12th & 13th Centuries: The Restoration
Photograph of part of the remaining Nahuatl Jungle, protected by the Rainforest Preservation ActThe reigns of John II, Simon, Robert IIDespite the serious power of Aztlan having been broken in the first twenty-five years of the war, the Crusades officially lasted until the Unification of Great Britain. Seventy years of war taxes and deprivation had sapped the spirit of Britain, particularly the crowded home counties, leading to a great deal of unrest across the continent. In 1108 a Christian-sympathising king, John II, took the throne and began a series of reforms under pressure from the nobility to weaken the Synod's direct authority.
One such measure was the adoption of the Julian Calendar as a nod to the growing influence of Brickfield. Another more turbulent reform was to reorganise the structure of the Synod along the lines of a Confucian bureaucracy, strongly demanded by the Confucian influence in Nottingham and the north coast of Aztlan. Although the Synod remained the state religion of the United Kingdom and the king its head and Protector, the reorganisation caused a great deal of dissent. John would be plagued for the rest of his reign by minor uprisings and failures to collect taxation.
In 1226 John died and was succeeded by his nephew Simon, a far more charismatic leader with a network of allies amongst the newly ordered Synod. With most of the real work behind him, Simon denounced his uncle's failure to adhere to the traditions of Judaism but kept all of the reforms he had instituted. Simon continued to reorganise the Synod over the course of his reign, establishing funds and processes by which redevelopment of the kingdom was to be encouraged. These reforms only proved effective within those districts where the Synod had a significant presence, resulting in the northern coast of Aztlan remaining largely excluded until later in the century when missionary presence extended the Synod's reach.
The frameworks laid out by John II and Simon would pave the way for two centuries of rebuilding and development known now to historians as the Restoration period. Some of the early efforts were less than successful; Simon's son Robert II withdrew funding for an extension to the London Library, aimed at turning it into a library of national importance, to spend on building a new castle.
If there is anything positive to say about Robert's reign it is that he laid down the first Arboreal Protection Act in response to a growing culture of clearcutting, preventing the logging of more than a specific quota within lands controlled by the Crown or its vassals. The Act no doubt saved those portions of the ancient forests of Britain within the boundaries of the Crown's control, but industry buoyed by the heavy deforestation beyond those boundaries would power the rapid growth of northern Britain during the Restoration. In these modern times we may be quick to denounce our forebears for these practices, but before the advent of the machined lumber mill there was a great deal of wastage from ordinary sustainable logging efforts; it simply made more sense to cut down trees wholesale and move them by barge back to the cities for processing.
Robert's descendants proved as charismatic as his father and over the rest of the twelfth century gradually brought the rest of the continent under the Synod's influence and pushed back the everpresent jungle of Aztlan.
It is probably worth noting at this point that the very actions which brought Britain its greatness during this period also caused significant ecological damage. Teams of serfs operating under feudal guidance reclaimed thousands of square miles in jungle for farmland and settlement, driving down the everpresent threats of disease in the south, particularly malaria and white fever the main reservoir of which was in the monkeys in the Nahuatl jungle. By driving back the jungle for farmland the British also destroyed the habitat of innumerable and uncounted equatorial species. Near-complete deforestation of the jungle would be achieved by the end of the thirteenth century, reducing the Nahuatl jungle from a cross-continental expanse to the thin strip of vegetation it is today.
Rededicating the country to Organised Religion instead of Theocracy is well worth the three turns of anarchy when you are expecting dozens of turns of peace before you even need to think about warring with anyone, especially when you're rebuilding after a war. The +25% to all building construction pays for itself quickly.
Deforestation has positive and negative effects. Deforesting jungle is almost always worth it, contrary to what Greenpeace will tell you. Jungle is almost worthless and has to be cut down to be worked. Worse, it provides no benefit for being cut down beyond its disappearance. Even worse, any tile of Jungle in a city radius reduces that city's health by 0.4 due to harbouring disease. Should you eventually adopt an environmentalist economy Jungle squares will also produce a point of happiness in cities as well, but it's probably not worth it.
Deforesting forests is a rather more mixed blessing. Cutting down forests produces usable wood (unlike jungle) and will give a significant one-time boost to production in a nearby city. The closer the forest is to the centre of a city, the more lumber will reach the source and so when cutting it down more production will be provided in the bonus. Unlike jungles, forests tend to be productive (at the very least they offer 1 additional hammer/square) and can eventually be improved by the mid-game tech Replaceable Parts, which provides lumber mills. They also have positive ecological effects by supporting wildlife and preventing soil loss, adding 0.5 to the health of a city. In the early game it may well be worth deforesting for the resource boons, but forests take a long time to grow back and Civ 4 does not allow you to replant them.
Hence, a compromise; a lot of forest exists just beyond city borders in northern England that can be successfully chopped without impinging upon the city radius and affecting health. The bonus production will make a lot of difference.
