take him somewhere to show him something. Lightly, he licked his lips and wondered at what to do, before he gestured for how long this was to take. The foreign chief considered for a moment before he gestured from horizon to horizon and then held up ten fingers. Ten days? Yes, he seemed to be say ten days, and after some clarification, it was demonstrated that this was ten days there and back.
That was... Nishiphur almost shook his head no, but instead something compelled him to agree. He quickly returned to his own people and told them that they would be taking this chief captive in exchange for his own safety while he went and saw something that they wanted to show him. They weren't to mistreat the man, but if he wasn't back in ten days, they were to execute the man and then try to drive these people off. Once all that was sorted, he returned to where the chief was and made sure that he got those conditions across, to which the man just nodded. Returning his club to his people, Nishiphur surrendered himself to the waiting subordinates, who quickly loaded him onto the stocked canoe and began the task of rowing upstream at a high clip. By the second day they saw signs of the land being distantly managed, the subtle border that Nishiphur and his people had avoided when they had originally pushed into this valley system.
By the third day they reached the outlying farms and Nishiphur's eyes went wide. He suddenly understood what these people meant about "teaching" his people, as their farms covered the landscape and ran up the hills and were blended with nearly ordered trees and zigzagging paths up the hills held in place with stone and in general everything was neatly laid out and the crops looked fuller and healthier than any he had ever seen in his life. By the end of the day they had reached the village proper, which sat atop a hill within the flat basin of the valley and teemed with people, at least as many as the dreaded home of the dead priests. With a sinking feeling, he realized that even if they saw off the group that had come with, these people could simply drown them in bodies... and it wasn't like they seemed particular slouches in the war department, even if Nishiphur judged them not as good as the finest the deadlands or the demons could offer.
On the fifth day they took him on a tour of their village, laid out like their farms with neat rows and irrigation ditches and brick and stone walls, and even up into the hills where they had aurochs grazing in empty fields, before they took him back on the canoe and sent him back downstream. Most of all though, he got the feeling that these people had very distinct feelings about how one should farm and that they were not going to take 'No' for an answer. Given the choice between learning how to grow crops better and more successfully and being driven out because the neighbours didn't particularly like the fact that his people weren't nearly as good, it really wasn't much of an option.
---
In consultation with the elders, the High Chief had declared that the outbreak had obviously been caused by disturbing the dead - the timing was all wrong to have come from either the new settlers or the tolerance of behaviours some people didn't like. Of course, sometimes you had a move a body, so a new punishment scheme was devised. For most deaths, family or immediately would still be expected to quickly move and bury the dead with proper honours, but during plagues or if for some reason an old burial was disinterred those who had committed crimes not worthy of death but more significant that mere slap on the wrist corrective measures would be given a choice: they could move the dead and then suffer isolation until judged physically and spiritually clean, or they could suffer death. Those in isolation would still be cared for and expected to work plots of land set aside for their use, but until judged clean they would not be allowed contact with wider society, with further crimes resulting in execution or complete and permanent exile. In the event there were no criminals available to perform these unpleasant but necessary tasks, the job would be handled by elders deemed spiritually strong and pure, who would have to go into a lesser period of seclusion. This last bit was actually mostly added on for the people posted at the waterfall, who had already been dealing with unknown bodies, some of which had already begun to decay by the time they were fished out of the water. The villages had enough people that they could usually find a couple of troublemakers no one would be too upset about doing the dirty work at any given time.
As for the lowlander settlers, once they got over the initial shock of outsiders actually trying to help them rather than kill and/or enslave them all, they had accepted the help offered, and, as the High Chief had hoped, had provided a wealth of knowledge about the lowlands. The lowlands had split into two distinct groups after the spirit talkers had struck them so hard, both in the far south of the land. On the western side were the 'free people'. They were still quite violent and practiced both slavery and human sacrifice, but the former seemed to be more transient and based off of internal punishments and raids, and the latter was only done in response to crisis. The big thing with them was that they were intentionally avoiding settling in the heart of the lowlands, sticking to the geographic borders but unable to go much beyond because they weren't very good farmers, due to a major fear of the ghosts of all who died in that place, and the depredations of the 'demons', soon sorted out to be their term for the spirit talkers. While they had inherited much of the warrior culture of their ancestors, when push came to shove they preferred to just pack up and move rather than put up with aggressive neighbours, hence why this group had migrated relatively far in short order.
