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Hello again everyone, and welcome back to Let's Play Zeus: Master of Olympus.



With The Trojan War completed, we move onto our next campaign and it seemed many of you folks wanted to Hercules' Labors. Not one of my favorite campaigns, but by no means a bad one. There will be three colony missions in this seven mission campaign, so a little under half our time will be spent outside the main city. But enough jabbering, let's get this shit started.




We must found a new great city, named Tiryns! The Oracle has great visions for our future and the cities fate will be intertwined with that of Hercules. ( )

For those interested, this campaign's time frame is set about 660 years after the completion of the Trojan War campaign or about 740 years from the start of the campaign (it took me a lot longer than 10 years )



First interesting thing about our home city here is that we don't get access to any farms. Our population will have to be fed with only naturally occurring food sources, in this case boar and urchins. As stated in the Mission Objective window, growth can't be allowed to get too out of hand, or food will become an issue.



Which works for me, because we don't have any industrial jobs. Not enough food for a large city, nor enough industries to employ everyone if I would try to do it anyway.



The world is still fairly small at this time, but note all the undeveloped cities dotting the map. Things should pick up relatively soon. Our only enemy right now is Nemea, that said, pretty much everyone except Cyme is absolutely worthless to me right now. Elis and Knossos quite literally trade for nothing, Eleusis buys marble, and sells nothing of particular use right now. Cyme will buy fleece though, and we have to produce a booming fleece industry to fill a mission objective, so...



Oh, and we also have a big lake and useless swampy territory smack dab in the middle of the map. Fucking joy.



Taxes are lowered to low in keeping with the mandate, wages are also lowered so that I don't immediately bankrupt myself and get flooded with workers when we have access to so little in terms of actual ability to employ them.



The first neighborhood is erected slightly to the south of the swamp and lake. It was chosen mainly because of it's close location to food and the meadow.



Cyme also sends it's first request for troops. The game is not so cruel as to take your only trading partner from you this early in the game, but it's more than willing to make dealing with them an absolute pain in the ass. Since I quite obviously cannot build any noble housing or Trireme Wharfs, they'll have to defend on their own, but they're not going to be happy by our refusal to send our non-existent troops.

This begins a long cycle with Cyme where they constantly close and reopen trading with me and clog up my message box incessantly with their bitching. Me --> <-- Cyme



Some Hunting Lodges are placed first, since there are boars quite literally right outside of the first housing district and they begin stabbing the shit out of some pigs for our citizens. A couple of Urchin Quays are also placed so that workers can begin harvesting the spiny little delicacies to feed the soon-to-be growing population.



And then the Plague hits. Whoops, knew I was forgetting something.

I don't have enough workers to place in infirmary at the moment though, and the plague already hit, so I don't give a shit about preventative walkers for a little while at least. So, a bunch of diseased citizens are left to die in the streets, but these things happen I suppose.



Food distribution begins in short order. Salted pork is sold to all the non-diseased citizens. None is gifted to those hit with the plague (Annoying side effect of the plague). The citizens, energized now that they're no longer eating mud pies, twigs, and small rocks, upgrade their housing, bringing on a new wave of immigrants. Some of these new workers are infirmary workers.



Then news reaches Tiryns that our ally Elis has fallen to Nemea. Not a single shit is given because they're worthless anyway.



Unrest has begun to become a problem in the city, due to a combination of shitty wages, high unemployment, and shitty housing. A Watchpost is placed to keep an eye on things. I don't want any of the rabble getting funny ideas after all.



Cyme continues to harass me about how they're not trading with me one month and then reopen the route the next. This is particularly annoying because I'M NOT EVEN TRADING WITH THEM YET! I don't have any Fleece motherfucker, and you sell garbage! Quit harassing me!



At this point though, the citizens are starting to clamor for fleece, and the treasury reserves are starting to look a bit low, not to mention the fact that the unemployed masses need work. Perhaps the fleece industry might be a good idea. Oh, but I guess I'm not gonna get paid as much for it as I would have had I worked faster.



So our fleece industry is established, as well as a trading pier with Cyme. They buy a lot of fleece at 36 units of the stuff. Each trading ship will take a batch of 12, so three ships per year will let us reach the max they'll buy.



I'm still running at a deficit at this point though, and since we do have a treasury goal this mission, at some point, profits must be found somewhere. Because taxes are so low, it's probably going to be exporting fleece.



The cities shepherds do their best watching the city's flock and shearing the sheep when the time comes. They're good people those shepherds.



Shamefully, it took me awhile to realize that the city's stockpiles of that fluffy white goodness were not growing. It seems that the pier was taking it all and sending it off to Cyme. This is, of course, unacceptable, as I can't place more carding sheds without more workers, and I can't get more workers without fleece! So the fleece trade is temporarily closed while the storehouse near the housing district is filled with it.



While waiting, news is once again received of Nemean aggression. This time against our ally Knossos. Once again, not a single fuck is given. We do, however, not have good battle lines drawn, with both sides having three allies.



The citizens aren't concerned with geopolitics though, they have food, clean water, jobs, low taxes. What's there to complain about?



Once an acceptable level of fleece has been stockpiled, a vendor is set up at the agora and distribution begins. Davros begins to formulate plans for killing everyone to escape all the terrible puns.



Once the homes are upgraded into homesteads, the new workers are all put to work in Carding Sheds, tending the sheep, except for a select few who work gathering urchins so that the city will continue to eat, despite the larger population.

Trade with Cyme is also resumed, this time with the maximum amount of fleece allowed on the pier set to 12. A visiting ship will clear it out, but it's close enough to the production source that it should be refilled very quickly.



A College is built along with a Podium to provide philosophical lessons to the masses and they all upgrade once again to Tenements, meeting the first goal for this particular mission. The immigrants are once again put to work tending the sheep. At this point, I have three choices for workers more or less - Fleece, food, or storage. There is nothing else I have access to that would produce something of use for the city at the moment.



It has now turned into a boring waiting game as I wait for the treasury to slowly grow back up to 7500. Cyme is, of course, still butthurt about me not sending them soldiers and refuses to offer me some coin and while they're buying 36 units of fleece a year, it's still pretty slow going.



Fuck this, to the black market. Gifts of fleece are sent to butter them up so I can ask for some cash.



It doesn't really work though, because by the time they receive the gifts, improve their attitude toward me, and they acknowledge my request for silver, it's all but done anyway. Still, they do manage to speed things up just a bit at the end.




With the treasury goal met, that concludes all the goals for this mission. It wasn't particularly hard, it just involved a lot of waiting around doing nothing, but that's ok. The first mission in a campaign is always pretty easy.

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That done, there is a lot of voting to be done this time around.

First: Which colony should be settled first?



Lemnos - A land of silver and marble, where we will be expected to grow a thriving city and build a temple.

Lerna - Fish and farms! I wonder why no one has settled here yet?

Ephesus - Copper deposits litter the ground as well as plentiful timber

Second: Tax rate!

Once again, the choices are None, Very Low, Low, Normal, High, Very High, and Outrageous

Third: Since mandates would be hard to make since we're bouncing around so much, I will be taking them off the table for this campaign, instead I'm make other little things to vote on each mission. This time we need a name for the lake and the first housing district.

I'm also putting one little caveat on voting. If you guys choose Ephesus as our colony, it has the potential to make the rest of the campaign very, very hard, if not impossible at low tax rates. If that's the case, I may just gonna throw the tax vote out and do what I need to do.