St John (left) and Joseph, Earl of Nottingham (right)St John the HumbleThe early thirteenth century saw the birth of St John, one of the very few canonised saints of Confucianism. Though Confucians often recognised the existence (and later, possible existence) of God, they felt that the Confucian philosophy was more important and so did not elevate mortals to sainthood (beyond Confucius himself) in the way that the reformed Synod began to. St John was the first son of the Earl of Nottingham, but renounced his fortune to follow a life of piety as a Confucian. He joined the Confucian ranks as a lay scholar and in time rose to lead the Academy but was throughout his life noted for his great humility.
John's brother Joseph (the Earl who had inherited in his place) also took a great interest in Confucius' Academy, the Kong Miao, albeit for more mercenary reasons. Like most nobles Joseph suffered serious money problems for as much money as the Earldom of Nottingham drew in, running it and living in the style to which the Earls had grown accustomed to cost more. Joseph soon realised that although not the dominant faith of Britain, Confucianism still held much sway in many of the United Kingdom's cities and there was a tradition of pilgrims coming to the site to pay their respects at Confucius' tomb and study for a time at the Kong Miao. The chief difficulty that dissuaded more from visiting was the location of the Academy; Confucius had been influential but not especially wealthy and his original Academy had been constructed on the site of a disused horse-market in the poorer quarter of town. The Academy had improved over the last thousand years, but the quarter had not.
Joseph pursued the simplest and most ruthless solution; he tore down the entire quarter of the city after 'compulsory purchasing' the land for a pittance. Although there was threat of rioting, Joseph was able to suppress the populace with his troops and since no other nobles or professionals with power of influence had been harmed the problem did not escalate. John lamented greatly the steps his brother had taken and spoke publically against them, but Joseph excused himself on the grounds that he sought only to bring the wisdom of Confucius to the wider world. The quarter was cleared and in its place an extensive series of gardens and pagodas in the Confucian style were erected. A paved stone road was extended to the main street of Nottingham and the Academy itself was renovated to house more students.
As a result of Joseph's direct intervention the Academy attracted hundreds of pilgrims from across the kingdom every year, mostly professionals and learned scholars willing to pay for schooling and contributing more and more money into the local market - and the Earl's coffers.
The Royal College of Chartered CartographersAround the same time as the Kong Miao was renovated the first reliable magnetic compasses were produced in Brickfield, chiefly by the master metalworker and machinist Alfred of Brickfield. Three compasses from his workshop survive to the present day; one is in the Museum of Science and History in York, the other two in private collections. The compasses caught the eye of a junior Treasury minister in London who, in need of an accurate census to be carried out, convinced his superiors to gather the premier cartographers in the city to observe the new device.
Prior to this meeting most maps were a mixture of guesswork and the patchwork efforts of several mapmakers, often based on second-hand information. Census information was usually accurate for the cities but villages and outlying towns were poorly recorded and thus it was difficult to accurately gauge whether taxes were being collected.
The product of this meeting, in which the junior Treasury minister (probably Sir Edward Scott, though no definitive evidence exists) explained the above dilemma, was the formation of the Royal College of Chartered Cartographers. The Treasury ratified and presented the College's charter on the 31st January 1220 and one of its stated responsibilities was to provide a central source of accurate cartographic information. This requirement established a strong tradition in the Society of funding a wide variety of explorative ventures to map out the less-travelled regions of Britain.
The College would play a very active role in the coming century, the first evidence of which was the production of a map produced after rumours were received of seeing land to the far south of the Cape of Good Fortune. A cartographer was able to map out a rough coastline from the relative shallows of the Cape, but at that time no ships existed sturdy enough to pass through the tempestuous waters of the Straits to mount an expedition. Nevertheless news of the foreign land surprised many and worried some in the synod, who had preached for centuries that Britain was the only land in the world and that all else on the Earth was sea.
The Golden Straits and the Cape of Good FortuneEnglish Development during the Late 13th CenturyThough one of the stated aims of the Synod was to restore the lands damaged in the wake of the Crusade, much of the finance and organisation provided was diverted back to England due to a mixture of nepotism and bribery. Edinburgh's population had already begun to surpass London's by the last quarter of the century, profiting from somewhat exploitative trade with Aztlan.
By the start of the reign of King Robert III in 1270, Branston was already recognised as one of the great financial centres of England. With cheap labour readily available in immigrants from underdeveloped Ireland and Aztlan, Branston and its sister cities were able to support a class of specialised professionals not directly related to urban labour or agriculture. In Branston this manifested most strongly in the booming Merchants' Quarter, an extension of the market that encompassed much of the high-class trade in the city.
The wealthiest merchants in Branston were rich enough to rival nobility and were the architects of enormous ventures such as the cross-continental grain trade or the funding of the limited redevelopment going on in Aztlan. This dedicated merchant class boosted the wealth of the city immensely, a great boon to an ever-struggling English Treasury.
Brickfield, lagging slightly behind its larger cousin, also boasted a powerful merchant class and within a decade was similarly devoting its resources primarily to the creation of wealth over industry.
