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[Taricus]

If I had this game I would be more serious, but I don't so I won't. Don't kill the minotaur! Build a maze and trap him in it until you can tame him!

He should be able to tame the minotaur just as soon as they release another patch for the game.

But I think it would be better to just rock the minotaurs world with a phalanx of elite gay soldiery.

Now with Two spears 

[Boksi]

The new year brings tribute!


All for me! All for meeee!

Er, I mean, all for the city!


Our current problem is unemployment. Even with low wage rates, it's staggering(I don't want to set them to 'Very Low' because I'm pretty sure that causes discontent).


I build two more dairies, but the west meadow is absolutely chock-full of goats. We need to get rid of the minotaur to utilize the east meadow properly. Also, we have a lot of cheese, so I sent some of it to Thermopylai, as well as requesting some fleece.


Another Thermopylaic merchant arrived. We now have enough fish and fleece to meet our goals!



I promptly ordered fish and fleece to stop being stockpiled so that our people could use them, as well as building a fleece vendor at the agora.


The fleece vendor picks up some fleece and returns to the agora...


The peddler delivers the fleece.

WHAT'S THIS? HOVEL IS EVOLVING!

CONGRATULATIONS! YOUR HOVEL HAS EVOLVED TO A HOMESTEAD!

WHAT'S THIS? HOMESTEAD IS EVOLVING!

CONGRATULATIONS! YOUR HOMESTEAD HAS EVOLVED TO A TENEMENT!

Pulled that from memory, so the format might be wrong. Anyway, the fleece lets us upgrade our hovels to homsteads, and a second culture venue upgrades homesteads to tenements. The two unevolved shacks aren't evolving because the neighborhood is unappealing. It's just ugly. I put some gardens in that little space between them and the road and that was enough.


I fixed the nonevolving shacks to the left later with a few gardens. But our last remaining goal is to have '500 people in homestead or better', correct?


Oh yeah. What's our next mission?


As you can see, the minotaur is the bastard child of Minos' queen and a bull. And that's why we don't allow the women near our goats: We'd be swamped by satyrs.


We can build Theseus' Hall. This building alone is not enough to get him to bugger over here, though.


There are several heroes in this game and each has different requirement. These aren't too difficult, except possibly for marble. We can import wine from Marathon but I don't think any of our allies trades for marble right now.


Speaking of allies, another one has appeared on the map. Plataia sells carrots. In Zeus, all food is condensed into "crates of food" when requesting/demanding/requisitioning/ordering, but there can be up to four different kinds of foodstuff. In this game, we have wheat, fish, carrots and glorious cheese.


Anyway, we need to build elite housing. See that button with the red-white house on it? That's the elite housing button. Just to build elite housing, we need a stock of food, fleece and olive oil. Nobles expect you to provide at least those goods as well as three entertainment venues just so that they'll stay there. And of course, the neighborhood must be very aesthetically appealing. If you want them to fight for you, they need armor, too.


We also need to build a trireme wharf, both to complete one of our goals and also just so we can sail to Knossos. A trireme requires a hundred stout men to crew it, as well as wood and armor to build it.


Of course, in order to raise an army we'll need a palace. We can build one now, as well as tax offices to collect taxes from the people. The palace is very important: If it is destroyed, we are conquered. It's not an instant game over, we're just vassalized, but it's still a bitch. It also increases the appeal around it and we need to build Theseus' Hall near it.


Finally, we can also build Hermes' Refuge, although we don't need to. Hermes' Refuge is a Sanctuary, which is basically a big temple. Sanctuaries are something we'll definitely be building later on. I mean, we're building Athens, so of course we'll build the Arbor of Athena. To build a Sanctuary, you need a stock of marble, wood and bronze statues, some drachmas(money) and an artisans' guild. Furthermore, you can never build more than three Sanctuaries in a city; sometimes even less than that.

Oh yeah, and we can build gymnasiums now. Kinda wish I could build a labyrinth for the minotaur, bu it'd just knock down the walls.

Spoiler: Current Map (click to show/hide)

[mainiac]

Now with Two spears 

This is my weapon! This is my gun! 
This is for stabbing!  This is for stabbing as well!

[Farseer]

As you can see, the minotaur is the bastard child of Minos' queen and a bull. And that's why we don't allow the women near our goats: We'd be swamped by satyrs.

How do we get cheese from male goats?

[Taricus]

We don't, we get cream cheese 

[USEC_OFFICER]

As you can see, the minotaur is the bastard child of Minos' queen and a bull. And that's why we don't allow the women near our goats: We'd be swamped by satyrs.

I thought we wanted satyrs to make an army full of horrible abominations of nature to fight the Minotaur?

[Jreengus]

What happened to our colony? The one we set aside resources for? Also I forget what bonuses does Hermes provide?

Also IIRC you can fit an infinite number of goats/sheep into any area can't you? Since they stack all you need is for at least one square to be free place a goat there wait till another opens up place another goat.

[Boksi]

What happened to our colony? The one we set aside resources for? Also I forget what bonuses does Hermes provide?

Also IIRC you can fit an infinite number of goats/sheep into any area can't you? Since they stack all you need is for at least one square to be free place a goat there wait till another opens up place another goat.

All good questions.

The colony business I assume is being hampered by Minos. And Hermes' bonuses are that deliverymen move faster and he fulfils requests for goods and food made of the city so you don't have to. If you're wondering where he gets the goods to fulfil those requests, remember that he's also the patron god of thieves.

