I talked with Zeb about the idea of building larger buildings in the city in order to increase population density. He seemed amenable to the idea, but also wasn't too sure about the stability of taller structures like that. We talked through best practices for structures of that height made of stone, including discussion of adding central pillars in the lower floor rooms to increase the general stability of the whole building.
He had his own worries of things to discuss with me though. For instance, many of the buildings they've built since the war have had to be built different than before the war. The reason being the number of higher prestige hobgoblins as compared to before. Demon biology is weird, and honestly, I hadn't put much thought into that problem. I'd experienced this myself when I went from an imp to a lesser earth demon, but it does make me think that we can't really have a singular housing size that will just work forever. On the other hand, forcing demons to move to a new community because they've evolved or prestiged beyond their current housing doesn't seem very fair either.
I'm not sure that there is a good solution that solves both problems at once though. For new goblins, any housing built for a high prestige hobgoblin would be far too large for them to live in reasonably. Currently they've just been moving into new housing if they completely outgrow their old housing, but there have been numerous complaints and people moving around a lot to try and find a new community. I hate the idea of forming a housing administration, but that might be the sort of bureaucratic overhead necessary to handle the issue.
The administration would handle two things in our current country. First, it'd assign housing to new goblins, and keep a record of where people live. Second, they'd help demons find new housing when they outgrow their old housing. Basically, I'd want them to have some short list of questions to get a feel for the type of community the demons want to be a part of, and point them in that general direction for where they should live next.
For example, if they're a fishergoblin, and they've recently become a hobgoblin, they may want to live near other fishergoblins, so they could be directed to appropriate housing for that want. That might help cut down on the current shuffling for housing that is happening. According to Zeb, when a hobgoblin picks a new apartment or house, most of the time, they're back in a few weeks, looking for a new one. This cycle repeats between one and three times depending on the individual before they settle on a new home.
The housing administration could also be in charge of taking census data. They'd need to do it initially anyway, but down the road, as the city becomes larger and larger, having a written record of our current population's situation every so often will be important to making decisions.
Outside of that issue, he had a second issue that I was able to quickly remedy. The problem started with the humans, but has since spread to the dwarves. During winter, like it is now, at night the temperature gets quite chilly on some nights in the city. The humans were the first to request windows to help keep the heat in their house while still allowing light in. Once the humans started complaining, the dwarves also wanted windows for the same reason. The easy solution to that is that I'd been pulverizing quartz already, so I just needed to show a few members of Zeb's team how to make glass from the quartz so they could make glass windows for him to use. In general, we should have enough quartz that he can use it for more than just the humans and dwarves, and I told him that he should plan future constructions to use glass windows, and that he might want to retrofit the old buildings with them as well.
So, I bargained with Zeb to get the warehouse built just outside town in exchange for taking some time to teach a few goblins on construction crews how to make glass. So, rather than helping the mining crew when they return up the mountain, I'll first be spending time teaching some goblins how to make glass. I'll just plan on returning up the mountain to mine on the next trip instead.
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In the fourteen days I had until I planned on returning to the mine, I managed to teach the four goblins Zeb assigned the glass making process. They only needed to learn how to make panes, so only needing to teach that made it a little easier. Ultimately, they have quite a few tons worth of pulverized quartz to work with, though I don't know if we're excavating it faster than they can use it currently. If it was only for new constructions, I think that we're mining more quartz than we use, but if we include all the buildings that need retrofitting, I don't know if the stockpile will last through all of it. On the other hand, since I'm mining as well, we're probably producing significantly more quartz than we were before.
I've been working with the mining crew for six days now, and they're returning tomorrow morning while I intend to stay up here for the next ten days to keep working. I've also improved the overall work speed of miners beyond just myself. The way the mine is currently run, excavated minerals are hauled up via a crane out of the shaft. There, they are loaded into carts, and run up to the entrance of the cave. I added in a little extra slot on some of the carts and the crane where a crystal charging tray can be relatively safely inserted for transport. As the carts are run up to the entrance, a drained crystal tray is dropped off at the charging room, and on the return trip, a fully charged tray is brought to the mine.
Ultimately, this has saved an immense amount of time spent moving to and from the crystal charging room for replenishing mana. I did take a day of downtime expanding the room and doubling the number of trays though, due to the new expanded use. The miners productivity being somewhat slow before this is sort of my own fault though, as they didn't want to move the trays out of the charging room without my permission, and I only realized this was an issue after I asked one of the goblins to bring me a tray so I could recharge and keep working, and he seemed worried about potentially breaking something. I explained that they're not that delicate, and then came up with the improved system.
Honestly, with how deep this shaft is, I'd expect this will more than double the rate of mining, even without my help.
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Well, the first four days were a bust after the miners left. As it turns out, without their help running the minerals and bringing me mana crystals, my rate of work isn't even a tenth what it is with them within the vein's mine. So after a single frustrating day, I spent three days working on other things, rather than being frustrated by my lack of individual progress.
Instead, I decided to start expanding the exploratory tunnel in a different direction from before by making a junction about half way through its length. Ultimately, I'm just doing this to get access to more mana crystals. We weren't particularly low on them, but it's a job I could do more quickly working solo than what I can do working in the new mine, so I at least felt like I was doing something of value.
When the miners came back, it felt good to return to working on the project I'd intended to work on. Moving forward, I'll only overstay compared to the rest of the mining team if there are other projects I want to work on, like growing crystals. When I work through the night thanks to my trait, it's not much of a slow down while the mining crew is here because in the morning they can just haul out everything I've cut, and I would make a single trip back up for food once in the night, and at that time I'd swap out some of the crystal trays before continuing work, after I ate and did some quartz pulverizing.
With me helping and the new crystal transport method, Konkur said that we're excavating nearly eight times the volume that they were before in a single six day stint. Though that's not necessarily good, because it means that they spend significantly longer hauling it down to the city, and he's worried about morale after I leave if the pace is too slow in comparison.
By his estimates though, we'll need to adjust to the horizontal cutting method after the next six day stint, which will also mean changing the way the staircases are cut. He said that if I just happen to stop helping after they switch excavation styles it'd be unlikely to affect morale, so I've committed to returning for the next six day mining stint, and then I'll stop assisting for a while. I'm just hopeful that with the new crystal tray method, they'll remain working quickly in comparison to before.
According to Konkur though, sometimes you'll get bursts of output from these veins if you happen upon a horizontal fracture full of crystals as you continue to mine them out, so I shouldn't be as pessimistic about it's output. Plus, it's still only producing quartz and some gypsum, so it's not exactly valuable.