City infrastructure

With the people fed and (relatively) healthy, disaster has been averted, and, as a bonus, the population started increasing, quite rapidly in fact. And not only here, but in most other civilized countries around us as well. And where do all these people go? Certainly not the farmlands, as they are already full, and with the increased efficiency there is little more demand for farmers. So, moving to the cities became the only logical choice, one which was made by millions of people over the previous century. I must admit however, in this regard the EC has us surpassed and usually leads in city developments, due to their societies having a much longer and stronger tradition of urbanization. From what I know, the portion of urban inhabitants in the EC as a whole is about 45%, close to half, with specific civilizations reaching over 60%, 70%, and even 80% (those being Babylonia, Dilmun, and Magan, respectively). Still, we are slowly catching up, with our urbanization level being just above 25%, while it was barely 10% during Ramesses III’s time. Hatti and Mycenae are also improving in this regard, while the top spot in the OFK is taken up currently by Alashiya, which has a respectable 35% or so of population living in cities. What I am saying, is that urban developments are now an important issue in every civilization, as urbanization is increasing everywhere, and the cities are not tiny settlements of a few thousand inhabitants anymore, they are now massive centers with populations in the dozens or hundreds of thousands of people. From the latest data, there are currently eighteen cities with a population of over one hundred thousand inhabitants (with the exception of Mycenae, Hattusa, and Susa, they are all here in the Commonwealth, Assyria, and Babylonia). Our capital Men-nefer has just recently surpasses half a million people, which is a great achievement, though it is still in the second place, behind Babylon with its population of near seven hundred thousand. The age of cities has certainly begun, or at least restarted.

But this has its own problems too. Mostly the fact that at first there was nowhere near enough housing for all the newcomers. Even four decades ago one could see thousands of homeless people camping in and around Men-nefer due to shortage of places to live in. A similar scene could be seen in most other cities in the known world, I imagine. Of course, even now we have this problem, but to a much lesser extent. One thing which helped alleviate this demand was the emergence of construction companies which started massive building projects, mostly focusing on housing. Many former zoning and building restrictions were removed and expansion of cities became a possibility. So cities these days are on average not only much more populous, but also much larger in terms of area, with many layers of newly constructed walls. The most famous of such building companies who profited greatly from these developments must be the Boktnassar Construction Conglomerate, which has a near monopoly on the construction sector in Babylonia, but is highly prominent in most of the EC. Here in the Commonwealth, Ankhtakelot Holdings, Inc. is the largest construction company, though it is not nearly as massive, as many other companies are competing in the field as well. In any event, this is now quite a lucrative business, as there is always demand for buildings to be constructed.

The most important invention in this regard is, of course, the apartment complex. While they have been around for a long while now, for most of history people have lived in single family homes, since there was never a lack of space for houses. Yet now, land in cities is becoming a greatly valued asset and developers are commissioning more and more apartment complexes, as opposes to single family homes. This works great for both sides – the developers gain a lot more value from their land, and the people have more places to live in. Not only are there now more apartment complexes, but they are larger themselves as well. Previously, an apartment complex had at most two floors and maybe five total apartments, whereas now we are seeing three story, four story, and even five story (as of a few years ago) complexes, with as many as forty apartments inside. Such apartments are usually able to comfortably house up to six people, so one such complex can have over two hundred occupants, which is highly efficient. But, like with most developments mentioned, there is constant advancement, and the Babylonians are said to be building six story and even taller complexes in Babylon, Isin, Uruk, and other popular cities. And there are now whole neighborhoods of apartments, so the possible population density is rapidly increasing in cities. I imagine that before long, each apartment complex could house a small town, while these neighborhoods could be considered cities themselves.

That is not to say that single family homes aren’t being built anymore, not at all. They are also being built at a much more rapid rate than before. With the expansion of the upper-middle class, there is a high demand for individual homes as well, so these are being built as well. Houses, country manors, vacation villas, and even little palaces are being built all around and such developments bring great profits as well, as the people commissioning them are willing to pay a lot. There are even specific construction companies which specialize in building such luxurious housing, as opposed to the ones focused on mass market apartments. So, no matter what one’s preferences are, there is plenty of housing to choose from these days, at least in places like Kemet, Assyria, Elam, and, of course, Babylonia.

