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Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)

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So, we've had the fief system for a while now and it's probably a good time to look at some of the issues we see emerging. Here I will discuss two: the mismatch of the CMP system to the actual cultivators we have, and agricultural productivity. For readibility, I will split this into two parts:

Part 1: Cultivator Manpower

CMP is probably the most obvious problem we have right now. As seen in discussions this update, there's significant confusion around what it's supposed to represent, with people assuming that it must mean Greens or something because we clearly have a number of common cultivators and yet have no CMP. The point of CMP is to abstract out common economic activity. Greens do not need to and should not be abstracted at our level. We only have a few of them, and every third realm will be an important individual. They should have a name, and presence in story. Similarly, we would not expect a hamlet to support 5 greens. At the viscounty level we might expect to start to work with Green CMP, but not at the barony level.

The problem, however, is real - the CMP system was designed in a vacuum from a starting point of no common cultivators. This does not match the reality in story, and so the system has become increasingly nonsensical. For it to function imo we first need to step back and look at what cultivator assets we actually have, and align the CMP systems with that. From what I can see (@yrsillar correct me if I'm wrong), they look something like this:
  • Outside CMP system
    • Important named characters like us (not part of the system, handled individually - should be the case for all greens)
    • Ling Clan servants in training (still being trained, won't provide any CMP for a while and would likely be focused on development of our assets)
    • Unspecified professional builders and contractors (outside experts being brought in for our very rapid infrastructure development projects, not part of CMP system)
    • Zhengui's friends - my impression is that these are geomancers and scholars who are part of the outside infrastructure development team, working with Zhengui on the geomancy of the region. Thus not part of the CMP system
  • CMP system
    • Gold Autumn School bureaucrats - we have an unknown number of clerks, but are currently not being applied to admin mechanically even though they're clearly working both there and in the granary.
    • Priests - two reds on Snowblossom. Also from the Gold Autumn school. I was unsure if they're part time or full time though the update says they're dedicated priests?
    • Guards - some non-trivial number of Cai guards providing security. Sect deployments to the villages during a high risk period were 30 common cultivators + scouts. Similarly, when we've seen the troops Xia Lin they've been described as if there are a decent number of them (e.g. "scattered groups of soldiers"). My feeling is I'd be surprised if there were fewer than two dozen? Like this is a very high risk zone with the Cai heiress. They shouldn't be skimping out on guards. A dozen would be the absolute minimum imo, and that would be pretty low.
So, we have at least "several" clerks from the Gold Autumn school - my impression from things is that it's probably more in the higher single digit range especially if we're putting two priests on Snowblossom? 6ish maybe? And then way more guards. In terms of what a CMP roughly translates to I don't think it can be very many people. The reality is that a hamlet (max 5 CMP) would not be expected to have very many cultivators (roughly 1% of the population, the villages we were at would have ~15 cultivators normally). Similarly, in the descriptions of things like the Clearwater Mist Collector that use CMP or the potentials identified in the recent update the descriptions are like "several cultivators". Based on this, 1 CMP should likely be some low single digit number of common cultivators - a handful at most. If I were to attempt to translate our observe assets into CMP, I'd guesstimate it as something like 1-2 CMP worth of clerks, probably 1 CMP of priests once we've got more shrines up and running, and like 6+ CMP worth of guards.

In terms of application to our actual mechanics, the story has already said that our clerks are running the admin and granary so that's 2 CMP, and the only reason we don't have anything on the shrines is because they haven't been given manpower slots yet. The bigger problem, however, is defense. Currently people have been desperate to acquire a CMP so we can put it on the walls and double our defense score. The problem is that this doesn't make any sense really. We already have a good number of trainer guards and the walls should already be manned. Getting a handful of new cultivators is not going to double our defensive capacity. A while back I suggested an easy "fix" might be to just change the walls to be two slots with each CMP giving 50 defense or something, but that still doesn't make sense unless we suddenly acquire a dozen cultivators or something.

The reality is that we are not a poorly supported fresh barony trying to build everything with our bare hands. We're a development project from a high noble clan and are using our powers of "connections" and "lots of money" to employ cultivators far beyond the capacity of what Shenglu could support at its current level of development. If the mechanics ignore this they'll just look silly. Ultimately, we want to grow our local cultivator population because we want our own minions and we need to show that we can build a functioning town that isn't reliant on mommy's handouts. Not because we (yet) need them for to defend our walls or anything like that. We will need to build our own armies eventually, but that's going to be a long term project.

