First thing I had to do before spring was finish the new dining building that I was in the process of building before the interruption of the eagle and dwarven army. Zeb also helped, so getting that whole building done took eight days. The goblins who wanted a new dining area were quite happy with it, so I'm glad.
The next project that Zeb and I are going to work on is the integrated dining area apartment building. I need both of those buildings done before the spring thaw so that Zeb can replicate them in the village to help expand the population while I'm busy up on the mountain growing the new crystal.
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Getting the new twelve person apartment with built in cooking area took a little while longer than I thought. Overall it took fourteen days to get the building completed. Thanks to how long they take to build, we agreed to only build them on demand from now on. I decided to have a planning discussion with Zaka and Zeb as well about the future development of the village.
One of the main topics was actually related to things I learned from the war with the dwarves. I learned that a single layer of defense isn't as useful as I thought it would be. Thanks to mana capacity of individuals, there exists a burst of strength that either side can display to get through singular problems for a short period of time, if they have the right magics to do so. For us, the steam cannons were one such tool. For the dwarves, that tool was the ability to quickly break through walls.
The conclusion of that knowledge is that we should layer defenses. Any future expansions of the village should have a new wall built in a new layer, rather than expanding the old wall. That way, defenses can be layered, and allow for strategic retreats inward, depleting any sieging army's mana supply. Normally, that would hurt both sides, but with a mana restoring bathhouse on our side, that should give us an edge that means we would win in longer sieges. Not including starvation and lack of water as potential threats, obviously.
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We should also build a new building once we have two wall layers. That building is a central castle. A towering building where siege engines can be placed high enough to fire over all the city walls, and big enough that the bathhouse area can be kept inside. This facility should basically be the final retreat point for all the villagers, where the last layer of defense, and any potential underground escape tunnels, are located. Building a castle will take quite a while, and will likely displace a number of homes, and would require a decently sized workforce and military to properly support, which is why it should wait until the village grows to the size of a proper city.
As for other buildings, they'll need to keep an eye on population size and food stores to determine if and when they expand any of the fields or the artificial tide pools. Since I'll be gone for almost an entire year, I figured we should plan out all the constructions we'd need in advance. There were some discussions about where to cut stone from, and it was decided that the escape tunnel should be dug to completion for stone, then the reservoir should be expanded afterwards.
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I spent the final few days in the village helping with various construction tasks while asking around to the goblins to see who would be interested in helping me on the mountain. As it would turn out, not many were keen on helping me for the entire year, but many said they'd work with me for a month or two at a time. After doing some scheduling, I had enough individuals scheduled to help me throughout the year that I shouldn't have any issues, outside of retraining them occasionally.
There were a few goblins that I wanted to come up more regularly though. Namely, the building crew. Since we'll be working with crystal material, I figured it would be a good idea to attempt to get them mana affinity, like both Zeb and I. There also will be a need for more trees to be cut down up on the mountain occasionally, so giving them more opportunity to gain levels through that process should also come in handy.
Overall though, I'm hoping that the next year will be pretty boring.