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Turbulent Winds - King Cuo's Temple

At Lingshou, in the small Kingdom of Zhongshan, the local warlord, King Cuo, has financed a Grand Temple Complex, and he has hired you to see the project through to completion. To finish this monument, you'll need to import stone from either Loyi or Qufu, but first their favor must be won. Impressive gifts of shiny new lacquerware, to replace their tarnished and aging bronzeware, will no doubt help to win some favor.
The Daoist philosophy has taken firmer root. If you build a Daoist Temple and pay homage to Xi Wang Mu, the Queen Mother of the West, perhaps she will grace the city. Her mere presence will often help to hurry the hands of monument workers. The esteemed Mencius is also roaming the lands; his benefits on trade and commerce should not be overlooked.

Starts Feb 317 BCE

$17,000 Normal

Requirements:
  • Grand Temple Complex
  • Produce 18 Lacquerware in one year
  • 3 animals in Menagerie
  • 12 months of Heroes

This is a nice, big fun map to work on. Your immigrants and traders enter from the Southwest corner and exit between the two rivers at the Southeast corner. My time in Lingshou was very peaceful, but who knows what could happen if you spend a long time building the Temple.

There are ample opportunities to make money exporting silk and lacquerware. You can mine iron and sell weapons, and many cities will buy foodstuffs as well. The only real limitation is you have no jade carvers. Oh, well, can’t have everything.

After a few experimental tries, I settled on a big block of common housing near the entrance. The lower plateau is one place you can irrigate farmland, so that is where the crops were planted. I laid out an industrial area around the little lake on the western side.

I connected up the farms at a different pathway than the original road, and placed my Mill and some warehouses alongside. On the eastern side of that main road was the Elite Market and housing. Naturally, it was a mixed block (with some common houses), since I am always underestimating the workforce needed.

A square of Trading Posts connected the industry down to the Mill and warehouses. It was pretty efficient.

Now, wood is really important in this mission. The lacquermakers need lots of wood. Get started early with chopping wood so when your first crop of lacquer trees are harvested you can have a decent production. I cleared a few trees and placed the loggers back in the woods to shorten the distance.

The lacquerware makers are just in front of the farms. Road-block the entrances to the farms and your inspector will keep everything in good shape.

On the Northwest corner of my lakeside industrial park, I planted two hemp farms. Usually I plant hemp with the food crops, but there really isn’t any reason to do that. They weren’t irrigated, but dang, I haven’t seen a mission yet where you couldn’t produce way more hemp that anyone would need. The mulberries and weavers rounded out the industrial loop. Later, I added a few clay pits and some ceramics shops. It was all tidy and easy to monitor.

Start your Temple as early as you have workers. I placed the base, chopped wood for a while and slowly added carpenters and labor camps. Keeping it disconnected from the city proper is always best. Otherwise, your wood just stays on the road, traveling from the monument to a lacquer maker to a tax office… and in this map, the Confucian Academy will need wood, too. I don’t think you actually need Confucian coverage, but I built one anyway. Unless you planned to call one of the Confucian heroes.

I sold silk and lacquerware and some wheat. Late in the mission I sold weapons. I imported Salt to give me Tasty food (millet, bean curd and wheat can be grown here) and even imported some Rice for insurance. It is very cheap. There were a few requests for lacquerware and bean curd during the years, but you might have other commodities requested.

After you build the Administrative City building, you can build a mint. I placed mine next to the fledgling iron industry I had going down on the river and wondered why that little man just stood there tapping his foot. Mints use Copper, not Iron, so it has to go across the river. Don’t forget a bridge so the Mint and its Inspector can access the labor pool.

Another thing I learned on this map… See where I have my farms, all nice and symmetrical? When I added the last farm, I extended the irrigation canal all the way to the edge of the river. It is kinda a tight fit to get 4 farms in that lower area. So, all is good until I noticed one of the farm tiles had turned to rubble. And then two more exploded! The irrigation canal blocked the exit point on the map, and the Emperor’s Engineers were fixing the problem. You have to have a clear path from the entrance of the map to the exit point. Crops don’t count, as you have seen the traders walking across them with no difficulty. But you will have to place a little foot bridge (a road tile) across the irrigation canal to avoid… exploding farms.

You should know how to get animals by now. I allied with Qufu and requested my first animal. Gifting and receiving gave me the second one, and when my Zodiac year came around, I requested the Special Gift and got the third one.

I planned on getting Xi Wang Mu to be my 12-month hero, but by the time I started working on her, the two Ancestral Heroes were pretty unhappy. So I had to be prompt with gifting them at the same time I was working on her. She didn’t budge from Contented until I realized the Daoist coverage was not very good. I added an extra shrine and temple to the Ornate Apartment block and kept working on her. I had imported some Jade just for Homage; and it worked really well. She may done her magic and made the monument construction crews work faster, hard to say. But she is very pretty.

  • Finished Nov 309
  • Pop 3571
  • 3 animals
  • 12 months heroes
  • best lacquerware production – 35
  • $66,718
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