Author's
Description:
The save file was made just after victory
had been achieved. It's set to run another two years. My family's name is Tahrqa.
The mission introduction spoke in foreboding terms of the Nubian army, seasoned veterans
that would fight to the death to expel the invading Egyptians. Images of another Serabit
Khadim's worth of continuous assaults came to mind, except now the enemy would be tougher,
would need to be fended off longer, and could potentially strike at any of the three
geographically isolated regions of the map!
To simplify the defense, I was determined to confine the city to the region containing the
kingdom road. Given the proximity of the second cataract of the Nile, and the rocky
islands dividing the river at the southern edge of the map, a naval invasion seemed
unlikely, thus I decided to concentrate on land forces.
Gold mining offered a fast initial stream of revenue, so my first step was to select a
site for the palace near the ore-bearing rock. I wanted to have a military academy and a
temple complex to Seth in place before establishing the first company of archers. Between
the palace, academy, recruiter, temple complex and mines, clearly I'd need a lot of
workers fast. However, the first flood was going to occur far too early to have any hope
for a decent first year's harvest.
So, I made plans for two housing strips, the first to be zoned immediately, the second in
time to have workers in the fields immediately after the flood receded. Actually, it was
becoming obvious that space was going to be very tight, so I spent a lot of time building
up a blueprint of the entire city in a separate save file. In order to nudge housing into
2x2 blocks, I left 2x2 gaps between 2x2 blocks, then later filled each gap with a pair of
1x1 blocks. Before evolving the housing into common residences, a small statue was set up
behind each 1x1. After the 2x2 blocks became residences, I could remove statue pairs at my
leisure and have the 1x1 pairs expand on their own into more residences.
The first strip was fed imported grain, the second had to do without until the chickpea
harvest prior to the second flood.
Well, by the time all this was set up, a year was already gone, and still no company of
archers. Gold from the new mines was pouring in, but funds were low, and I wanted to start
importing copper to have weapons ready for a company of infantry. Despite my dislike of
running out of money, I chose to do so rather than wait, and received a gift of additional
funds. Sigh.
Over the following few years, I assembled the army company by company, raised
fortifications along the city perimeter, began importing flax and exporting linen. Ptah
seemed to take special pleasure in topping up my storage yard for flax. I held off on
pottery, beer and papyrus, reserving storage yards to accumulate the necessary 100 blocks
of imported granite for the obelisk. By the sixth year, Abu suddenly bumped up the amount
of granite it was willing to sell, and, having imported 15 blocks a year from the start,
it almost immediately became possible to place the unfinished obelisk.
The monument construction foreman is a pretty sarcastic sort, isn't he? Must be some close
relative of Pharaoh to get away with taunting the governor like that. Pretty amusing to
watch carpenters fall from the scaffolding, though.
Abu offered a gift of granite, *after* the obelisk already was in place. Thanks a lot. But
I accepted it anyhow (following the bitter lesson learned at Saqqara) and then destroyed
the temporary storage yard holding it.
Serabit Khadim requested military assistance before the Nubians even appeared. When they
finally did, I had a full six companies arrayed beneath city walls bristling with archers
and javelin chuckers. What a joke, the Nubians died so quickly, Seth didn't even awake in
time to strike them down. And that turned out to be the only battle in more than twelve
years of play.
But I was running into difficulties of the production sort. Year after year after year of
pitiful floods, never better than mediocre, sometimes failing entirely, and irrigation not
helping much at all. Osiris wasn't available to help out. My people were fed, largely on
imported grain, but the barley crop was scant indeed, and all the kingdom's requests for
beer weren't helping. Nor was I able to expand and evolve the second strip as planned
without facing a chickpea shortage. The final straw was the discovery that the culture
rating stays stuck at 15, regardless of dental and scribal school coverage, until a stage
for dancers is in place.
There just wasn't enough space or farm production, and the meadowland on the other side of
the mountain range was beckoning, so I finally surrendered to circumstance and established
two new colonies, one across the river solely for ferry landing hops, and one south of the
mountain range. The meadow farms made all the difference, and soon the victory conditions
were met.
Ironically, the first good flood finally came around *after* Buhen expanded crossed the
river. Maybe that was a triggering event in the script.
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