Explaining turn #4

Looking at the Basic Data

A couple things stand out this turn. First his income for faith points didn't go down, but they also didn't go up any either. The people are used to Mesnoth doing what he does and are fairly content with things as they are.

Second we are doing great on developing technology. We've got a lot of things our people can do, mostly related to farming and weaving. The development of rafts was a surprise to the player, but the technology wasn't a huge leap from what they were working on to get the huts up and running.

However the player didn't give the people any new projects to work on and we have nothing listed for that anymore. Of course the things they worked on in the past are still being refined, such as the huts or farming, that is one benefit of having the people work on a project rather than just giving them the technologies turn after turn. We saw some benefit in that direction this turn as the people developed sharp shell hooks to help them cut manboo and mansa reeds for weaving and hut making.

Looking at the Description

After a few hundred years of living on this island the people have managed to throw together a nice little village. Populations are still low but everyone is content and over the last hundred years technology has really bloomed. With a decent diet and fairly safe environment the people are living to get older and the oldest members of the tribe are ruling over everyone else. In a population that is so small this is a fairly common practice as grandfather or great grandfather keeps firm reign on the "kids" but it does tend to make for a society that changes fairly slowly. Small incrimental changes to existing ways of doing things are more likely than entirely new technologies like the boats that appeared this turn.

The Conversation

This is one of those simple turns that end up having more effect than you'd expect. Mesnoth is setting things up this turn for big actions later. He's a more experienced player and he's worried about his situation. He's defenseless and his population is low. While he knows that players don't USUALLY meet up this early in the game it CAN happen and right now he'd be totally vulnerable.

So he plans to teach the tribe to fight somehow next turn. Yet having experience he knows that when they go out they'll take casualties. We saw that in Drethnor's game when he started his people hunting with spears, accidents lowered his pop DRAMATICALLY. To prepare for that Mesnoth is working to up the population and set them up with the sort of body that is GOOD for fighting and living a fairly active life.

The higher number of kids should also offset the growing power of the elderly. This upcoming generation should be LARGE. Ironically Mesnoth thinks he's behind in population. He doesn't have any clue that his nearest rival, Drethnor, took high casualties learning to hunt a few turns ago.