My suggestion is this: our admin manpower needs to be adjusted to reflect what our clerks are actually doing, and the defense system really needs to be expanded beyond just "have walls and man them". It needs to reflect that just having cultivators - and especially dedicated guards - improves security as well as a system of building walls and towers and outposts and manning them to improve those defensive scores further. And we should probably just accept that we're not going to be significantly increasing our military via homegrown recruitment for a while, and it's certainly going to require more than just "1 CMP". And also acknowledge that we're using Renxiang resources to employ cultivators far beyond Shenglu's current cap. It's fine. We've got all those luxury cultivation materials we want to develop that'll need cultivators and building up our own forces is its own reward and something we want to do even if it's not immediately doubling our defense score or something.
 

Part 2: Agricultural Productivity and Population Ratios

So, this should hopefully be much shorter, but I figured it'd be better to split it out given how long the CMP discussion was getting. Basically, the question for @yrsillar here is how much of the population he envisages being in agriculture? Because I've noticed that our productivity in terms of food / manpower is actually getting pretty high - we're looking at 2.5 fish/mp with boats, and 2.6 farm/mp from the fields with all the currently visible upgrades.

This obviously isn't going to produce the "90% of the population in agriculture" that we're all familiar with for a lot of history. With a rate 2 ag/mp we'd be able to get down to 50%, and here we're approaching like 30%. These are like agricultural revolution -> industrial revolution numbers. This paper for instance estimates agriculture figures in the 19th century to be ~36-60% in different countries. Even if we expect a combination of surplus generation and wealth products to fill out our numbers, my feeling is that productivity probably shouldn't go beyond ~3 ag / mp (which would produce a baseline of 25% pop to meet basic ag requirements)? I don't get the impression that Forge is supposed to be industrialised, even if we can probably justify agricultural revolution levels of productivity via cultivation magic. We probably aren't supposed to hit modern levels of only a few percent of the population on farming.

My general feeling here is that it makes sense for our current upgrades to be increasing productivity because we're basically just getting our basic infrastructure up to spec. Once we've done that, however, we shouldn't be looking at productivity upgrades but rather expanding (to increase total surplus) and diversifying (to get more variety and wealth) operations. Possibly it could be a good idea to look into different crop options not just to try to find cash crops, but also maybe some kind of happiness benefit from being able to provide a more varied diet? (I admit I'm kind of being inspired by city building games like Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom where you needed to grow a variety of crops to make better food to improve wellbeing and upgrade housing to higher levels).
 
Kek, found a line from A Practical Guide to Evil that sounds like something a Hui who didn't focus on their clan's typical bullshit would say to Shenhua and her gang:
"And so Dread Emperor Irritant addressed the heroes thus: Lo and behold, I fear not your burning Light, for I am already on fire."
 
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Delving Deep New
  • Sidestory
    • Ancient weathered columns cracked and crumbled, and the buried hall shook violently. Filling the air with the grinding noise of rock on rock, the boulder that filled the passage from end to end hurtled on, rolling so fast as to blur. Gu Tai looked up at its approach and heaved a sigh.

    The round barrelling stone impacted against his outstretched palm with an immense crack, its inertia driving it to spin in place with a grinding shriek, even as his fingers curled, digging into the chalky rock, spitting pebbles out along the furrows they made until its momentum ground to a halt. He could not believe he had fallen for such a simple trigger as that. But he did always have a problem with hastiness on these… races.

    "Now, what was that meant to accomplish?" He called out, voice bouncing off the crumbling promenade beyond the boulder.

    His only answer was laughter and a low, groaning crack from under his feet.

    The floor collapsed, tiles coming apart under the boulder's weight and the guileful weakening of its supporting structure. Amid tumbling rubble, Gu Tai fell into darkness.

    Flame erupted, pale, luminous orange, and he rocketed back into the light, past the falling boulder and the tumbling flagstones, shooting him down the hall that was now unblocked. "That doesn't answer the question!"

    "Did it need to accomplish anything aside from putting that look on your face?"

    The laughing voice mocked him from the shadows ahead, up from the spiraling staircase descending down into the earth on the other side. Once, this promenade had been a hanging bridge between two towers, jutting into the sky, but now it all lay under the earth. The flame at his feet guttered out as he felt himself losing stability, and his feet caught on dusty stone, transitioning quickly into a sprint as the bridge continued to collapse into the pocket of foul air below.

