Sentus Populusque Rmnus

[Imperator Knoedel]

Feel free to suggest tech paths so i don't have to stop playing whenever I discover a new tech.

 

[Nighthawk419]

I agree about a workboat, we have learned to make these floating vessels, let's use them to catch the fish we hunt on the coast!

We should next work in the hills until the pasture has been created to harvest the fluffy animals called sheep! And I believe we should turn to spirituality of some sort. The people are grumbling and wondering what this life is for, let us find answers for them to keep them happy!

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

You would think the woods of the Balkans were peaceful and quiet, but you would be wrong. For every boar and deer you have a group of hunters from this or that tribe strolling around searching for them, but more often than not finding each other instead of delicious game. The whole experience is highly frustrating for the descendants of the brave warriors who once lead the fight against the Etruscans, but since at least the fruits and fish are plentiful in that area hostile contact with their new acquaintances has been kept to a minimum. At night they often came together and told stories of their respective tribes around the camp fire, like for example of the time when Remus jumped over Romulus' fence to tell him of our new enemies, mildly annoying the latter in the process. Upon hearing it a scout of a tribe named the Celts said it was a boring story and called Marcus a terrible storyteller, upon which he replied: "Well you know what else is terrible? Your... uhm... fire! Uhu!" The Celt then answered: "Nobody is forcing you to sit around it. Why don't you go make your own?" "Oh we will!", said Marcus, urging the rest of his gang to stand up, "and it will be so big, you are gonna see it all the way from your puny flame here!" Thus the Roman hunters departed, walking a good ten meters to the right, and commenced igniting their own campfire. The Macedonian hunters meanwhile, who had been sitting around the Celtic fire as well, were now taking awkward glances at each other.
And thus the rivalry between Rome and the Celts was born.

Don't get the impression that DKVM was the only one having all the fun, because a group of Gauls came along and paid a visit to our glorious... agglomeration of huts... Seriously we need to hurry this up a bit, I don't want to be stuck in the stone age forever.

Anyway many locals have begun spending more time of the day with the cutesy wootsy animals on the hills around Rome...

and some people have tried tinkering with tools and putting them on sheep for them to pull across the few small fields people were planting crops on. What this was good for nobody really seemed to know, but it appeared to have a positive effect on the longterm quality and quantity of foodstuff that was grown.

The only new tech we could research now is Pottery for the Granary to store food upon growing.

Spoiler Out of story comment :

Well, it finally happened: I filled my attachment quota, which means I have to delete a bunch of old stuff.

 

[CaterpillarKing]

I agree with what Nighthawk chose, and with what you said, this does need to get out of the stone age

 

[baseballpie]

Archery!

 

[Nighthawk419]

Shamanism! Our people need to understand what is the purpose of being on this here earth for? I believe it would ultimately lead to happier people!

OOC: Man workboats take forever to build!

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

OOC: Man workboats take forever to build!

That's mostly because Rome is working the fish which give no hammers.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Our tribe has grown lazy and now prefers the worldly wealth over the spiritual. Even the shepherds and fishermen demanded compensation for their direly needed work, and the rest of the villagers complied in the form of shiny stones and other superficially useless objects. The search for those did not leave much time for pondering the mysteries of our existence, which was left to some elders who served as intermediaries between our world and the other. At least food was plentiful as ever with fish from the sea and sheep from the mountains providing nourishment, which allowed our tribe to support a steadily growing population.

Polytheism enables the Tribal Councils civic which gives +1 Happiness in the 7 biggest cities, that is for now it would allow us to grow Rome to size 3.

There are five things Rome can do now: We could train another worker, workboat or warrior, build Research (only 50% of hammers get turned into beakers though) or construct a Monolith, which costs 20 hammers and provides +1 Happiness.

We have a bunch of units running around and nobody is telling me what to do with them. Three warriors are garrisoning Rome, one is keeping an eye on the Etruscans, one hunter is running circles in Southern Italy and another in the Balkans. Should they keep doing that or move elsewhere?