With cities expanding at such a rate, distances within them become longer as well. And while the cities are dense and so most people still walk towards their place of work or entertainment, there are now some options to reduce these travel times. Since most cities are located next to or around a river, ferries are now becoming quite popular. Boat transport has been a thing for millennia now, of course, but it was mostly reserved for between city travel, whereas now, with the distances in the city increasing, it is becoming widely used in cities as well. As for transport on land – that demand is filled by horse-drawn carriages. Again, an invention first used for between city or country travel, and now, during the last few decades, adapted to suit travel within city limits as well. Both carriages and ferries work rather similarly. They have private options, as well as more public ones, as peoples’ routes match quite often. All these services are paid of course, either by paying for a single ride, or paying for a monthly subscription – a concept pioneered in Babylonia three years ago, as they noticed that such transport is taken by mostly the same people and so a subscription was introduced to make transactions easier and save time. A person pays a lump sum at the start of the month and receives a ticket, the functions of which depend on the transportation company’s policies. Some tickets allow one to travel for free a set number of times, others allow unlimited rides along a certain route, and others (often most expensive ones) allow unlimited travel anywhere within city limits for that month. These services have regular schedules, and one usually doesn’t have to wait long before getting into a ferry or a carriage, as passengers are picked up at the most popular routes as frequently as every ten minutes. This gets people to work quite quickly and efficiently and the chance of someone being late to work is greatly reduced. Both ferries and carriages have a speed more than double that of an average human walking, with the fastest carriages currently available reaching an average speed of 170 rods per hour.

Other than transport, the cities have more of other essential services as well. I already mentioned the hospitals and doctors in the previous section, so healthcare is now also rather easily accessible in the cities. Same goes for the medjay (and other forms of police in other countries). We have had them for many centuries, but, with the cities expanding, their numbers have increased as well. Men-nefer just by itself has ten medjay stations, up from merely two five decades ago, and most other respectable cities also have at least three, so that crime could be effectively reduced and that even if one station falls to insurrectionists or whoever, there would still be enough servicemen to stabilize the situation. Crime is at a high point, that’s the unfortunate reality, but at least now we have better methods of dealing with and hopefully preventing it. The medjay sometimes have even better equipment than the army, having armor, guns, and special medjay chariots, carriages, and boats to deal with anyone from a petty thief to a highly organized terrorist cell. Over the last decade we have also built many prisons to house the criminal populations. While the most serious criminals are executed, killing all of them would be a waste, so we now house criminals who committed less serious offenses in these prisons, putting them to work on some menial government projects before their term is up and we see that they have learned their lesson.

We also have firefighters now, a branch which has emerged over the last decade, as arson – accidental or deliberate – is becoming a serious issue as well, and we need to prevent fires from spreading and destroying much of the city. Firefighters also have their own special equipment and vehicles, as well as methods of dealing with the fires, involving new compounds created by the alchemists to combat fire more effectively. Some firefighter groups are private, guarding only select houses and neighborhoods, and others are public, taking care of entire cities. Babylonia mostly has private firefighter companies, but here in the Commonwealth we have public ones, as is the case in Assyria and Elam. And there is also a new method of calling such emergency services (doctors, police, and the firefighters), devised by the Babylonians a few years ago. This involves a network of bells placed throughout the city, which can be rung to call a specific service to the neighborhood, and from there the coming rescuers can be directed to the specific building or area by the locals, which greatly reduces response times from having to go all the way across the city looking for help.

Another area of interest, while not relating to emergency matters, but still just as important, involves water delivery and sewage systems. I already talked about water delivery to agricultural fields, but in the last decades we have also improved in regards to water delivery to the cities and to homes. This development is mostly due to the improvement in making pipes. The first ones appeared in Mesopotamia millennia ago, but they weren’t very sturdy and only saw limited uses. We have also been using them in a limited capacity for a similar period of time, as did the inhabitants of the Indus Valley civilization, which had the most advanced plumbing and sewage systems from what we know. Supposedly, some of their engineers left the region during or after the civilization’s collapse and travelled to Elam and Mesopotamia, where they were hired to improve such systems. Another important addition was the discovery of lead in what is now Lullubum, as this material was realized to be well suited for piping. So, with this new expertise and new materials, the Mesopotamians began rapidly increasing their pipe production over the last century and so introducing more and more homes to water delivery and sewage systems. We are not too far behind either, and while most of our pipes are currently made of copper, the Hittites have a large supply of lead and so we could trade with them to acquire it and improve the quality of our pipes. Though even now most middle and upper class homes have pipes delivering water to their homes for cooking and cleaning, so that the residents wouldn’t need to go outside to acquire it, and other pipes removing waste from these homes to the appropriate areas, which helps us keep the cities clean and the people healthier.