    And ahead, he caught a glimpse of the mocking sparrow. Slender like a whipcord, chestnut hair tied back in a loose tail that flew out behind her like a silk flag. She wore a vest of black deathworm hide over a billowing pale blue tunic. Boots of the same material rose to her calves over similarly colored pants.

    On each of her boots were affixed soles of jagged cyan windstone, organic crystals sparking and arcing with stray electrical impulses as the stones repelled her from the ground and left her flying, spinning down the stairs, grinning up at him as she shot backward into the depths.

    Deng Mai was an intensely frustrating woman.

    But, he did have his own methods to be frustrating.

    As she dipped out of sight down the tower stairs, no doubt assured that she would reach the pocket of old city beneath with time to surveil and snatch anything of value before he even reached the base of the tower, he skidded his way through a turn that took him out to the edge of the wide floor, where an inconspicuous floor tile was just slightly displaced from its fellows.

    He had studied his family records of Lu-era architecture. And towers of this type always contained a maintenance tunnel. He kicked up the hidden tile, revealing the ancient, rusting ladder that went down, down, down to the tower's base.

    He swung himself down immediately, not climbing but merely grasping onto the sides and letting the Law of Earth do the rest.

    With a bit of assistance from the jets of fire that erupted above his head, giving him a little extra push.

    Metal screamed steam, and sparks erupted from his boots and his bare hands, raw friction kicking up sparks and smoke as the old iron glowed a dull cherry red in the passing; the wind ripped at his hair, yanked up above his head as he accelerated down into the darkness below.

    Only a few exhilarating moments later, his boots struck the bottom tile with a crash and spray of shattered floor tiles and dust, and he dashed from the access tunnel into the buried city below. Gu tai channeled qi toward his eyes, and the darkness lit up in the soft, indistinct colors of the heat dwelling in objects. Ancient masonry shone a dull red, almost black, barely visible; blobs of yellow and orange pooled here and there. These were natural heatsinks and the occasional scurrying beast living down here under the 'roof of fused metal and glass that preserved this bubble of the old world from the sands and ash above.

    Sparks of green whispered by, the native fire fairies rippling invisibly in the air, dancing and swirling around the intrusion… and there, he could see the gusting motes whirling around the main exit from the tower. Deng Mai would be here soon. He rather hoped she had prepared a trap or two on the stairs. She was always so put out when he made her work 'for nothing.'

    Most importantly, he could see through the dull red haze of multiple crumbling buildings, a bright, shining blue core filled with near-white motes in his heat-sight. That was, without a doubt, the site they were seeking.

    He dashed off, kicking up sparks as he leaped up, rebounding off the old stone to speed himself onto the rooftops, dashing the direction of the source as he let the heat sight fall away.

    Without it, he could see the cracked and faded tiles under his feet, the golden spires reaching up like fingers toward the rooves, the countless windows whose glass lay strewn like dust across every street, even crunching and cracking under his boots up here on the angled rooftops.

    The source was inconspicuous, comparatively, a low tower covered with half-melted leaf of gold, which had pooled about its base, leaving the granite beneath scorched and bare, with a conical roof topped by a scorched and broken crystal.

    It was a kind of defensive emplacement if he recalled his lessons, able to be used for both clairvoyance focus and casting burning rays of light akin to his clan's arts at long distances. This meant the treasure the diviner had provided the lead on was most certainly a the powering array.

    "Ah! What is this!"

    He smiled. She had emerged and detected his qi from the acceleration. He could hear the wind howling behind him. The crackling arcs of electricity scoured stone as she poured on speed.

    He crashed through the glassless window on the lowest floor of the tower, booted open the near fossilized wooden door to the basement level, and it came apart in splinters. An old, old security formation guttered, wailing a few notes of alarm before fading out, and he sped down into the cooler basement, flipping off the stairs to land beside the intricate, glowing array device set into the tiled floor, a glowing fist-sized stone of bright cyan light curled in the embrace of countless copper wires.

    The wall behind him shook as something, someone, crashed into the stairs behind him.

    His fingers touched the faintly pulsing spirit stone, fourth grade and still almost entirely potent.

    "My win this time, Deng Mai," he said, earning a growl as one might hear from a frustrated cat as stone and dust fell, his pursuer wrenching herself out of the rock.

    "Ugh! It's rude just to sidestep the trail I leave for you, you know? Shouldn't a man face his challenges head-on?" She complained. He half turned to face her, seeing her brushing rock dust off her sleeves.