Most importantly, our worker has just completed the pasture on the sheep and needs new orders. The Improvements we can currently build are:

Camp - +1 Food, small chance of discovering Deer or Attack Dogs, gives terrain a higher chance to spread
Farm - +1 Food with Irrigation, gives terrain a higher chance to spread
Pasture - +1 Food, small chance of discovering Cow, Pig or Sheep

Of the eight tiles surrounding Rome one is a Peak, one Coast and one has our pastured sheep, which leaves five tiles we can improve (Unless of course someone would like me to replace the pasture with a camp which would actually make it worse instead of better):

NW - Hills/Plains (2H1C): Pasture
N - Hills/Forest/Plains (3H1C): Camp
W - Swamp/Grassland (1F1C): Farm and Pasture
S - the same
SE - Hill/Savanna/Plains (2H1C): Camp and Pasture

Which tile to improve with what? Everything we can build at the moment gives the same yield bonus and costs about 10 Gold, so it's more of a matter of which resource we want a shot at popping or which terrain spread.

Nobody has said anything about the Research and Gold sliders during the entire game so far so I took the liberty of shutting down Research to 0% for now to pile up some gold.

 

[CaterpillarKing]

I would say pottery, vinculture, archery for techs. Just keep doing what you're doing for the units. I say we build research as we don't need anything else at the moment.

 

[DKVM]

I'm going to hunt the animal pack northwest of me! I recommend Pottery for research. Fund 50% of our income into research. We should also build a monolith.

OOC: When do the Sea-People begin to attack?

 

[TheNoob]

I vouch for researching Pottery.

Spoiler :

Also it was just bothering me I had let this story get so big without my intervention

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

I would say pottery, vinculture, archery for techs. Just keep doing what you're doing for the units. I say we build research as we don't need anything else at the moment.

Erm, we will shortly exceed our happiness cap with that much food we have right now, so we would need either a Monolith or the Tribal Councils civic to deal with that, preferably both.

I'm going to hunt the animal pack northwest of me! I recommend Pottery for research. Fund 50% of our income into research. We should also build a monolith.

OOC: When do the Sea-People begin to attack?

Well good luck with that, the Balkans are really crowded and whenever I weaken an animal with the ranged attack someone else's unit sweeps in and steals the kill. I could try to fight without range attacking first, but that would lower the odds of survival.

Funny you would ask that as I am studying history and we covered just that topic in a lecture last Friday. I'm pretty sure we won't have to worry about those for another thousand years at least.

I vouch for researching Pottery.

Spoiler :

Also it was just bothering me I had let this story get so big without my intervention

Well I wouldn't really call it big. I'm half expecting that the number of viewers/readers/participants will increase exponentially once we get close to the actual founding of Rome in real life.

 

[Nighthawk419]

I definitely think we need a monolith to worship our great leader Knoedel! I'm out voted on anything with tech, and I don't really care about the worker or hunters now that I'm fat and happy with all this yummy sheep-meat!

 

[CaterpillarKing]

Subbed, I am CaterpillarKing

 

[Matthias I]

Subbed, I was Matthias I

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Finally DKVM managed to track down and kill a large group of wild boars in the woods. Never before had the group enjoyed such a large and delicious meal. It was a veritable feast! The hunters decided to stay in the immediate area for several years and hone their hunting skills before they decided to move on to new hunting grounds after having exhausted the local wildlife.

North of Rome meanwhile the local people took a more long term approach, only hunting sparingly to ensure that the forests would be filled with tasty animals for generations to come.

A new fad took hold in Rome: Forming clay into various forms and heating them to create various useful and lasting objects such as vases and containers. Some ceramic was even added to the recently completed Monolith which serves as a monument to our ancestors, much to the chagrin of a few elders who detest this new trend and say that it's just a passing fad that will never catch on.