People also need places to work, and so unemployment was just as big of a problem as homelessness for a while, but it was also mostly solved. Many new industries are booming and companies are establishing workshops and factories in every growing city. I will go in depth on this matter in another section, but suffice to say that these days, anyone who wants to get a job in a city, can rather easily get one. Of course, the aforementioned construction sector is a lucrative field, but one can find many opportunities for employment from companies and government agencies in other areas, such as manufacturing weapons, assembling furniture, making textiles, and more. The service sector is also booming, and so employees are needed for working in shops, restaurants, bars, and other such places, so there are plenty of jobs which aren’t physically demanding as well. I should also mention that women are starting to work in such jobs more and more often as well, rather than just staying at home, though that is the case only in select countries and regions – Kemet, Retjenu, Assyria, and Elam to some degree. Still, the industry and service sectors are seeing massive unprecedented growth, and this is a self-propelling cycle, as people are moving into the cities, jobs are being created as there is now a larger workforce, which drives even more people to the cities (since even a rather lowly industry worker can often make more than an average peasant), and this makes more companies move in, creating even more jobs, and so on. While agriculture is still the dominant field in most countries, that may not last for long, as these other sectors may soon overtake it.

There are also plenty of new jobs for the upper-middle and upper class citizens as well. These companies need scribes, overseers, managers, and other such employees, so there are many open positions for the literate and educated class. Banks are also being established everywhere, as more and more people need loans and other financial services, and so there are great opportunities in this sector as well. And for ones who want an even more interesting and exciting job – they don’t have to look further than the stock exchanges. The first stock exchange was established in Byblos thirteen years ago, and now there are other ones in Ashur (though it is said that there existed a stock exchange in Ashur about eight to six centuries ago as well), Babylon, Susa, and Men-nefer, our one having recently merged with the Byblos exchange to create a unified stock exchange for the entire Commonwealth. These places employ only the most distinguished scribes who know how to calculate very well, and the employees mostly spend their days managing the portfolios of their rich clients, buying and selling stocks and derivatives of them to create the highest possible profits. A new product which was recently introduced was the sale of government bonds, so that just like how people could invest in companies through stocks, so they can now invest in our great country through bonds. The returns are not as high, because the country naturally cannot advance as quickly as one specific company, but the upside is that the returns are almost guaranteed, as the government isn’t collapsing any time soon, while companies are much more volatile, and many have already gone bankrupt.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Finally, there is, of course, the entertainment. People can’t only sleep and work all the time, they need some entertainment too, and the cities do certainly provide that as well. Other than the traditional avenues of going to a bar, a restaurant, or a brothel, cities now offer a variety of other activities. Firstly, we now have theaters, which show regular plays of various events, mythological, historical, and fictional alike, and they draw in hundreds and sometimes even thousands of people. Theaters originated here a few decades ago, but have recently spread to Assyria, and, surprisingly, the Mycenaean Confederation, the citizens of which seem to enjoy this activity the most. There are also concerts, popular basically everywhere, as notable musicians and musical groups gain more and more recognition and so people want to listen to their songs and instrumental tracks being performed live. The largest recorded concert took place right here in Men-nefer two years ago, when the group Kushites With Temperaments, led by the famous musician known as Lime Stone, came by and performed for over ten thousand listeners. Since then, they have also gone to perform in Hatti, Assyria, and Punt. Sport competitions have also become big over the last few years, especially since the first Olympic Games held in the Confederation last year, and now one can easily find something to watch, be it a competition between local clubs, between cities, or even between countries such as during the Olympics or other such major tournaments. The most watched sports these days are wrestling, boxing, chariot racing, and various team-based ball games, for which new stadiums are constantly being built.