    "Should a lady not lay out her trials more delicately?" Gu Tai said. "As agreed, I will take six parts of the sale, and you shall take four."

    That was their deal, pooling funds for the diviner who had given them a lead here.

    "So be it," Deng Mai grumbled, drifting off the stairs with a faint thrum, descending atop her windstone boots to glower down at him. "But you are buying the drinks!"

    "I don't recall that part of the deal at all," Gu Tai said dryly. "But for my poor, humbled Lady Deng I shall kindly provide."

    She jabbed a finger into his chest. "Hmph! As if I'm not the one doing you a favor, allowing you to drink with my esteemed self."

    "Yes, yes, how could I forget," Gu Tai chuckled.

    It was an amusing thing he had found out here. Where every person was… almost separated from their name. On nearly equal footing, seeking the establishment of branch clans in the waste.

    …It was hard to go back to something fully rivalrous, not after riding out the storm of the dead together. "Now, if the Lady allows, will you help me discern how to uninstall this without breaking anything."

    "Of course, we can't have your clumsiness cutting the value. Four parts of such a find is still no small sum," Deng Mai said, brushing past him. She bumped her shoulder against his a bit more forcefully than necessary.

    "I won't lose the next."

    "We will see."
     
  • New
  • Sidestory
    • yrsillar said:
    He had studied his family records of Lu-era architecture. And towers of this type always contained a maintenance tunnel. He kicked up the hidden tile, revealing the ancient, rusting ladder that went down, down, down to the tower's base.

    He swung himself down immediately, not climbing but merely grasping onto the sides and letting the Law of Earth do the rest.
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    The ancient cultivator art of knowing where to find a hidden ladder to Dark-Souls-slide-down.
     
    Erebeal said:

    Part 2: Agricultural Productivity and Population Ratios

    So, this should hopefully be much shorter, but I figured it'd be better to split it out given how long the CMP discussion was getting. Basically, the question for @yrsillar here is how much of the population he envisages being in agriculture? Because I've noticed that our productivity in terms of food / manpower is actually getting pretty high - we're looking at 2.5 fish/mp with boats, and 2.6 farm/mp from the fields with all the currently visible upgrades.

    This obviously isn't going to produce the "90% of the population in agriculture" that we're all familiar with for a lot of history. With a rate 2 ag/mp we'd be able to get down to 50%, and here we're approaching like 30%. These are like agricultural revolution -> industrial revolution numbers. This paper for instance estimates agriculture figures in the 19th century to be ~36-60% in different countries. Even if we expect a combination of surplus generation and wealth products to fill out our numbers, my feeling is that productivity probably shouldn't go beyond ~3 ag / mp (which would produce a baseline of 25% pop to meet basic ag requirements)? I don't get the impression that Forge is supposed to be industrialised, even if we can probably justify agricultural revolution levels of productivity via cultivation magic. We probably aren't supposed to hit modern levels of only a few percent of the population on farming.

    My general feeling here is that it makes sense for our current upgrades to be increasing productivity because we're basically just getting our basic infrastructure up to spec. Once we've done that, however, we shouldn't be looking at productivity upgrades but rather expanding (to increase total surplus) and diversifying (to get more variety and wealth) operations. Possibly it could be a good idea to look into different crop options not just to try to find cash crops, but also maybe some kind of happiness benefit from being able to provide a more varied diet? (I admit I'm kind of being inspired by city building games like Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom where you needed to grow a variety of crops to make better food to improve wellbeing and upgrade housing to higher levels).
    Click to expand...
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    In a cultivation world, I would expect most farming not to be done for food, but for cultivation materials. Half the mortal farmers might produce food, while the other half is employed by cultivators to do the menial labor for growing spirit crops.
     
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    Erebeal said:
    Because I've noticed that our productivity in terms of food / manpower is actually getting pretty high - we're looking at 2.5 fish/mp with boats, and 2.6 farm/mp from the fields with all the currently visible upgrades.

    This obviously isn't going to produce the "90% of the population in agriculture" that we're all familiar with for a lot of history.
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    According to what I've read, classical Rome had the farming technology to manage 40%, and so did many other ancient polities; the reasons we get 90% of the population being farmers is more a matter of social organization and economics than technological limitations - having to do with the way engaging in subsistence agriculture tends to crush people.

    (Two sons can't inherit the same farm, and subsistence farmers are known for having lots of children; if the farm is big enough, this means it's usually split into two farms, both of which take more labor to produce a similar amount of surplus. This continues until people need to spend all their efforts getting every last calorie out of their farmland that they can, at which point things get really bad for the second sons.

