The Shop, continued
Nov. 28th, 2008 01:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencerHaving those two territories safe from the infernal machine was a great load off my mind. Repairing the walls had been a good idea: one of red's territories got hit twice and the walls came a-tumbling down. I could have attacked his outpost then, but I had other fish to fry.
The hermit had told me, somewhere among the panic, that in order to get to the machine to study it, he needed a stone road all the way there from my settlement. Something about delicate equipment that needed to be carried carefully. Unfortunately, stone roads were among the casualties of the machine. I'd lost even the basic ones that ran between my central buildings. Also unfortunately, stone roads required, well, stone. Which was also needed for stone walls, and for repairing of same, and for upgrading of the aforementioned central buildings, and for the useless and expensive obelisks and things the game sometimes insisted that we build to celebrate our victory. I'd thought I was going to be okay for stone, but my first quarry was already starting to look a little empty.
No help for it. I needed to build a stone road all the way across the map, and protect it with stone walls. I started in, using one of the territories I'd already walled off as my first stage, and whacked a wall around the next one along. It was slow going. The damn machine kept on firing off at random, and territory after territory became blasted wasteland.
Then I got a message from the red leader. He was in trouble, and he was willing to make an alliance with me, if I could spare him a cartload of stone.
Well, the short answer was that I couldn't, but that might well lead to redoubled attacks on my walls, and siege engines could do more damage to them than the machine could. On the other hand, if I supplied the stone there was nothing to stop him turning against me later. Another bind. There were days when I really wasn't so awfully keen on this game.
"What would you do here?" I said as someone came in. I didn't get an answer straight away, so I turned around. It was Zoltan-hound-of-Dracula.
He read the message over my shoulder, looked at the map, reached over and brought up my resources screen, tapped me on the shoulder to make sure I was looking at him, shrugged expressively and went into his office. Thanks a lot, boss.
Oh well. I sent the stone, just as my quarry signalled that it was cleared out, kaputt, no more. I sent a geologist to see about that. They come expensive, but they can be worth their weight in lumps of granite, or even iron sometimes. Meanwhile, there was another quarry in a territory adjoining red's land. I took a chance and sent the knight over to claim that one. I was halfway there, and I needed more stone.
Effusive message from red leader followed, swearing eternal alliance till death us do part, or something. I just hoped so. I was going to be laying myself open to attack from his side. The geologist successfully located some more stone, and the quarries swung back into production, and the machine fired off again and hit the territory I had half-walled. That was all right by me: I hadn't laid the road yet. I claimed the second quarry without incident and set it to work.
Suddenly, almost without my noticing it, I was there. I had a long corridor of stone, punctuated by gates, with a stone road running down the middle of it all the way from my settlement to the place that was my immediate goal. I set an outpost in the final territory--
--and blow me if a bunch of bandits didn't emerge from the woodwork and set fire to it!
Life, it has been truly observed, is just one damn thing after another.
The hermit had told me, somewhere among the panic, that in order to get to the machine to study it, he needed a stone road all the way there from my settlement. Something about delicate equipment that needed to be carried carefully. Unfortunately, stone roads were among the casualties of the machine. I'd lost even the basic ones that ran between my central buildings. Also unfortunately, stone roads required, well, stone. Which was also needed for stone walls, and for repairing of same, and for upgrading of the aforementioned central buildings, and for the useless and expensive obelisks and things the game sometimes insisted that we build to celebrate our victory. I'd thought I was going to be okay for stone, but my first quarry was already starting to look a little empty.
No help for it. I needed to build a stone road all the way across the map, and protect it with stone walls. I started in, using one of the territories I'd already walled off as my first stage, and whacked a wall around the next one along. It was slow going. The damn machine kept on firing off at random, and territory after territory became blasted wasteland.
Then I got a message from the red leader. He was in trouble, and he was willing to make an alliance with me, if I could spare him a cartload of stone.
Well, the short answer was that I couldn't, but that might well lead to redoubled attacks on my walls, and siege engines could do more damage to them than the machine could. On the other hand, if I supplied the stone there was nothing to stop him turning against me later. Another bind. There were days when I really wasn't so awfully keen on this game.
"What would you do here?" I said as someone came in. I didn't get an answer straight away, so I turned around. It was Zoltan-hound-of-Dracula.
He read the message over my shoulder, looked at the map, reached over and brought up my resources screen, tapped me on the shoulder to make sure I was looking at him, shrugged expressively and went into his office. Thanks a lot, boss.
Oh well. I sent the stone, just as my quarry signalled that it was cleared out, kaputt, no more. I sent a geologist to see about that. They come expensive, but they can be worth their weight in lumps of granite, or even iron sometimes. Meanwhile, there was another quarry in a territory adjoining red's land. I took a chance and sent the knight over to claim that one. I was halfway there, and I needed more stone.
Effusive message from red leader followed, swearing eternal alliance till death us do part, or something. I just hoped so. I was going to be laying myself open to attack from his side. The geologist successfully located some more stone, and the quarries swung back into production, and the machine fired off again and hit the territory I had half-walled. That was all right by me: I hadn't laid the road yet. I claimed the second quarry without incident and set it to work.
Suddenly, almost without my noticing it, I was there. I had a long corridor of stone, punctuated by gates, with a stone road running down the middle of it all the way from my settlement to the place that was my immediate goal. I set an outpost in the final territory--
--and blow me if a bunch of bandits didn't emerge from the woodwork and set fire to it!
Life, it has been truly observed, is just one damn thing after another.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-11-28 07:32 am (UTC)Oh, and I'm rather suspicious of that Hermit....
no subject
Date: 2008-11-28 08:06 am (UTC)Shorry about the teeth.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-28 02:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-28 04:19 pm (UTC)