If anyone is reading this who didn’t manage to enter, you missed an absolute classic! It was essentially a test of strategy and ability to manage a good number of things happening simultaneously. Most of all, it demanded a really efficient distribution/trade/production layout, and maximisation of export income. The shorter timescale of the Hard version made this particularly challenging.
Industry/trade layout:
First concern was to ensure that the caravan traders did not take the long, long walk all around the lake. A ferry crossing across the mouth of the lake kept their path through the map quite short, and all the trade SYs were placed reasonably close to this path. The dock was next to the map entrance on the N side, allowing adequate time for 2 ships per city each flood season. All the barley/beer/brick/pottery industry was placed in the NE corner.
Housing:
I had 3 separate housing bocks, each a 46 or 48 tile loop. One was in the NW corner, one next to it in the N, and one on the S bank. In total these were designed to evolve to 74 fancy residences and 4 manors. In addition I filled a row of slum housing in the SE corner right at the start, to get labour onto the map quickly, and retained this until near the end. The two blocks on the N side were supplied from the same granaries/SYs, which meant a long walk for the bazaar buyers in the NW block. This necessitated 4 upgraded bazaars in that block.
Food:
This was ultimately the major constraint. For the first 3 years I fed them entirely with fish. Two shipwrights were used to accelerate its build-up, and were then deleted to free up labour. After all the quarries had been placed, I started the grain farms during AD2, on the S bank. This was supplied as the second food to the N block, and later to the NW block. However there was insufficient for the S block, for which I had to import chickpeas.
Exports/imports:
Getting a fast start to export income is usually very important in contests. In this case it was vital. Initially I was only able to sell 800 beer, plus some bricks and stone, in the first year. However, I then altered my strategy and placed 8 barley farms as soon as I could, with 8 breweries next to them by harvest time. The farms delivered straight to the breweries, which then just had time to produce 200 units each by late Dec, and were delivered to an adjacent SY. After some experimentation, the Mennefer trade route was opened 3 days before the end of Nov, which allowed its second caravan to arrive at the SY just as the second round of beer deliveries was getting there (clay imports were turned off first to ensure the caravan did not go to the clay SY). This enabled me to sell the second 800 units with 2 days to spare before the end of the year - phew! The additional income allowed the building of the palace/tax collectors during the first year - which then enabled me to avoid a loss in the second year, which in turn would have killed the PR until the start of the fourth year.
After that, I found it was essential to export everything possible except grain. Normally, I wouldn’t bother with the low-value items like sandstone, fish and barley, but in this case the extra income they generated was critical. In total, after the first year, exports generated about 10,000db annually.
This provided sufficient income to import 1500 papyrus in AD2, 1200 in AD3 and 2400 in AD4. The maximum 1500 linen was imported in AD3 and AD4. The dock was connected to the industry block, so to prevent the trade ships from being hung up at the dock, I turned off the pottery exports/clay imports just before each Khmun ship docked.
Monument:
Once the export/fish production was established, stone quarries were added progressively, finishing with 20.
It’s a long time since I built a mausoleum, and I had to experiment on the logistics. I found that you need just 1 carpenter with 100 wood only to complete it, which saved on the wood import bill. I still normally learn something new from every contest, and this was it! With my configuration of stone SYs, 4 masons and 8 work camps provided the optimum workforce. The mausoleum was completed in Jun 5.
PR:
I evolved the 4 common manors during the first half of AD4, and upgraded them to spacious manors towards the year end. This was more than sufficient to reach the 100 PR eventually, the major problem was the timescale. Throughout the last 3 years I had to make sure unemployment was kept in the 0-5% range at the end of each quarter to ensure the highest possible PR increase. Even then, the PR only just reached 100 in the final quarter, Oct 5. Before the final save in Dec 5, I doubled up the firemen in each housing block, just to make doubly sure of full protection during the run-on period to Apr 6.
Fancy residences:
Evolving the NW and N blocks to fancy residence level turned out to be fairly straightforward. However, managing the S block was more complicated, due to the shortage of the second food. I dealt with this by initially blocking the formation of any 2x2 housing in the block, so it consisted only of 1x1s, and evolving only to ordinary cottages. During the penultimate year (AD4), the maximum 2500 chickpeas were imported and held in a nearby SY. Likewise, pottery, beer and linen supplies were also held in readiness. At the start of AD5, I reduced the housing to a single 1x1 cottage on the site of each planned 2x2 residence, and deleted all the remaining cottages. This left me with 28 cottages, 420 people in total, all fully stocked with fish. I then released the pottery, beer, linen and chickpeas, which evolved them quickly up to fancy residence. This got round the problem of limited supply of the second food, since each cottage required 6 units per person to fully stock it (2 year’s supply), 2520 units in all. I still carried on importing chickpeas during the final year to cover the ongoing consumption.
This has turned out to be a rather lengthy description, but it was a very complex mission. Congratulations once again to GQ, and to the testers, for this one Now, Elf, it’s cards on table time! How did our challenge match go?