|
Work Camps
Peasants gather at Work Camps to be assigned to work
on nearby floodplain farms or on monuments. During the growing season,
most peasants draw farming duty. During the Inundation, everyone works
on the city's monument project. If there's no monument being built,
peasant workers have nothing to do but play a lot of senet during the
Inundation. If your city has few Work Camps relative to its number of
floodplain farms, you will notice a distinct rhythm that's set by the
Inundation.
Work Camps need road access and their own staff. It
is best to place Work Camps near farms and monuments so that the peasants
don't have far to walk. Indeed, there is a limit to how far they'll
trek to reach their back-breaking chore. The more Work Camps the city
has, the quicker monuments can be built, because more laborers will
be available during the growing season.
The number of farms one Work Camp can support depends
mostly on proximity. A fully-staffed Work Camp supplies one peasant
worker every week (four per month). This worker walks to the nearest
floodplain farm that's awaiting a peasant, where he will toil for six
months.
When a farm is halfway through its peasant's work period,
Work Camp employees notice that the farm will need another peasant if
farming is to continue without interruption - remember that the growing
season lasts nine months in most regions. If you're using one Work Camp
to supply a very large number of farms, some might never receive peasants,
and those that do will have trouble keeping peasant workers continuously.
You could run a huge number of floodplain farms with
only one or two Work Camps, but many farms wouldn't reach their potential,
and peasants would only be available to work on the monument during
the Inundation.
Practically speaking, one Work Camp can support four
to six nearby floodplain farms without interruption and still contribute
some peasants to the city's monument project. Adding more Work Camps
spreads the burden around and frees up more peasants to work on the
monument during the growing season.
|