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Refurbish Job

Esteemed administrator, you have been sent here to the desert oasis of Liangzhou, on our western frontier. It was many hundreds of years ago that a great wall was built here of rammed earth. The ravages of time have taken their inevitable toll, however, and that ancient wall is so heavily eroded that it no longer casts a shadow. The barbarians it was supposed to stop now laugh as they ride their mounts over its tumbledown heaps.
Your primary task is to refurbish this decrepit barrier by erecting a new one in its place. The wall you build should be surfaced in durable stone so that it will better withstand erosion. However your city should also act as a conduit for trade along the Silk Road. The soil here is dry, and devoid of nutrients, and the weather is harsh and unpredictable. Ensure that sufficient amounts of food are stockpiled for those lean years when the clouds are few, and the rain is scarce.
Finally, as you are aware, our dispute with the distant kingdom of Koguryo continues. If the campaigning in that region should resume, do not be surprised if Emperor Yangdi has a sudden need for fresh troops.

City - Liangzhou
Starts Feb 609 CE
18500 starting cash on Normal

Requirements:
  • Stone Great Wall must be built
  • 5 trading partners

You are going to be in Liangzhou for a while. The Stone Great Wall takes a long time to build. Keep things simple. You need workers and you need to provide them with water, food and the basic necessities of life. I didn't build any elite housing here or any military. I had one block of 32 Spacious Dwellings and one block of 31 Elegant Dwellings. With a total population of 2924, I had all of the workers that I needed. If I had needed more workers, there was room for 6 or 7 more houses in each block.

Resources are limited on this map and good farmland is at a premium. Your best export item is Carved Jade. Lanzhou, Yangzhou or Chang-an will buy all of the Carved Jade that you can produce. You can only purchase Jade from Kashgar, and they will only sell you 12 a year. Kashgar and Chengdu will buy salt. Salt isn't the best moneymaker, but you don't have a lot of other options available.

By keeping a careful eye on spending, I was able to make a small profit selling carved jade, salt and millet, with additional income provided by the Mint. In retrospect, I should have built the housing blocks on the fringe of the grassland (with just enough overlap for a well) and reserved more farmland for crops. Chengdu was buying the excess millet that I produced, but with more farms I could have sold wheat and millet to Lhasa, Guangzhou and Changzhou.

A small profit can be made by taxes, but paper will have to be imported from Chengdu. If finances become desperate, you can always try and buy carved jade, silk and/or lacquerware from one city and selling it for a profit to another. After all, one of the mission requirements is 5 trading partners. You might as well use them. Additional stone can be purchased from Chang-an, but I had no trouble producing all of the stone that my masons could lay.

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