Discussion: NEP goals or what should our workers be doing?

Thanks to Chieftess we now have a National Employment Program and the number of our workers has increased during the last turn chat. Despite this increase there is much work for our workers to do and your government needs citizen input on what the goals of the NEP should be.

Some goals I can think of are:

Building a national railroad network
Fortifying areas for national defense
Improving city tiles for growth
Railroading to increase production in our cities, especially those targeted for wonder building

There is also a proposal to abolish slavery.

Here is the original poll for the NEP.

Citizen discussion is requested in order for us to determine and prioritize our NEP goals.

How about making our own road from Alexandria to Cyrus so we don't need to depend on Greek roads? I see that as high priority.

Then the following:
Improve wonder cities
Nat rails
City Improvements/RRing city surroundings
Fortifying/deforestation/Jungle clearing

We currently have 14 Phoenatican and 26 foreign workers. They are currently working on the following projects:

Railroading around PDX to improve production: (11 foreign and 1 domestic) There are still five tiles to rr and then some irrigation could be changed to mines

National Railway Network construction:
Eyr to Fox Nest (1 domestic), one tile to go
Khatovar to Malinalco (1 domestic), 2 tiles to go
Malinalco to Fox Nest (1 domestic), 3 tiles to go
San Francisco to Seattle (2 domestic), 2 tiles to go
Valhall to Atlanta (1 domestic), 2 tiles to go
Boston to Valhall (1 domestic), 3 tiles to go
Justinian to Macao (2 domestic and 2 foreign), 2 tiles to go
Asyut to Malinalco (1 domestic), 3 tiles to go
Plexia to Lutetia (2 foreign), 6 tiles to go
Abydos to Memphis (1 domestic and 1 foreign), 2 tiles to go
Thebes to Heliopolis (1 domestic and 1 foreign), 2 tiles to go
Heliopolis to Alexandria (1 domestic and 5 foreign), 2 tiles to go
Chondote to Cyrus (I foreign), 2 tiles to go
Total: 13 domestic and 12 foreign.

There is one foreign worker building a road from Cyrus to Alexandria

One foreign worker is railroading the coal near Civanatoria and another is mining the same coal.

About PDX I dont think that we should change any square that have been irrigated to mines becouse when we get hospitals we would allow PDX to grow so it can take every square in city radius to get more production and we are industrius so we get more shields for larger city

Originally posted by crabapple
About PDX I dont think that we should change any square that have been irrigated to mines becouse when we get hospitals we would allow PDX to grow so it can take every square in city radius to get more production and we are industrius so we get more shields for larger city

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PDX will build at least one, maybe two wonders before we have hospitals. It needs as many mines as possible without causing starvation.

I agree with eyrei on the PDX mines. I would note that once we have a hospital in PDX we could re-irrigate some of the mines. We are proposing temporarily mining some tiles in order to boost our wonder building program in Normandy.

Other possibilites for workers:

1) clear jungle
2) prepare Civanatoria for factory / ironworks production
3) sit around and do nothing due to lack of citizen interest

Clearing jungle takes too long. That should be reserved until absolutely necessary for city growth.

WHOA! We need some of that absolutely necessary jungle clearing in Kashmir. Sure it takes to long, but so does writing a Constitution. It still needs to be done.

I vote for some Jungle clearing in Kashmir.

Originally posted by Cyc
WHOA! We need some of that absolutely necessary jungle clearing in Kashmir. Sure it takes to long, but so does writing a Constitution. It still needs to be done.

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As long as it's absolutely necessary.

Originally posted by Cyc
WHOA! We need some of that absolutely necessary jungle clearing in Kashmir. Sure it takes to long, but so does writing a Constitution. It still needs to be done.

Click to expand...

You're not insinuating that we should be writing the constitution in the jungle are you?

The constitution should be written on top of a mountain, not in a jungle.

Quote from Donsig:
You're not insinuating that we should be writing the constitution in the jungle are you?

Donsig, I meant clear the jungle by machete not burn it down...

And Eyrei, thanks to Dis, we have a Grand Summerhouse in the mountains south of beautiful Alexandria. This is the place of discussions and writing. It is now available and I offer its use to the reworking of the Constitution, The Polling Standards Commision, The Democratic Constitutional Reform League, and of course to Dis.

