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Once again a “Get as many of the best housing you can in a forever running city”.
First try: Iunet starts in 2551, with copper. As you need to set the ferries and make the people come down South, it is better and cheaper to set as many copper mines as you can (11) and to sell copper to the two cities buying 2,500. As shown in my thread “1, 2 or 3 caravans, we know!”, one can understand why you see 3 caravans from Buhen and 2 from Selima. I managed to sell 4,000 without effort on the first year, what grants me with 7,400 db. Then, on Year 2, I start to overproduce copper, but you can immediately set infantry forts then remove two-three mines. So, fundamentally, Iunet is a game where you have enough money in the beginning.
I had to chose where to set the docks. In fact, it was irrelevant as the routes opening, following very small requests, to deliver the third and fourth kinds of food (Abu 2550 and Men-Nefer 2548) as they also sell the flax, linen and papyrus needed and the useful gems, are both maritime. At the end of Year 4, I can rethink of my industrial blocks and restart the game. Particularly, I can set the room consuming bricks+straw-SY+farms+clay+pottery+mastabas+workers in the desert. How, using the trick: setting the clay pits on the edges of the map.
Following the opening of these routes, I checked I should normally be able to set palatial estates (I have three types of luxuries, 4 types of food). It seems funny that the requirement is a Culture Rating of 30 only but it is the first time that the Senet appears in the game, so players are supposedly not yet aware of large manors and estates. I had saved the room on the South-western bank as the space is a bit wider and cleaner. Blocks would not be perfect (17 PE each) but that is life. One block would get grain, one peas, then with some major blessings from Bast I can distribute both foods to both blocks.
On my second try, I checked that I had to see two roundtrips of the two caravans from Selima. I open the route in early April, when the copper SY is still empty, so I set the SY at “Get Wood” and the overseer at “Import wood”, then I remove the import while the caravans are coming. Of course, I forget to remove and get 100 wood, but manage to sell 4,900 copper, so an income of 9,065. I have checked I can set two PE blocks, a rather normal one with some 12 PE expected, a funny one that could stand no more than ten.
I discovered in Iunet an event I do not remember having seen before. I forgot to set any form of law in one block and a criminals appeared in number. Usual criminals stole some money, but the tomb raiders stole my Kingdom rating: each of them entering the mastaba made my KR drop by five points, down from 57 to 0 in one go. I had to reload one month before and spread policemen around. On the opposite, they managed to kill the two tomb raiders who appeared and I gained 1 KR point per thief killed. In this case, there is a trick to get KR points when you do not have the mansion: you set a small group of isolated 1x1 houses somewhere afar, not surveyed by policemen, you arrange to have from there one way to the monument that leads to a group of policemen. And you cash in KR points say once two years.
My major aim was desirability, somewhere in the corners of the blocks. The surprise came from somewhere else, mostly with temples and their low desirability. I even destroyed my Temple complex (6,000 db lost) and my mansion (1,500) to move them one tile and insert a large statue. The modest estate remaining could become a palatial estate destroying one bazaar and exchanging some other buildings with the temple. Re-doing it, I would exchange the water point and the tax man with Ra temple, having the opportunity to bring the large statue closer.
To my surprise, a residence SE evolved to modest estate (I was looking somewhere else). I would not have thought the desirability would be enough, this was first a residence block. So I improved the desirability around and it became a palatial estate, but I lost it as it evolved expanding over the floodplain, survived like this for some years, then was destroyed by a perfect flooding. Knowing something was possible there, I moved the block road one tile backwards, and these residences became manors. Then, at the beginning of the year (I always save in December: Y01, Y02,…Y26), I tried to move this and that around and managed to get some 5 unexpected palatial estates (as said in Rowarty, I consider the presence of a modest estate the symptom of an ignominious failure).
I have seen my population climbing, going beyond 8,000 then 10, 13, so checked if it would be possible to reach fifteen. I had to add schools in residence blocks and sweated sometimes, when my libraries were empty for a while. This would not have ben possible without Bast, and even perhaps her Temple complex that helped to save food: the cattle farming is not so productive.