For the more intellectually minded, there are activities too, naturally. Many new libraries, private and public, have been built in recent times, which act not only as centers of knowledge but also as meeting places for like minded individuals. Various clubs and philosophical schools also have their own lounges, with the Thotherites probably being the most prominent of such groups. So suffice to say that there is something for everyone in most major, and even smaller, cities, which are currently thriving and doing better than during any previous period of time. With plenty of housing, job opportunities, a large selection of goods, enough security, and all kinds of entertainment, it is no surprise that everyone is currently flocking to the cities, and this trend will only probably continue in the coming decades.

Textiles and other industry

So, the people have places to live in, but they also, usually, need clothes. That issue, luckily, has also been taken care of in recent times. While many industries have advanced over the last few decades, the most notable development is, of course, in the textile sphere. The watermills which I already mentioned helped greatly here, as they began to be used to power the mills where textiles are created. Rather than having to make them all by hand, which takes a lot of people and time, textiles are now created with the help of machines, which speeds up the process, while also making the textiles more uniform and so the output is more reliable. Specifically, these machines are the new spinning and weaving frames, first created in Assyria about a decade ago. Assyria has always had a tradition of textile production, so it is not surprising that the most recent developments in this area also came from that country (even less surprising considering it happened under Ninsina’s rule, who is the first female Assyrian ruler, and textiles have traditionally been made by, of course, women). The import of cotton to the EC in large quantities is also an important factor, as the material has traditionally been grown in the Indus Valley, but over the years made its way to Elam. And more recently, in the last decade, cotton made its way from Elam to Assyria, since both countries are now in the same faction. Soon enough, cotton became seen as a better material for making textiles than, say, linen, and so became much more widespread.

So how does this all come together? Well, three years ago this resulted in the building of the first cotton mills’ complex in Ashur, which made used of all these developments – watermills on the Tigris to generate energy, spinning and weaving frames inside the buildings to use that energy and make textiles faster, and cotton being the material of choice for the creation of these textiles. This first complex had positions for more than three thousand workers, and so was able to produce textiles efficiently and at comparatively extremely large numbers. The success of this complex resulted in the opening of a similar one in Mari, though that one, as we all know, was the site of a terrorist by the Assyrian Liberation Army (since then the complex has been rebuilt though). Still, that did not stop this development and now there are five more such complexes in Assyria, with the total employment being in the dozens of thousands, and still growing. It is reported that at this point, Assyria produces nearly half of all textiles made in the tri-continental area. We are trying to catch up to them in this regard, or at least make sure their monopoly is not as strong. Cotton has been grown in Kush for centuries by now, and so we started focusing on expanding this industry to have more of this material, while also opening our own cotton mills in Kemet and Kush. We may not be able to match Assyria in terms of output anytime soon, considering how much of their economy is focused on this sector, but we can at least prevent their products from completely flooding the OFK markets and so making us dependent on an EC country for such a crucial resource.

However, we do have a certain trick up our sleeve in this sphere, though it is still very experimental by this point. Watermills are great and they provide the necessary energy, but rivers are not always completely reliable, and so that means that the watermills aren’t either. In turn, the mills may not always be fully productive either. So our scientists have been thinking how this could be fixed. I am personally working on this project as well, and I have devised a protype engine which could help solve this problem. In short, this engine would generate steam, lots of it in fact, so much so that it would push the water in the way we desire and so keep the mills running at all times that we need. This steam would be generated by burning some flammable substance, of which there would be large quantities available. We first experimented with wood, but we found that it generates relatively little steam, and there is also the fact that wood is not so abundant and would be better used for shipbuilding and other such matters. However, we recently discovered a much better material, one which generates a lot more steam, and one which couldn’t really be used for anything else than burning anyways. And that would be coal, of which the OFK now has plenty, thanks to Muwatalli’s conquest of Cimmerian lands to the north of the Euxine Sea. One of the regions which he conquered is Donbas and it is home to massive quantities of coal, which the Hittites have already started mining. It wasn’t Muwatalli’s first intention when embarking on that campaign, as he was mostly interested in punishing the Cimmerians and acquiring fertile agricultural lands, but Donbas was along the way and so easily became an additional benefit of the campaign. We have negotiated a purchase of some of that coal so that we could experiment more with it, and, if this works out as expected, we will set up a permanent trade route. I cannot promise anything in regards to this steam engine, but, if it performs as expected, it could be of great use not only to the textile industry, but to many others as well.

