So here goes....
Woke up all the workers and sent them south as there is still some serious terrain trimming to be done down there, e.g. Paris is very long food as are some other places. So they get split up into gangs of threes and fours, three for irrigating green and four for mining brown (or green) as needed to balance the food supply and get some some more shields out.
Reset the research to Democracy as I wanted some more trade bait.
Then spent down the treasury cash rushing a bunch of stuff, reassigned the citizens to boost the cash flow, adjusted the budget allocation so the nation would not go broke etc and so forth and so on. There is a lot of fiddling to be done to get the right shield counts for the projects in hand troops in five or less and buildings just as fast as they can go.
As the workers finished their jobs the next step was to join them into the producing towns to get to pop12 while still keeping a couple three gangs for the foresty projects. It is just a matter of looking around and finding a town that was food high or low for the population then adjusting the terrain as needed, either by mining or irrigating or planting trees. As a result Paris and Lyons are getting a net 20 spt and the other two core towns are getting 14 to 16, just about right for what we need as you can see from this Domestic Advisor report.
In 890 Democracy came in and I gifted Wang into the IA for no gain as he learned Nationalism and wouldn't give it up no way no how, so this deal was made with the Abester
and the science guys went to work on Economics as Smith's will give Lyons something to do while Paris (which now has a barracks) trained up knights for the northern frontier.
Little of any note happened after that. Workers planted trees, the navy was recalled from exploration for upgrade to galleons, and the like that. Traded some maps for some spare cash (not that it is needed) when the opportunities arose.
Things got a little dicey in 940 when two luxury deals expired all at once. But with a little haggling the canny French came out ahead. First by buying the luxuries for cash, then getting it back and then some for obsolete techs. This is an example of the kind of deal I mean (this is the last in the two step with Inca)
The same was two step was done with Elizabeth for her ivory though the return was less.
The next decade saw a real opportunity open up. Abe's saltpeter was back on the market. We had buckets of cash in the treasury and a pretty spiffy cash flow so I made this deal for his 'peter
then used the cash to upgrade our troops accordingly. So at least now we have some semblance of a contemporary military with cavalry, cannon and muskeeters on the border with Happy Hiawatha and frigates building in the coastal towns.
If somebody wants to go investigate the other continent and see if Ragnar holds some luxuries or other resources we could use I wouldn't be averse to a little resource imperialism. Taking on Hiawatha just isn't in the cards right now.
Though it might also be fun to win this one without ever setting foot outside the realm in anger. It is up to you guys.
Revolting to Democracy after Steam and if we have coal on hand might also be an interesting ploy as the faster industrious workers will really lay down those rails though it is not like we have to build a military railnet across the continent.
Give me a nudge when we get Steam and Coal and we can discuss how to go about the railroad building.
Very little is going on in the wonder building business, so there could be an interesting play to put Shakespeare's Theatre in Lyons. The extra population would really drive the commerce there. It means learning Free Artistry which we can do in 4 or so, but ut also means making the calculations whether the reduced maintenance from Smith's is more or less than the additional commerce from a higher population at Lyons. I am inclined to think that the added commerce from the sea flowing through the science multipliers at Lyon will be of greater benefit than the maintenance savings from having Smith's. Something to think about though.
It's good to be back in the saddle again. So let's go have some spaceship fun.
Guess who does? That's right, Mr. I-have-every-single-resource-in-the-gameawatha!