Originally posted by Cyc
And Eyrei, thanks to Dis, we have a Grand Summerhouse in the mountains south of beautiful Alexandria. This is the place of discussions and writing. It is now available and I offer its use to the reworking of the Constitution, The Polling Standards Commision, The Democratic Constitutional Reform League, and of course to Dis.

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Now if we can only complete the railroad from Chondote to Alexandria....

(more in next post)

Our domestic leader has posted the following instructions in the turn chat thread:

Workers around PDX should be set in groups that finish a rail in 1-2 turns. Each time a rail is finished the workers in the city should be optimized.

The workers built in Chondote should immediately be sent to Thebes, and then given orders to build a railroad to PDX.

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The original poll proposal for the NEP called for us to have 74 workers *at or after industrialization*. We currently have only 40 and this is seriously hampering our efforts in completing our various projects. This combined with the fact that there is a constitutional void concerning authority over workers is seriously straining some of our projects.

I specifically request that the workers produced in Chondote build a road and railroad to Thebes. The rail connection between Thebes and PDX can be completed by already existing workers and/or newly recruited workers that are closer to these cities.

The workers around PDX (30% or our workforce) are currently working together because they have been railroading the mountains near PDX. They are on the last mountain and all that remains to do around PDX is railroad and remine a few plains tiles. I request that once the mountain is railroaded half of these workers be sent to build a railroad connection to Civanatoria and then be used to develope that city's production capabilities. The remaining half can be used to finish improvements around PDX and then move on to improving Pherris.

I would also like to reiterate eyrei's original call for workers as we still need 34 workers to meet the NEP proposal that was endorsed by our citizenry. This is almost one worker per city!

Actually, Donsig, I think we may have over-estimated our need for workers. 40 workers is a lot. Thats like 7 per Province. Moving 40 workers constantly during a turn chat is going to take a good amount of time. The current 40 workers, plus the workers queued up should be plenty for the work we need done. We should be allowing our cities to grow, not shrink.

Originally posted by Cyc
Actually, Donsig, I think we may have over-estimated our need for workers. 40 workers is a lot. Thats like 7 per Province. Moving 40 workers constantly during a turn chat is going to take a good amount of time. The current 40 workers, plus the workers queued up should be plenty for the work we need done. We should be allowing our cities to grow, not shrink.

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I tend to agree with Cyc, here. Since we have several sources of coal, the rush to build rails is not as great as it could be.

Donsig, the intent of the rail between PDX and Thebes is to quickly connect the two halves of our empire. As you said, we are short of workers, and cannot have them working on all projects at once. The road between Thebes and PDX, and then to Fox's Nest will allow us to easily defend the productive parts of our empire in even the worst circumstances (another domino war). While losing the area SE of Thebes would be a great blow to Phoenatica, it would not come close to the damage losing one or two of our core cities to a surprise attack would cause.

I do agree the workers near PDX should make a stop at Civinatoria next, though, because of food constraints on that city, it will not be necessary to railroad the entire area.

I also would like to reiterate my call for workers. Istar will have produced 4 in a couple turns, and each of the other provinces should produce at least that many. They cannot continue to be produced in Istar without harming the economy, as each citizen in that province works diligently and efficiently (almost no corruption or waste).

Yes, I believe the railroads from PDX to Thebes and Fox Nest are paramount for rapid deployment of our newly upgraded forces. I also believe that instead of increasing the food and gold supply of PDX, if you really wanted to increase it's Wonder building capabilities, you would have mined the mountains and not the plains. It doesn't take that long. I can see increasing the food supply for PDX and allowing it to grow to utilize the mountains once it gets a hospital, but we're doing nothing with the mountains and now we are going to start limiting their food. I suppose this theory may work, but I believe we could have been more efficient with the workers. First, I would have connected the cities, then gone back for more development of tiles. Well, let's see what happens. Please be figuring a way to acquire sanitation...

From the military perspective the completion of the rail network is of paramount importance. In fact, pretty much all of our military docrine (ie. offence as well as defence) is predicated on rapid deployment. The plans do not, specifically, prioritise defence of productive inner cities (although if they were threatened they would, of course, take operational priority) - the military aims to defend the whole nation. Loss of the areas SE of Thebes is not an option. From a military perspective, therefore, it is of great importance that EVERY city is rail connected. Full rail integration will permit us to strike at any and every point of enemy incursion on the very same turn that it is detected - that is the optimal military condition and it is what we need total rail connectivity for.

I agree with Lecky. Full rail connections must be our number one priority.