Rebuilding Science in a Magic World

I was certainly not delighted to hear that we weren't going to have any trade coming our way until the war was over.  It meant that the rush to make the new salt greenhouses was not as useful as I hoped it would be.  We did get a larger salt yield this year, and traded it for coin, but ultimately, that is significantly less than I was hoping to get.  The fact we only got dwarven coin also was quite unfortunate.  The coin itself is pretty much useless if we can't trade for things with it.

Though, because we relied on others to actually do the trading rather than having our own trade ships it's also our fault.  Given that is the case, we might want to accelerate our harbor timeline.  Though trade with the dwarves is unlikely while they're going through a civil war, perhaps a human or elf country would be able to trade with us.

Though I personally want to improve our self-reliance even more now.  We aren't dependent on the continents for anything, but we do gain quite a bit of benefit from trade overall.  The main issue for an island nation is our limited resources.  While we've been blessed with many deposits of metal, and a decent food supply, there exists some upper limit on the availability of resources for an island nation, which is why I was so keen on trading renewable resources like salt for permanent resources like metal.  However, the continents seem to be quite volatile, and using trade as a shortcut to provide our dwarves and humans with clothing and spices from their homeland is starting to show itself as a weakness.  Now that they'll be unable to get those goods because of the war, I think it's time to attempt to integrate them further into our society.

I talked things over with Zeb and Zaka, and they agreed that we should focus on self-reliance more.  At this point, Zeb has started to train up quite a few new stone shaping goblins, which means that sometime this year he'll have a few more construction teams available.  I discussed it with him, and in a few months I'll be getting volunteers for a second mining team to join the first one.

This year, we'll plant some of our imported fibrous plants.  These seeds were imported from the dwarves for the purpose of growing better plants for weaving cloth.  If all goes well, we'll at least be able to make simple clothes of a quality similar to the dwarves.  Most of our population is wearing shoddy clothing made from the plants that grow on the island or decent quality leather.  The dwarves and humans, however, are wearing imported clothing.  They don't have an abundance of it, but it was meant to make their transition to our lifestyle easier.

Zeb and I agreed that it was time to expand the production infrastructure in and around the city.  We've had a few goblins who have worked as Karsh's assistants for years now, and it's about time to have them move to their own smithies, and give Karsh some new assistants.  So, we'll be building two more smithy areas.  There is a similar situation for carpentry and weaving.  So for a few months, one of the construction teams is going to stop building new housing, and focus on getting those new buildings built.

For a little while, I'll be busy making sure that everything is working in the hydroelectric facility, and teaching ten goblins how to handle everything.  The facility has significantly more electrical capacity than it's currently using, so we have plenty of room to add more machines in the future to that area.

After some discussion with Zaka, it's been decided that after I make sure everything is working as intended with the hydroelectric facility, I'm going to work on a few buildings in the city.  We were waiting on a good supply of metal in order to make a bank.  Given our overall growth rate, it's been decided that we don't just need a bank, though it's where we'll start.  After building a bank, we'll build a mint for making more of our money.  It's been determined that the mint will be built under our castle.  There, we'll have a vault for storing our valuables.

Initially, I wasn't planning on doing something like that, but Zaka brought up a good point on the matter.  As the population has continued to grow, there has been more and more crime of increasing severity.  A decade ago, petty theft was about the highest extent of the criminal activity.  We already have guards and a jail, but that hasn't stopped the occasional individual from engaging in more severe crimes.  Recently, Zaka executed a hobgoblin for running an extortion ring.  Currently, I just hide the minting equipment up on the mountain along with spare coin.

Following Zaka's logic, as the population continues to grow, it wouldn't be impossible for a criminal element to decide to steal our minting equipment or coin, which is unguarded.  If, instead, it was kept in the castle and guarded, at the very least it would be easier to investigate the crime, should it occur.  Zaka's been doing a good job of keeping the number of guards up relative to the rest of the population, though we're starting to run into a new issue as a result.  Lack of leveling opportunities.

There still are some, but it's becoming more and more limited over time.  Which, after some discussion, I've decided on a plan.  We imported a significant amount of waterproofing materials over the last few years.  Initially, I intended their use to be for more windmills.  Instead, we'll be using it to make a decently large boat which we can use to travel to the next island over.  There, a group of guards can be brought over for part of winter, where they can hunt giant lizards and cut down trees to gain levels.  Which also means that once a few new construction teams are available, it's time to build the harbor, so we can safely store our ships.

Our plans for the year basically went off without a hitch.  There were a few hiccups with the hydroelectric facility, but they were pretty minor and easy to fix.  By mid-spring it was ready to be left in the hands of the goblins.  They were separating hematite much faster than it was being mined, which was good.  The enriched hematite was quite easy to process into good quality iron.

Which was good, because I needed plenty of iron to make the vaults for the bank and the mint.  First, I worked on the bank, which consisted of a vault with 10,000 deposit boxes.  Admittedly, there was no locks on the boxes, and some were larger than others, but any individual who wants a box can get one in the bank.  Each box is labelled with a dwarven number, and we hired five clerks and ten guards for the bank.  The clerks were given a basic rundown of dwarven number systems, and then also taught how to write names down. 

From there, a ledger was kept of who had what box in the vault.  For the time being, we're not keeping a running total, and anyone who wants to withdraw from the bank will have to wait for a clerk to physically check their balance.  To prevent mistakes, they also have to have two other goblins double check that the right deposit box was checked.

After the bank was operational, Zeb was ready to designate new construction teams, so I joined in to get a second mining team.  Since the new mining team was relatively low prestige, I split the existing team in two, and the new group was split among those teams.  One team will focus on extracting the upper layer of hematite and quartz, while the second team will dig into the root of the vein to extract the sulfide ores.

After removing the new mining team from the pool, Zeb was left with three new construction teams.  One of the senior teams was dedicated to building out the new smithies and other workshops, two of the new teams were put back on terrace expansion, and one senior team and one new team came with me to the other side of the island.  I brought along the human harbormaster to help us plan out the future port.

A channel will be dug out into the bay, and for now a single wet dock area will be built with a lock to maintain water level even during low tide.  Ultimately, ships can come in during medium tide and above, and by using a dual lock, we can make sure that the water level in the wet dock never falls below that level.  I'd initially planned for the one wet dock to handle our single ship, but the harbormaster made a good point about having it two wet docks instead.  If we only make the one, then we'll be unable to receive anyone who might arrive while our own ship is docked.

In the future, we'll add even more docks, but that was what they'd work on for the time being.  After that, I spent a few more months designing the mint under our fort in the middle of the city.  This vault was made more secure than the bank vault, with extra thick walls, and a combination lock.  The actual coin minting area is in a higher level of the fort, but the equipment is stored down in the vault while not in use.  After it was complete, we moved all the equipment and coins that were stored on the mountain down into the vault.

By that point, it was mid-fall and enough of the port had been built that I could begin construction of our new ship.  I had initially thought about having it be a sail powered boat, but those require significantly more know-how to operate than a powered boat.  Unlike the barge, which uses a paddleboat design, I wanted to go with a propeller and rudder design for this ship.  Ultimately, the plan is for it to hold 50 individuals, and a bunch of cargo.