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Zheng Guo's Canal

Royal Administrator of the Kingdom of Qin: As you are aware, not long ago Zheng Guo, emissary and chief architect from the lecherous state of Han, arrived in our capital of Yong seeking an audience with our leader, King Zhuang Xiang. Suprisingly, instead of being summarily executed, this Han vermin actually had his request granted. In fact, he evidently convinced our normally wise leader of the importance of some construction scheme -- a canal linking the Luo and Jing rivers. According to this yak-brained emissary, such a canal would facilitate moving produce and supplies north of unnavigatable portions of the Wei River.
The decision has been made. The canal shall be built! Thus it is that our noble king, trusting in your abilities, wishes for you to oversee construction of the canal in the mountainous Haunxian region. Engineers have already dug a pass through one high ridge, and marked the canal's path, but a lot of excavating work is still to be done. You must establish work settlements and keep the peasants' noses in the dirt. Luckily that region is known to be rich in iron ore; producing weapons and training some troops is advisable. Both are likely to be needed, as our borders are still in flux.

City - Huanxian
Starts Feb 260 BCE
12000 starting cash on Very Hard

Requirements:
  • Grand Canal Section must be built
  • Produce 18 bars of iron in one year

Oh well... that serves me right. I was looking for more excitement, so I started to play this campaign at Very Hard difficulty. Already while testing the map and checking what the Canal requires and when, and what the cities are selling and buying, I got invaded and lost the battle - and when shortly thereafter another city sent its army against me, I decided to retreat. After all, I already knew how to start the monument and had general ideas about the layout. Now if I just could avoid being invaded, or build an army strong enough to repel invaders (of course, allied city Yong is always ready to supply a few soldiers... problem is, that really only a few). It seemed possible, that the invasion was released by me sending all those emissaries at once; I never sent an emissary to an unknown city this time, just to get help from Yong. I decided to ignore the monument, and build up an army quickly. Well, an army - 5 infantry is all I was able to train before invasion; it happened in October of the second year.

I started with food as always, and it took some time to get the iron industry running. To my surprise, I lost the battle. I played the battle several times, but I was still losing. Huang Di would probably help, but I doubt I could get him into the city in time. I don't like fighting too much, so I decided to reload from before the first announcement of invasion, not to ask for help and surrender when the army from Shu comes. This helped me in a way, because being a vassal means that the trade opens with the city that's ruling you (but, of course, you can't win while you're a vassal). I was selling them ceramics and iron and made quite a nice profit out of it.

I didn't know when the next invasion happens, so I started to build an army anyway, in order to be ready for an attack (cavalry fort this time). One fort is all you can have, and I wanted mobility, that's why cavalry. Shu asked outrageous tribute of 13 canisters of salt per year, which I didn't have - so I ignored it. They gave me 1 more year and offered a change of tribute to 18 clay. I accepted that gladly and when I had that amount, I sent it promptly. When the extended period for salt request expired, Shu got angry with me and my city was marked as rebelling on the Empire map. From that moment on, traders from Shu didn't appear on the map (or didn't buy anything and I missed them passing through). However, I had to ignore tribute of clay next year to make Shu attack me again. When soldiers came, I was ready for them with my cavalry fort and borrowed troops (2 catapults, 3 crossbow, 2 chariot, 2 cavalry, 5 infantry). Borrowed troops were stronger than at the beginning of the mission - city of Yong had grown from 1 to 2 shields in the meantime, and also I sent them a few gifts in addition to the requests, so they were Philantropic. I don't know whether that helped or not, though. Anyway, I won the battle and even without Huang Di. I summoned him to the city, but forgot about him completely when the invasion came, LOL.

OK, that was the military part. And what was I doing in the meantime? Producing and selling tons of iron and some pottery, making nice with ancestor gods, and taxing people heavily as soon as houses evolved to Cottages. I did not distribute ceramics this time, I built two blocks and had enough workers without evolving the houses further. Each of the blocks was on one side of the canal, and Administrative city was overseeing it. I thought that it would be nice if the captains don't have to go too far to pay taxes for use of the Canal :). Such setup means, that for the first time I had more than one market in my city; both markets were taking food from the same mill though.

Canal is divided into 33 smaller sections; each of them requires 2 digging seances (workcamp), 4 blocks of stone, and 1 mason action (consists of hammering in two places). Digging is done in all sections two times, only then stone deliveries start (i.e. you should have more than 2 full warehouses of stone in that moment to proceed quickly) and as soon as you have stone on site in at least one section, first mason is called. All monument construction buildings, as well as warehouse with stone, were built as close to the canal "door" as possible. Canal "door", meaning the place where all workers enter the construction site, is located near the center of the map, at the topmost of the three crossings which will eventually turn into bridges.

I started stone production too late, and had to wait for more stone to be produced when finishing the canal - but in the end I finished the monument just one month after I won the battle for freedom, so I wouldn't say that I have wasted lots of time. I'm sure I could have done better, but since this was my first mission at Very Hard, I'm happy with the result.

Result:

  • November 255 BCE
  • treasury 10059 cash
  • population 2296
  • best iron production - 40 units
  • perfect harmony
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