Then there were the 'dead priests', who were the eastern half of the lowlanders remnants. They were the consolidated remains of the one major settlement that had survived the disaster a generation ago. Where before the situation had been a free-for-all with the strongest rising to the top, this group was instead held together around the lowlander's spirit talkers, who followed the teachings of ancestral spirits that ached for blood. Slaving and warfare and human sacrifice were still present and endemic, but the priests now controlled when and where it happened. Gone were the days of explosive growth, but this group sounded like they might actually be organized enough to survive a major disaster, unlike their predecessors.
The settlers also ended up sharing their knowledge of advanced weapons. Out on the caravans where the warriors tended to get blooded, ranged weapons useful for keeping attackers at bay were the order of the day, but the lowlanders and the spirit talkers had developed a number of nasty weapons for fighting in melee groups. The most prominent of these was the 'demon club', a massive chunk of wood that typically came up to the sternum and had to be wielded with two hands, that was cut with grooves set with polished river rocks secured in place by resin and strips of tightly wound leather. Nasty, brutish things that they would have to be on the lookout for in the future.
Speaking for things to be on the lookout for, the traders had a number of 'cousins' among other nomadic groups further out - various intermarriages for their own reasons, and they were reporting that up north where the hills flattened out into cool, dry plains there was another group of nomadic tribes that were stirring things up. These new tribes had many animals, but they also seemed to maintain limited farms in places and were much more territorial than previous groups, although by all accounts they could still be open to trade, and they apparently had some truly impressive trade contacts. The length of trip needed to make contact with these new tribes was quite significant, and a dedicated mission would be required, but learning more about them might be useful in a variety of ways.
Assist Settlers - The new settlers at the end of the valley could be further assisted, and also brought closer into your sphere of influence [Sharing Circle]
Build Wall - Long experience with retaining walls has lead to the idea of a settlement wall for protection
Domesticate Snails - The snails that can have their shells processed into a vibrant dye have long resisted being directly managed, but with the expertise in land, water, plant and animal management they might be made to live as cattle and sheep live
Establish Annual Festival - People already like to celebrate at certain times of the year, but with the level of control over food distribution a new and particularly lavish festival can be established
Expand Farms - The people have brought an enormous amount of land under cultivation in the valley, but there is more available in more marginal areas, and in the forests around the fishing village
Expand Fishing - There are managed cultivation zones along the shore, and dedicating more people to the tasks can increase the yields of fish and luxuries brought in
Expand Pasture - While the traders mostly just take their animals where there is good grazing, specific areas can be set aside around the settlements that can be made ideal for the protected grazing of herds
Expand Place to Spirits - The current place dedicated to the spirits and wisdom is nice, but it could be bigger and grander...
Expand Managed Forests - The forests atop the hills surrounding your valley are now an integral part of your water management system as well as providing materials and the occasional bit of game. Expanding onto the back side of the hills can only bring more benefit
Expand Warriors - More men can be inducted into the ranks of the warriors every year and not face major food shortfalls
Improve Trail - The path between the valley and the sea has been cut by generations of travellers, but the dirt path is easily disrupted by rain. Infrastructure improvements could be done to reduce this damage
New Settlement - The land is not particularly good for farming in between the valley and the sea, but there are places where a settlement could be set up, serving as a stop over point along the journey between the two settlements
Step-Farms - Bringing the irrigation systems to its limit, the hills can be sculpted into a series of steps, each step supporting a farm plot, the run off from a higher farm irrigating the farms lower down [Gardeners][King]
Trade Mission - Sending a major caravan to another large group can bring new opportunities and find out more about the outside world
Mega-Projects - Mega-Projects can require many generations to complete, take an unknown amount of time to do so, and drain Econ while active, but can produce massive benefits once complete. Once chosen, the occupy the Main Focus slot until either completed or stopped early. Early stopping once started does not refund any of the investments and increases social strife. To reduce confusion, mega-projects are not listed as part of the voting project list and must be "written-in".
