V8: Chapter 5

…

How much does it take to make one brick cost effectively?

And, after that brick is made, how fast can you get it where it needs to go?

To answer those two questions, you first need to ask another set of questions:

What are the bricks for?

What is the brick in question required to be? Tensile strength? Dimensions? Material composition? Weight?

How many hours will it take to extract the raw materials? Are the raw materials available through the current market in required amounts? Will there be shortages within the project timeframe for which the brick is required? If there is a bad actor in the process, who sells poor quality materials, how much damage will lack of checks do? Will we need inspectors for the materials?

What is the manufacturing process of the brick? How many labor hours are required? Where can that labor be sourced from? How specialized is the education required for the production line, the on-field supervision, and management staff? Back to the manufacturing process. How long will it take to form the bricks and cure them? What machines are necessary to make it in the desired quantities? Will machines even be necessary? What are the dimensions needed for the furnace and how big should the facility be?

All those questions need to be answered.

If the answer doesn’t exist, it needs to be made through a study.

If there isn’t a floor plan, along with a mock trial, they should begin making both.

In other words, to make any project work for half of a continent, you needed bureaucracy. There needs to be documented processes to be followed and those processes in question need to have trackable goals, delivery status reports, and milestones to reach. Not only do you need pencil pushers who just keep track of one thing in dozens of departments and just keeping up with all of them, you also need problem solvers, analysts, people managing lines of communication, and managers and supervisors for it all. Every step needs to be documented, every plan in triplicate and poured over for any mistake, and then mock-trials and models made for each plan before their implementation, along with all the paper work needed.

You’re free to say that it sounds insane, and that I’m making work for imbeciles to basically do nothing in. I say that I’d rather see a few dozen mock trials fuck up, before I end up with the infrastructure for bricks that don’t brick… let alone combat armor, rifles, and grenades. Not only that, but once the bureaucrats are done producing a fully-realized system of production that I want, they can start on another project.

Is paperwork horrible?

Yeah.

Will the bureaucracy end up requiring more bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy?

Most assuredly.

Does it save money and time by preventing investment into bad production lines and products?

Abso-fucking-lutely.

…

While the rest of the city was preparing to receive its returning heroes, I was looking at the first five steam engine locomotives made to bolster the trade routes between my cities. The engines in question were large barrel-shaped constructs on four large wheels on each side. It was entirely reverse engineered from a steam locomotive made by the Citadel. It took days of Citadel time to fabricate the construct, which could’ve otherwise been used to churn out medicine, raw material, and agricultural supplies beyond our ability to create.

We took it apart, made models of it, studied it, and eventually the scholars figured it out and wrote everything down. After that, many of the first designs blew up and only magic healers on station prevented deaths. Most of the first models blew out within days after being put through the endurance tests we put it through. Only after we had a locomotive that could run for days without blowing up, or needing maintenance, did we begin making the dedicated infrastructure to mass produce the trains… and we were nowhere close to the train made by the Citadel.

But they didn’t take up fabrication time that could be used to make Guardians and cannons, so it was a good result in my book.

Now, we had a factory that could make five locomotives every three months, so I could start connecting my cities with rail and ease the burden on my flying transports. As effective as the flying transports were, they took up mages, flying horses, and skilled pilots when used. With the population growing steadily, leading to rising demand for goods and materials in all cities, they were becoming too costly for the role. Good for perishables and priority stuff, but not for bulk shipments of grain or materials for factory work.

They were good enough knock-offs, and I’ll be using them until the Ancient’s Underground transportation network is online and under my control.

It also gave my people training in building steam-powered engines and tools and machinery.

Hopefully, this would get me industrialized earlier than expected, but the scholars needed time, the engineers needed time, and the factories would need to be built.

Maybe, at most, I shaved off a year or two from the official industrialization period from the game.

But I’ll take what I can get.

“Push two of them to their limits. Find out whatever can go wrong. Destructively test them to see their limits, too. Record everything.” Ayah nodded at my words. The plant manager and everyone else working on them were given the day off and a small bonus for their efforts. Now, Ayah and I were accompanied just be another Iterants as we looked through the looming trains. “Direct lines between our cities first. Keep it as straight as possible. The less chance of failure the better.”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

I touched the massive steam locomotive, while Ayah wrote out and gave orders to the Iterant.

The flying transports, the flying castles, and now these trains. All three weren’t in the game. Oftentimes, I did my best to think of them as lateral thinking. Projects that just weren’t in the game for the sake of time to make a viable product. Game Devs don’t have infinite funding and infinite time, after all. These innovations outside the game were meant to be advantages, but every time I consider the time and money that I put into them, I couldn’t help but wonder if the reason why they weren’t in the game was if they were dead ends.

What if the resources I was piling onto non-game canonical units and projects weren’t available, since they’d consign players to death?

Whenever that thought came up, though, there was also the fact that the game didn’t showcase a lot of inconveniences. Cities could be blockaded and starved, sure, but there wasn’t a whole logistical system for the player to manage. Once the roads are done, you just pay maintenance on it, and that’s that. You’ve got a connection. Not minding the fact that roads where people can only walk or drag along carriages isn’t worthwhile, and that you needed to breed animals for labor, set up industry for wagons, and make sure those roads were policed.

In short, to be fun, the game didn’t reflect every single system involved in civilization… because it was a game.

It was meant to be fun, in the end.

Reality wasn’t.