As expected, the maritime attacks (my forts and my carriers are useless) are stronger with time. 5 ships were not enough for the last one, but one tower helped to solve the problem.
My dock settlement is OK but not perfect: more Sys should be closer to the docks, in one block. I could have so sold more beer and pottery. Having the cattle farms in the desert is a good idea, a they are space consumming. O fcourse, I had planned it but was driven by the game: the SY block between the two PE blocks should have been a bit more SW in the desert, thus allowing space for a bigger housing block, or for the Temple Complex which room could have been used for a clean housing block. The granaries shoud be closer to the docks, meaning closer to some bazaars.
I witnessed again the bazaar ladies fetching food in one granary then resuming in the next one, then the next one, crossing in definitive the whole map to get their purchase. I have been thinking for a while of building up a scenario with this option.
BTW I played Buhen, Heh, Iunet, Khmun, Serabit Khadim, Sawu, Waset and Thinis in two months. I will need someone to propose a nice scenario as there is little left (most remaining ones have a Culture rating of 70 and above that make the end of my games a nightmare).
I think I will try this one again.
CR 30 required
KR 100
Treasury 1,090,500
Pop 15,130 (33 full palatial estates, 1 modest estate, 6 stately manors)
Score 185,243 (314 months, 26 years)
Third try:
Moving faster to get the benefits of the BAST blessings sooner, however I know my problem will be to stockpile papyrus. So I reach the described above population a bit sooner, I have two other blocks, one of workers and one ready to become manors/PE at a stage or another: the shape of the block is a bit funny, so the becoming of the houses a bit of a gamble. I realize I can get some more papyrus than I spend, so could stockpile a bit to have some insurance. But, one year, I realize I go no papyrus from Men-Nefer. Reloading the whole year, I realize that my trade route to Men-Nefer has vanished: it is still there but no ship is entering the map. I already saw that once. I destroy the docks, the ship comes, then no more. I do it again and everything comes back to normal. Later on, I even try something: I destroy my docks in early January, when a ship from Men-Nefer is just leaving and build them again after the warning: “no operational dock”. Instead of having the first ship coming from Men-Nefer in late March, it comes in late January, so I gain one trip and, by the way, ensure this way that I get 4 trips per year and 4,000 papyrus. It seems since Khmun that the rules I found out for the caravans do not apply so evidently to ships.
I am starting to get some problems of workers who do not make a roundtrip. Also, I am playing a lot on the edges of the map, and I know that is not recommended at all. But I already bypassed the former performance.
CR 30 required
KR 91 (I forgot it, my own treasury was 6,500 db when I remembered! And my KR down from 95 to 71)
Treasury 1,380,000
Pop 18,000
Score 225,000 (326 months, 27 years)
Housing:
Palatial estates: 35
Modest estates: 7
Stately manors: 11
Elegant manors: 1
Common manors: 3
I could have had more palatial estates, destroying some residences or manors here and there and replacing them with statues of the same size. But I wanted to reach a population of 18,000 after realizing that I could not reach 20,000 as wished without much pain and moving my industrial block to the desert. I am still importing more papyrus than I use with the help of Ra. The bottom of the SE block has to be icromaneged some once every two years: either the Ra priest or the mortuary man (?) forget to pass by. Otherwise the city is perfectly stable, knowing that papyrus SY have to be told once a year not to Get papyrus but to deliver it (11 SY devoted to papyrus).
The population of 20,000 could be reached without much trouble, restricting the industrial block to its very minimum and adding a working block on the NE island. A better gaming would be to bet on a 30-32 years game, stockpiling more papyrus before expanding.
Two towers and 4 warships make it without much trouble.
Now I am ready for another bigger and faster Hetep than my “100 palatial estates in Hetep”, but I need my old upload and the one of Cartouche Bee. So I will have a look at… Sauty.
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