Grand Canal - The hills between the valley and the sea are rough and the rivers there fast and wild. In one man's dream there is the vision of an artifical river cut through the land, tame and managed [Gardeners][King]
Great Dam - The river can run wild and dangerous when the rains come strong, but could it not be controlled by the same principles by which the water on the hills is channelled and contained, merely on a larger scale? [Gardeners][King]
Choose one [Main] Focus and two [Secondary] Focus. Unless otherwise marked
I really want trails to strengthen the connections between our inland settlements and our sea village. It strengthens our logistics and it'll make shipping wood from inland to the coast for shipbuilding much easier. I really want to get our foot into naval trade as soon as we can.
I also want an expedition to the lowland remnants to free the enslaved peoples and wreak havoc on the remaining not!assryrian dirty slaver communities. I want to encourage a labor shortage in the lowlands so it's harder for the slave-based agricultural societies to rebuild. Ideally, I want to keep kicking them while they're down and make sure they stay down.
I stand by having Trails as our next Main Project since I did start that point as well as Step Farms.
I recommend Snail Domestication though as having both farming and fishing would push us into Food Waste again and it gives us a durable Luxury trading good.
That depends on what the third project would be. Expand Warriors or one of the grand projects would increase the number of specialists who don't produce food, but still need to be fed. While a New Settlement would probably run at a food deficit for a while and need food imports from the other settlements until it gets on its feet.
Edit: oh. And the festival could gobble up our surpluses as well (in fact, I think that's part of the reason why festivals happened in the first place. Instead of having a lot of food spoil, why not have one big event where the whole town could build up a guaranteed reserve of nutrients?)
Right, nothing too urgent regarding the new settlers, though they do bring up trading contacts so that would help as well as advance our own form of warfare without relying on numbers.
So still pushing forth on
we need more warriors, which we can afford due to step farms we are hopefully building this turn, assimilate settlers now so we can have more laborers to start up new settlement and wall next turn and trails, though we should probably use a festival after they join to settle people down.
[X] [Main]Improve Trails
[X] [Secondary] Step-Farms
[X] [Secondary] Assist Settlers
eh I can deal with this (also starts moving our power closer to the lowlanders area).
It's a force multiplier for our trade, organization, and multi-community projects. While the Rivers are faster, they aren't capable of handling all of our transportation needs.
. I think Improving transportation should be given higher priority than the new Settlers. These are long term projects so even as a secondary, we would still be bringing them in
we need more warriors, which we can afford due to step farms we are hopefully building this turn, assimilate settlers now so we can have more laborers to start up new settlement and wall next turn and trails, though we should probably use a festival after they join to settle people down.
Why more warriors? The Lowlanders have been scattered, with those nearest having mellowed down and hopefully with Assist Settlers made peaceful. The Priests are way on the other side of the Lowlands.
Though you say that assimilating the settlers is important, you aren't voting for it?
Improve Trails as it helps our Trader people who have been rather neglected while also assisting in travel within the whole group to integrate the people further.
improving the movment between our villages/towns will hopefully decrease our overall centralization so that we don't end up putting our heads into the ground. (also easier to gather forces for war).
Guys. We need to build up military might. The lowlanders that are left down there are more dangerous then previous. They are actually organized now. We need to expand warri9r numbers to remain safe.
Focusing on economics is all well and good but defense is also important.
Omg, I really want to make contact with the nomads sooner or later.
The breadth of trade contacts and knowledge of faraway lands, allies against the lowlanders, and possibly having technologies and techniques that we don't have but they do possess. (ones mainly coming, I'm guessing, from going up to the nomadic tech chain)
Why more warriors? The Lowlanders have been scattered, with those nearest having mellowed down and hopefully with Assist Settlers made peaceful. The Priests are way on the other side of the Lowlands.
Though you say that assimilating the settlers is important, you aren't voting for it?
Improve Trails as it helps our Trader people who have been rather neglected while also assisting in travel within the whole group to integrate the people further.
improving the movment between our villages/towns will hopefully decrease our overall centralization so that we don't end up putting our heads into the ground. (also easier to gather forces for war).
I think Improving transportation should be given higher priority than the new Settlers. These are long term projects so even as a secondary, we would still be bringing them in