    Having a big metropole nearby to send your spare children to where they can make their own way - probably, admittedly, by joining the army and taking it from a third party - does a lot for the welfare of an agricultural community.)
     
    Not really a concern yet, but we might want to consider investing in the Bai Soil Studies before the war starts. Just in case Yan Renshu tries attacking the settlement and Ling Qi's family. I mean, this is the dude who tried poisoning a baby Zhengui after all.
    Plus the boost to manpower wouldn't hurt.
     
    Candesce said:
    According to what I've read, classical Rome had the farming technology to manage 40%, and so did many other ancient polities; the reasons we get 90% of the population being farmers is more a matter of social organization and economics than technological limitations - having to do with the way engaging in subsistence agriculture tends to crush people.

    (Two sons can't inherit the same farm, and subsistence farmers are known for having lots of children; if the farm is big enough, this means it's usually split into two farms, both of which take more labor to produce a similar amount of surplus. This continues until people need to spend all their efforts getting every last calorie out of their farmland that they can, at which point things get really bad for the second sons.

    Having a big metropole nearby to send your spare children to where they can make their own way - probably, admittedly, by joining the army and taking it from a third party - does a lot for the welfare of an agricultural community.)
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    Also a matter of climate and terrain.
    Rome had Egypt, which was extremely fertile, and the ability to ship through mediterranean.
    And ship long distance in general, dyuring the heigh of Roman empire, someone in Egnland could reliable order goods, or hire labour/experts, from anywhere in t he empire, and even beyond, which influenced everything.
     
    Candesce said:
    No, this was well before Rome claimed Egypt; that didn't happen until pretty damned late in Rome's timeline.

    Egypt could theoretically manage well better than 40%; the Nile's effect on farming is no joke.
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    That's also during the time when Rome was mostly in the mediterranean, instead of northern Europe.
    Pretty sure some areas never lost the ability to keep the 40% ratio, others never really had it without ability to trade.
    Because things like land fertility, and length of growing season matter a lot.
     
    Candesce said:
    Yes? I'm not arguing otherwise.

    I'm just pointing out that the common 90% population distribution isn't because of technological limitations, and in a newly-founded colony the social and economic factors haven't had time to kick in yet.
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    Except in most places, it is technological limitation.
    Not farming technology necessarily, but of transportation and trade.
    Though i guess it can be argued that it this is also a matter of social organization.
    But when the organization requires reliable trade with the other end of the continent, i would argue it starts to become a technological limitation.
     
    Adhoc vote count started by CedeTheBees on Mar 24, 2025 at 2:36 PM, finished with 145 posts and 50 votes.
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    Doramas said:
    That Fishery Specialization eludes me yet again.
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    If it helps, I'm putting together various plans based on what peoples are more interested on doing (develop a baseline industry, prioritize developing cultivation resources or shrine, for example), and boats always come up as an important one because raising our base manpower
    matters a lot.
    (though of course, my proposed plan had it this time too :D)
     
    Hmm...So potentially nine projects total barring one of the mining options gets voted on since Iron mine and Silver mine are both of those are two month projects.
    Will probably have to do Cai Wealth at least once before the war.
    .....I really wish we had some idea for what kind of projects would open up with Cliff Roads. For all we know, it could include some really useful projects which are an utter mystery...

    I shall do what I can during each of these turns to try pushing for Bai soil studies before the war happens, because that really seems like it would come in handy.
     
    Kanue Tomkin said:
    Hmm...So potentially nine projects total barring one of the mining options gets voted on since Iron mine and Silver mine are both of those are two month projects.
    Will probably have to do Cai Wealth at least once before the war.
    .....I really wish we had some idea for what kind of projects would open up with Cliff Roads. For all we know, it could include some really useful projects which are an utter mystery...

    I shall do what I can during each of these turns to try pushing for Bai soil studies before the war happens, because that really seems like it would come in handy.
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    we probably want at least the iron mining project, its pretty important for a settlement and one of our best resources. plus, war tends to increase demand for iron, though the inital mines are probably too small to matter for that.
    aside from that we really need to do the boats. combining it Bai soil studies will hugely improve our agriculture. I also want to do some of the stuff after the boats- the Lake is our greatest source of food, and its one the Ithia will find much harder to tamper with(Snowblossom is a high level spirit that is consciously trying to feed for the settlement)
    we also have to see if the Lumberyard option is good.
    I am quite against cliff roads until the war arc ends. the Cathedral is also a passage into the underground, and making it easier to travel from it to Shenglu doesn't work in our favor. as it is now, it requires a good deal of effort to move troops between the two(IIRC even third realms could have difficulty though Im not sure, and numbers are all but impossible). its probably better to focus the defenses around Shenglu itself than risk creating an easy path into our home.


    also, will we be able to do projects during the war arc, or would those be paused?
     