Still, life is peaceful in our tribe, food is plentiful and many people have a lot of time to ponder the mysteries of the world and invent new tools to improve the daily lives of their fellow men.

Since this story was on a such ridiculously long hiatus, have a refresher about what the various techs we can research now do:

Polytheism: Enables the Tribal Councils Civic which grants one extra happiness
Metalworking: Enables the Forge which gives extra production and is produced faster than normal due to our trait; the Lumber Camp improvement which gives an extra hammer; allows chopping down forests and reveals the Lead and Copper resources
Viniculture: Can build a Winery improvement and reveals the Grapes resource
Archery: Gives access to the Basket Archer unit and a promotion which gives a 40% chance of surviving a lost battle
The Wheel: Gives +1 Hammer to the Mine, Salt Mine and Quarry improvements, none of which we can build yet I might add

Now that the Monolith is finished we don't really have many options of what to do with our hammers. The Granary and Rice Barn can not be built yet because we lack the resources they require, so that leaves workers, warriors, work boats and Research.

Also terribly sorry about the long hiatus y'all, I was crazy busy the past few months, but I really hope I can get this back on track.

 

[DKVM]

OOC: Metalworking

Congrats on getting back on track.

 

[CaterpillarKing]

IT LIVES!

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Aaaaaaaaaaand absolutely nothing of note happened over the past few decades. Well that's not entirely true, our tribe got quite skilled with metalwork, and a large deposit of copper was discovered in the highlands between the flocks of sheep (you know, the ones that mysteriously appeared out of thin air some centuries ago?) and the sea. As a matter of fact it was a young shepherd named Cuprus who happened upon it, that is one of the sheep got away from the flock and while chasing it he slipped on a rock and fell into a cave. His wife and two kids were devastated when his friends found his dead body in there, as it was quite the fall and a hard landing, but at least they could take solace in the fact that he didn't suffer. Well, except for the two seconds or so of falling and the split second of actually hitting the ground before he stopped being a living breathing being, but really who's counting? At any rate shamans held his funeral the day after, with the sheep that lead the young lad to his untimely demise providing ample and tasty food for the attendants.

On the bright side, one of the people who helped lift the boy up from the cave, recognized that the ground was unlike any stone he had ever seen before. A week later he came back to take some samples and experiment with them, burning them, stabbing them with sharp rocks, the works. He found the material to be quite fascinating, and decided to name it Cuprum (Copper) in memory of the dead shepherd. Time will tell what use will be found for the metal.

Apart from that little incident life for this generation was calm, peaceful, and... boring... Not even our hunters saw any action, instead just carrying on with their random strolls through the woods.

Would you look at that, we can finally construct a building again!

Have a screenshot of the tech tree, because there is nothing else going on at the moment. Metalworking unlocked a whole lot of new research possibilities:

Mining for, well, mines, duh, also salt mines and uncovering a bunch of metals.
War Axe for a promotion and the first offensive unit, for those who still want to wipe out the Etruscans above all else.
Quarrying for Quarries, which like most improvements can apparently be built almost everywhere and have a small chance of popping Stone or Marble.
And finally, from what I've heard is just about the most important tech in the early game, Leadership, allowed us to construct a Palace, which provides happiness, culture, commerce, espionage and a whole lot other stuff, bottom line we should get it ASAP and will do so unless the mob overrules me again.

Btw what do you guys think about the pace? (Apart from the dreadful months long hiatus of course, for which I cannot apologize enough. ) The current segment length is based on techs, so usually about five turns per update, which is imo horribly slow. If you are okay with this I'd speed it up a bit and go to at least ten turns per update, at the risk of having to pick one or even two techs and/or builds without reader input. With that in mind, don't be afraid to make several suggestions about what techs to research or things to build, even queue your requests if you feel like it. Personally I'd really prefer that over the current way of having to set the research slider to 0% most of the time so new techs don't arrive too fast.

 

[CaterpillarKing]

This seems well enough but there are no pictures for me.