“My lord?” Ayah questioned, and I looked at its way. Her way. Whatever. Man, taking a few days to destress made coming back to work harder. I should’ve taken another day or two off. But the clock was clicking. I needed every advantage. “Can I help you?”

I considered Ayah’s words for a moment.

“Yeah, you can. I want to set up a council to assist me in governing. I’m getting worn down doing so much, and I’m sure everyone else feels the same.” Ayah’s eyes widened and she nodded swiftly. I wondered if I was showing weakness or wisdom by asking this. Either way, I couldn’t inspect every factory, look at every result, and do this for everything. I needed to focus and to delegate. “Get portfolios ready to look over by next week. For now, we’ll continue our current pace. By next month, though, I want more time to think and to focus on ruling and preparing for what is to come.”

“Yes, your majesty. I understand. It will be done.”

I nodded, before continuing with my tour.

After this, I’ll investigate something more conservative that’ll still help us out a lot and be a lot less risky.

With a small enough budget that I don’t feel bad if it fails, too.

…

Interlude: Rita

…

In the distance, at the center of Talon Hills, our capital was resplendent and greeted us with honor.

The Citadel, stark white and piercing the clouds in all its immensity, was at the very center of the capital and surrounded by our district of governance. Pure white buildings composed of marble were where laws were set, courts were made where people could judge their peers, and the processes of law and order were set and administrated.

After that single ring of governance, the districts radiated outward, separated by large roads that all led to our Citadel.

The residential districts were neat and orderly blocks of buildings. Six floors high, with the first floor dedicated to small businesses, people lived away from the noise of industry and entertainment. Whole villages fit in single block houses, even with their centers dedicated to growing food and spaces to endure nature. From afar, the blocks look like empty squares of multi-colored buildings that spun out from the center of the city. In those blocks, people were provided shelter, running water, basic furnishings, and even light. And, even from the farthest residential block, one could take a trolley and reach anywhere in the city within an hour.

The residential districts were typically side-by-side, as to prevent noise, but the scholar’s district was between the two. There, the campuses were immense, filled with classrooms, libraries, and laboratories for those who study alchemy and other such things. Amidst a sea of multicolored apartment blocks, the scholar’s district was composed of expansive institutions normally white in color surrounded by trees and surrounded by walls and checkpoints to keep our knowledge safe from spies. Construction was already taking place at the farthest end of the district, of a center of ‘science’ which the Ancients deemed was the study of reality itself, and once completed the ‘science’ center will embark on unveiling the secrets of our reality itself.

Though I wished to take in the rest of the city, a weight settled on my shoulder.

Morgan’s hand.

I made sure to check that I responded accordingly and that my knife’s tip was ready to plunge into her heart from beneath her sternum.

“Oh-ho. Still sharp. I thought you let your guard down. How silly of me.” Morgan stuck out her tongue and gave herself a bop to the head, while retreating from my blade. She took a seat on a nearby branch. Not a single needle fell from her movement. “When did you hear me? I thought I was perfect.”

“There was a bird nearby chirping, then you approached the base of the tree and it stopped.”

“Huh, nice to know.” Morgan stood on a branch and leaned against the tree casually. She looked upon the capital, and a smile spread across her face. “Barely a year, and it’s even grown more. Did you hear about the latest project? A whole new army?”

“I heard. His majesty intends for at least a pair for each Citadel. He wishes for three.” One hundred and twenty thousand soldiers. The thought sounded impossible. It was almost double the force that took the fight against the Death Lord and won the day. “He expects the first probing forces of the outside world to come soon and that we’ll need them all.”

“A defensive army, offensive army, and a spare. Then, there’s all the militias. In a few years, we’ll have nearly half a million troops.” Morgan casually made projections and statements only learned scholars ought to be able. Or, of course, his majesty.“Say a three to one advantage with defensible positions, and we have a million and a half soldiers effectively… yep, we’ll need the others to fall in line as soon as possible. The numbers just don’t work.”

“It will be difficult with the new alliance they’ve forged amongst themselves.”

“Difficult? Hm. I’d say impossible, myself. They’re feeling it now. The threat of our ruler and the new power that comes with allies and Citadels on the same level as our own. They’ll be filling their lands with Guardians now. Any war against them will be a waste of lives.” Morgan sighed and shook her head. I glanced her way. Despite the dire news, she had a smile on her face. “Now it’ll be all about subterfuge and intrigue and culture. All of which our king has carefully prepared for us.”

Morgan’s smile became ferocious in an instant, more like she was baring teeth than expressing teeth.

“None of them know. Not one of them knows that we have Iterants. That we’ve sent them into their lands amidst their refugees and their logistical offices.” A small chuckle left her lips, followed by an outright guffaw, as she began to laugh riotously. She had to lean against the tree trunk and hold onto her stomach, before wiping away tears that formed in her eyes. “I thought it foolish to hide them. I wanted to use them as shock infantry, assassins, and bury the enemy with troops as strong as Guardians. But, if we had, then we wouldn’t have our new foes in the palm of our hand!”

Morgan’s smile softened, while she looked at a certain section of the city.

Undoubtably, she knew where our liege currently was… and only whilst looking his way did she seem akin to a normal young woman.

Not a ferocious creature filled to the brim with talent, intellect, and drive.

“I wonder if he’ll let me rule over the Merchants? Their new camps may be the key to solving our manpower shortage.”

Nevermind.

Morgan is not normal in the slightest.