One of the awesome aspects of researching Currency (that tech we got centuries back) is that it allows you to create Wealth instead of any industrial projects. If it doesn't make sense to build anything new in a city (as in Brickfield and Branston at this stage), you can happily set it to produce Wealth, Research or Culture and half of its production 'hammers' will be devoted to the chosen trade instead.
Branston (and to a lesser extent Brickfield) both have a surplus of population for the tiles they are able to work (or it is productive to work). This surplus population can be readily dedicated to serving as a professional class (Engineer, Merchant, Scientist, Artist, Priest and Labourer are all available, though Labourer just represents unskilled additional workers). Under normal circumstances surplus population can only be rededicated to professionals if the necessary facilities exist (you need a Market to dedicate Merchants, a Library to dedicate Scientists, a Theatre to dedicate Artists and so on), but the Caste System civic lets you turn as much population as you like into Merchants, Scientists and Artists.
Why not just use the Caste System? Well, aside from it not really fitting into the narrative, the British are looking at a good century or two of development to take care of. The 50% bonus to Worker construction speed is very useful in freeing up my units to cover more ground. The Nahuatl jungle didn't deforest itself you know.
So because Brickfield and Branston both have high production values and committed Markets, it was worth turning their production to Wealth and creating 1-2 Merchants for the extra taxes. The boon to the treasury allows research rates to be put up without exhausting the exchequer and gets the UK competitive with the rest of the world again in technology. Since at the start of the 12th Century tax was at 70% of GDP and research and culture were making up the other 10% and 20% respectively, getting costs down is ridiculously important. Why is the tax this high? In part because the extended nature of the empire drives up maintenance costs across the entire kingdom but also because it is suffering an inflation rate that is swiftly approaching 25% of total costs. When your total costs are nearly 200 gold/turn, this is not to be sniffed at.
Second bit of fun - 1270 is the year that turns start happening in 2-year increments instead of 5! Time for more accurate timekeeping!
The large lumber companies funded by Brickfield and Branston merchants begin running low on available forests profitable to cut near London and so over the course of 1278-1284 moved their operations south towards the southern Scottish forests near Edinburgh. Several bribes are believed to have been offered during this period, but King Robert held firm on the law's stance; damage to the country's long-term interests would be too great.
In 1286 we can find the first evidence of a true telescope, based off accounts from the RCCC for that year. It was constructed in Hastings primarily to aid trade ships in spotting and mapping shorelines, as well as occasional pirates. Later sales of telescopes and other optical instruments can be founds in the records of the Hastings and Edinburgh grand markets, established between 1294 and 1296 in response to the growing industrial presence funded by wealthy investors from Branston and Brickfield.
1296 marked the high point of the Thirteenth Century, King Robert III's reign and a ten year period of great prosperity in the United Kingdom. Within five months of one another the Edinburgh market, the Hagia Sophia and the Hanging Gardens of York were completed.
Based off the original designs for the castle King Robert II had begun, the Hagia Sophia was altered and completed during Robert III's reign as a beautiful synagogue. The imposing structure, built of stone and marble and crowned with a golden dome over 100 feet in diameter, served as a statement to the world of both the power of the secular state and the continuing supremacy of the Synod. Although the Synod's official base of power remained at the Temple of Solomon in Cardiff, many of its operations in the capital were moved into the Sophia. During the decade following the initial construction, the interior was redressed in coloured marble, gold and mosaics depicting Judaic history. Although the demonstration may not have notably affected the balance of power amongst the nobility, the splendour of the Sophia struck a chord with the peasantry whose loyalty to the crown redoubled.
Popular myth paints the Hanging Gardens as being a gift of King Robert to his wife, Queen Topiltzin, daughter of the Tlatoani of Tenochtitlan (now a state equivalent to that of a Duchy) who was not used to the cold weather of York. Although the Gardens did contain many flora from Aztlan, contemporary accounts point to its construction as being a symbol of the immense prosperity of the time. A series of good harvests had brought in a great abundance of food and the population spiked over the period. The Hanging Gardens, a tiered structure of flowing water and extensive ringed gardens, collected plants from all across the continent to mark the breadth of its control and reinforce the national identity of the British as one grand kingdom. The gardens also served as a pleasant retreat for the higher classes and its careful cultivation of different plants (a feat of immense ecological engineering for the time, given the variety of habitats from which the flora came) inspired a culture of greater environmental awareness amongst the nobility.
Regrettably, this very period of prosperity served as its own undoing and by the end of the century the massive population growth it had spawned gave rise to overcrowing, food riots and an outbreak of plague that stretched across most of England and Wales and claimed King Robert's own life in the process. The census of 1300 registered approximately 2,787,000 citizens within the county of Edinburgh alone, outstripping London's own population by a margin of several hundred thousand. The total population of the United Kingdom according to the census exceeded 14.6 million citizens, probably over half the population of the world at that time.
The Hagia Sophia, standing majestically in the foothills south of London
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Topic: Let's Play... SM's Civ 4: The United Kingdom of Great Britain & Aztlan! (Read 12291 times)