    I really just wish we had some sort of hint at what else is on the table for those cliff roads. Watch tower? Further fortifications? Water slide down into the lake?

    Yeah, I can see narrative reasons why Iron would be of good use. Come to think of it, didn't Silver also have some uses involving purification or something like that?
    Hmm. We would probably need to do another manpower pop or two in that time...
     
    barty said:
    If it helps, I'm putting together various plans based on what peoples are more interested on doing (develop a baseline industry, prioritize developing cultivation resources or shrine, for example), and boats always come up as an important one because raising our base manpower
    matters a lot.
    (though of course, my proposed plan had it this time too :D)
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    I see. In that case let me add my thoughts on the available projects, pending knowing what the new unlocked projects will entail:

    Boats would obviously be top of my list for the next month plans. Fishery is and will be our main Ag generator, so we can't let it undeveloped too long.
    The Expanded Docks will have to be compared to the Fields to see which ones should be prioritized.

    The Hunter's Shrine will most likely be included in the next month's plans. Even if it doesn't help with CMP, I think it'll most likely provide a +X Defense by protecting from wild beasts. That would be good to have before the War.6
    Lumberyard is a mystery, but I doubt it will rank higher than other Ag Projects like the Fishery or the Fields, or than Mat Projects like the Mines in case it produces that.

    About the Field Projects. There is the option of going for the three projects (now two) needed to unlock the Bountiful Shrine, but I'm not too keen on that. In particular the Defense penalty and the increased slots from the Field Expansion. Even if it grants 1 MP, I'm not sure it's worth it right now.
    I would rather do the Communal Mill and the Communal Ovens (comes from Fields Preservation) first. So our people can make effective use of the Ag we're already producing instead of expanding into more farm lots we'll have difficulty manning.
    I also really want to do the Bai Studies before the War. Its obvious anti-Ith features have already been pointed out by others.

    Many people want to do the Iron Mining in order to cover all our bases and have the baseline of all of Shenglu's production operative. The fact that it's a 2 month project also incentivizes starting it earlier so it doesn't finish too late.
    But I personally prefer the Silver Mining. Its costs are exactly the same, just as the Defense penalty. The difference is that it exchanges 0.25 Mat per ManPower for 0.15 Wealth per ManPower, which I think it's better.
    Iron also unlocks projects that Silver doesn't, but Silver increases Happiness. I don't know if we can actually reach it, but getting the next tier Happiness bonus would be better than unlocking Projects we may not even take.
    If that is mathematically impossible, then Iron regains priority.

    I'm against both Cliff Roads and Saline Grotto. Those are ambitious Projects that we should take after everything else is quite developed.
    It's not like LQ is going to be around a lot to benefit from cultivating in the Cathedral or the Grotto.
    The potential Cliff Projects are unknown, but it's not like we are short of things to build and improve.

    I consider the City Center and Exotic Material Projects as belonging to the same group, even if they are under different labels.
    Those are Projects that are very interconnected, like how the Tradepost and Lab generate more wealth the more resources we have available.
    They are also very unprofitable at the beggining, with high Wealth upkeep and low generation, needing follow up Projects to get going.
    Thus it doesn't make sense to take them one at a time as we do with the other Projects. When we do them, we shoud dedicate 2-3 months focused entirely on them in order to minimize dead time.

    The "Minor story arc" of the Pottery is quite tempting though. Would we have time to do it before the war?

    Lastly, there is Population Drive. We'll have to start doing it sooner or later, but while it's neccesary it's also lackluster compared to the others.
    Cai Wealth will be freely taken when resources are low. (Without running out, obviously).

    So a couple plans I can think of for next month would be
    [] Communing with Nature
    - [] Fishing Boat
    - [] Hunter's Shrine
    - [] Bai Studies

    [] All Bases Covered
    - [] Fishing Boat
    - [] Hunter's Shrine
    - [] Silver/Iron Mining

    That's the general gist of how I see our current Project layout.
     
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