And while there are, of course, some men employed in these cotton mills and other textile producing facilities, women do still make up the majority of the employees in this field, both in Assyria and here in the Commonwealth. Most other industries are often restricted to only male employees, so the textile industry was the natural choice for many women who wanted to get a job of their own and not be completely dependent on their husbands for income. So the advancement in textile technologies has resulted in women entering the workforce in much higher numbers than previously – many times more women got employed this year than even a decade ago, for example. Of course, so far this change is restricted to Assyria, the Commonwealth, and Elam to some extent, but other countries may follow suit before long as well. It just makes sense, after all – just like most countries decided to allow women in the military to have much larger armies, so I imagine most countries and companies will open up more work positions to women, so that the GDP of the given country or profits of the company would increase accordingly. It will take time, even more so for conservative societies like Hatti, but such market forces cannot be resisted for long. I admit, I may be speaking a bit prematurely here, considering women have started entering the official workforce in large numbers less than a decade ago, but some results can already be seen, and the trend will probably only continue.

There have been some advancements in other industries too though, and I feel I should mention them as well, even if they are not yet as significant as the changes in the textile field. The furniture industry, for example, has grown in recent decades too. With hundreds of thousands of new houses and apartments being built, there is naturally going to be higher demand for furniture, as those homes can’t be empty. Some prominent furniture companies have emerged, which consolidated local productions and started making furniture more efficiently so that the market demands could be met, and huge profits acquired. Such companies have factories for production, and while they don’t have some major new technologies (equivalent to the spinning and weaving frames of the cotton mills), they have streamlined the production process by having different groups of workers make different parts of an item, before it is all eventually assembled by the last group at the final stage. This method saves quite a lot of time for everyone, and, just like with textiles, the furniture is more uniform, which was not the case when every craftsman was making a furniture item by themselves from start to finish. These factories are located mostly in the Mycenaean Confederation, Elam, and Retjenu, since these are all regions with nearby sources of wood, the main material used for furniture production. Hatti also has plenty of wood and it looks like they might also open some of their own furniture production facilities in the coming years.

There is also the matter of weapons. I will go more in depth about specific armaments in the final section, but for now I will only shortly mention the production methods. By now, the days of individual metalsmiths making weapons are largely gone, except for specific circumstances (such as nobles commissioning a unique chariot or sword just for themselves, as these items couldn’t be mass produced in factories). Armies now have hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and there are also thousands of garrison soldiers, law enforcement officers, prison enforcers, and so on, which means there is often demand for literally millions of swords, shields, spears, and other weapons. So, just like with furniture, companies have emerged to fulfill this demand by opening large factories where the workers are divided into different groups for different tasks. This increases the rate of weapon production and so keeps the army well stocked with supplies, though, again, not all countries have adopted this model yet. But at least the Commonwealth, Babylonia, and Elam have, so neither the OFK nor the EC has a large advantage in this regard. As for what armaments are being made at such mass scale – basically all of them at this point. There are factories for swords, shields, spears, bows, arrows, light armor, chariots, explosives, and now even guns. Not to mention expanded shipyards for everything from the smallest boats to massive royal flagships. Safe to say, shortage of weapons is not a concern for most countries anymore.

Lastly, there is one more development worthy of mention. Writing has historically been a rather painstaking task, requiring knowledgeable scribes and a lot of time, but more and more documents need to be written as our countries expand both externally (by conquests or other territorial acquisitions) and internally (by population and city growth). Simplifying the writing systems a few centuries ago did help, but the process of writing down words was still slow. Yet it may not remain so for long. The Babylonians have just invented something known as the printing press, which is a mechanical device which imprints the needed symbols onto a surface, usually a clay tablet in their case. It shouldn’t be hard to adapt such a machine to suit our needs, as we would only need to cover the symbols in ink and then have the machine imprint these symbols on a papyrus scroll. It is said that a single scribe operating one printing press can be as efficient as nearly a thousand scribes writing by hand. We should definitely look into this development, as this could allow us to create a much more efficient administration and help in every other matter relating to writing, possibly saving us millions of shematys.