Author's
Description:
Men-nefer (Old Kingdom) Normal
141 months
C15, P60, K82, Pop 1981, 26898Db
Score 6370
Another replay.
Culture is limited to 15, as there are no dancers. Housing is limted to Common Residence, which limits Prosperity. They will tell you they need a second food, but don't let this fool you as there aren't any dentists either, so they won't evolve even if you start importing figs.
I started with a housing block in the northern area and immediately planted a few barley and beer farms. Water and fire coverage were next. A few clay pits and potters were next, so by the time I got my first harvest in the first pots started to roll out. I added a bazaar to distribute the food and found out I'd overbuild both beer and potters, which I needed more people.
The second block was started and I added some more farms to make sure my food production got going well. In the mean time I added temple and entertainer coverage to the first block.
Remember: The first intermediate goal is to create Spacious Apartment level housing, which needs pottery, beer, religious access, entertainment (2 types) and a courthouse.
I made a silly mistake when I connected two doors on different sides of my granary to the two different (non-connected) blocks of my city and a season or two my pea-pushers drowned while trying to figure out how to get to the other side of the granary. It's still a mystery to me why they didn't use the other door...
Anyroad, I fixed this by disconnecting it from the north side and now the south side could be fed. As I'd already been getting pottery and beer here, the houses progressed pretty quick.
The next intermediate goal is to provide a scribe school with papyrus.
By now I was low on money (too much industry to start) and had about a 1000Db left. I put down a reed gatherer and a papyrus shop. Then I thought: tax? Hmmm, yes. I could put in tax collectors, but I didn't have a palace. I decided to build one anyway and dip into the rescue loan. One palace and tax collector later I was making a little less money than I lost each year and soon after supplied my school with papyrus.
This opened up stage three:. Import some bricks.
I opened the trade route to Nekhen first and expanded my papyrus trade. Shortly after that I opened the route to Perwajyt and imprted some bricks, my cash balance came tumbling down as I got something like 9 traders per year selling a total of 4000 bricks. I set import to maintain 400 and placed the mastaba. The little workers started doing their thing and my housing had stabelised at Common Residence level.
Even set to maintain 400 bricks you will still manege to get almost 3600 bricks in a year (9 traders unloading immediately after the sled pullers get the bricks from the yard). I shut down import for a while and decided to make some more money first. In the mean time I'd received two requests for things like pottery, barley and beer.
A year or so later I got a few more bricks and decided to move my bricklayers next to the mastaba on an unconnected bit of road. This worked fine until I found out bricklayer's guilds collapse and catch fire. This cost me two guilds...
A request from Nekhen increased papyrus trade from 2500 to 4000 and now money came rolling in. I slowly completed the mastaba, while wanting to catch the disappearance of some loads of bricks. It seems the 'half' load on top of the mastaba's entrance aren't counted, but they do cost a full 400 bricks to put down. So there that mystery explained.
The game is saved with the last load of bricks waiting in the storage yard.
Note: bricks are set to Stockpile.
Mistakes?
Putting in too much industry at first. The first two intermediate goals can be reached without having to take the loan and still leaves money to start trade. I also had about a third too much chickpea fields.
However, you'll need the extra industry later to absorb your unemployment, at least you do when you build two blocks taht house a 1000 people each.
Importing slow will help you get some cash, especially as you stay there long enough to catch the trade increase from Nekehn.
Jayhawk
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