And as for the one goat per tile thing, it's horribly inefficient and aesthetically unappealing. Goats and sheep need to eat in order to produce milk or fleece respectively.

Notice the greenery at the top? Once that goat there finishes, the tile it's standing on will become more like the ones at the bottom. Greenery eventually grows back, but I'm pretty sure stuffing a goat into every available orifice tile is not a good idea.

Also, there won't be an update tonight because I'm tired and want to go to sleep early.

[Boksi]

What, you thought I'd let this thing just die? Fuck no. I just had some trouble with homework. There's also a total lack of suggestions from you guys bar Jreengus. We've suddenly gotten a bevy of options and nobody wants to do anything? I spent a whole evening just designing an elite housing block.


(There's a reason it's located in a weird place like that.)
So obviously, the first thing I did was build a palace. It's such a wondrous building. You can't see them clearly, but behind it are four standards of rabble. Standards are how you manage your military: A squad moves to its standard when they're mobilized, and fight any enemies nearby. And no, they don't stand a chance against the minotaur. Rabble are just a bunch of guys throwing rocks, and what's worse they're conscripted directly from your labor pool so you can get crippled by labor shortage even if you win a battle.

...And now I find myself wondering why I don't activate one of those companies to soak up unemployed layabouts, since those are one of the biggest problems we're facing. Hindsight is 20/20, I suppose.


I also construct a gymnasium and a tax office. Tax offices send out clerks to collect taxes. It won't be much at this stage of the game, but fully evolved townhouses will give us a lot of money in taxes. Elite houses pay even more! Both the office and the gym are unstaffed right now, but soon you(or rather, I) will be able to hear the sweet clinking of coins and soothing grunts of muscular, sweaty men gripping each other.


Still, taxes aren't going to pay for our eventual warmongering! That's where demanding money from vassals comes in!


Hey, you agreed to become our vassal, you can't back out now. Besides, we'll give you cheese. Lots of cheese. Isn't that wonderful?


Next, we construct Theseus' Hall. Next to the palace and encircled by walls, as ordered.


I went ahead and built a trireme wharf, even though we don't have access to quality wood or armor yet. It's an employee sponge, requiring 100 workers to staff. Yeah, we have a lot of unemployed buggers, disturbing other people's goats. I'm all for some good old-fashioned goat disturbing, but you should only do that to your own goats unless you have permission from their owner.
(Actually, right after I took that screenshot, the employment counter dropped like a rock into "64 workers needed", but that just means I shut the wharf down for a couple of months. The end result is the same: We still have unemployed people, but the wharf sucks a lot of them in.)


Curse you, minotaur!


And here's some good news. I've been gifting some of our massive cheese stockpiles away to various cities, too(but not to Sparta or Corinth, those guys can rot). Hopefully this will improve our relationships with the world at large(id est: "Not Sparta or Corinth").


Neat! It's only been a few year and already we have a thousand people living here!

...Why do we call ourselves a city when we're barely a town?


More good news! In fact, very good news. Why? Read on:


Odessos produces marble. Currently, in order to defeat the minotaur, we require wine, marble, and good appeal around the hall. Those are the unfinished goals to summon Theseus. Appeal just requires a bit of spending to pretty things up. Marathon produces wine. And now we can acquire marble, since they're on friendly terms with us!

Also, we can build Hermes' Refuge if we really want to.

We still don't have any source of olive oil though. That sucks and means we can't build any elite housing.


I immediately built a pier for Odessos. You saw that blue line on the world map? It indicated that the trade route between Odessos and Athens is a sea trade route, so we need to build it near the river.
(And the entire world map consists of nothing but Greece and its immediate surroundings, because Greece is the only part of the world that matters.)


The rest of the year is uneventful. It is now the year 797 BC. Why are we counting downwards, anyway? What happens when we reach 0 BC? Does it just go into the negatives or what? I'm not even sure negative numbers have been invented yet!

Spoiler: Current Map (click to show/hide)

Why am I only spoilering this tiny map, anyway? Wouldn't it be better to spoiler those huge-ass images?

Please feel free to make suggestions or demands. How should we go about acquiring marble and wine, for example? Trade, requests or a combination of the two?

[Darvi]

Well those guys are sympathetic, so I guess requesting some marbles wouldn't hurt. As for the olive oil... who has that?

[KaguroDraven]

Question, once we're done with Minos can we attack anyone else? If I remember correctly in RL Athens and Sparta had a rather heated rivalry, perhaps we should attack them before they attack us.

[Taricus]

We should really embarrass them with our women's martial prowess 

[Boksi]

@Darvi: Sympathetic isn't always enough to request goods though. Wanna butter them up with cheese? Also, fucking nobody has any olive oil yet.

@Kaguro: Sure, we can attack anyone besides ourselves, our vassals and really distant cities. It might be best to do so before crushing Minos, too, because that'll probably be the end of the mission. The only problem is that attacking an ally, even a nominal one such as Sparta or Corinth, will incur a pretty big relationship with all other allies. Not with vassals though. I once had my massive army conquer every city on the map besides Egypt, which was too far away. So yeah, attacking Sparta would be fun. They don't seem too strong, either.

@Taricus: That would be pretty humiliating, but the only woman in this game capable of fighting is Athena. And we can't build the Arbor of Athena yet, which is annoying. I mean, if we built it, we could solve our olive oil problems in a snap!

[Taricus]

This is greece, all our men are effeminate and our women butch 

[KaguroDraven]

This is greece, all our men are effeminate and our women butch 

Except in Sparta, which was like the internet. Men where men, women where Men, and little girls where old men.