Game of Thrones: Royal Game

Chapter 217 War Preparation
It was near the end of the month that Ian received Celia's first paper report. Although he had already understood most of the situation through the cat's perspective, the process was not left behind.

The results of the first round of statistics show that the number of slaves that Rolle and the others have registered in the Worm River is 11, which does not include those fugitive slaves that have not yet been captured and that Yunkai will return in the future.

The grain they seized was also concentrated, but the total amount was not large, even far inferior to the grain reserves in Astapor City.

If the more than 12 slaves on both sides of the Worm River were provided with food according to Ian's new slave policy, the food would only be enough for them for less than half a year at most
This is probably the reason why the population of Slave Bay is so small. During the long summer, the nobles did not store food for the slaves for the winter at all, and the grain production in winter dropped sharply (Slave Bay is located in the south, and it can barely sow seeds in winter. If there is no environment, not a single grain can be grown), and more than half of the slaves will starve to death.

The nobles only need to buy new slaves from the Dothraki or other slave traders when the long summer comes again, and they can fill the gaps in these lands on the Worm River again, so they don't need to consider these troublesome issues.

But for Ian, who is expanding his army on a large scale and will even use it soon, Astapor's food reserves are definitely not enough.

The wheat that has been sown on both sides of the Worm River will mature in three months at the earliest, while the newly sown wheat that Celia has pushed away other crops will mature in five months.

In order to solve this problem, a large-scale food import plan was put on the agenda by Ian.

The largest production area west of Essos is undoubtedly Volantis. They have extremely vast farmland and more than 1000 million serfs in the valleys of the Lorne River and the Seruhe River. They are the largest grain exporter in the Western world.

Unfortunately, considering the land distance from Volantis to Astapor, the possibility of importing food from Volantis by land transportation is zero.It is barely feasible to transport by sea, but because it cannot cross the Sea of ​​Smoke, the grain transport ship needs to go around the entire ancient Valyrian Peninsula to go back and forth between Volantis and Astapor, which makes the shipping cost of each trip less It will be more than 5 to 10 times the cost of the food itself.

Therefore, Ian could only turn his attention to the closer Skahazaban River basin, where Meereen was in the west and the Lazarin was in the east.

Meereen is traditionally the main food import place for Astapor. Although the land in the Skahazaban River Basin is not much more fertile than that of the Worm River, because its population is much larger than that of the Worm River, the area of ​​land that has been developed there Much bigger than Worm River, too.

After much consideration, Ian decided to increase the scale of food imports to Meereen.

Firstly, this is one of the few choices for him, and secondly, deepening the trade relationship with Meereen can also give the other party an illusion that he is not hostile.

As for whether Meereen will take this opportunity to raise the price, Ian doesn't care, anyway, every penny he spends in Meereen will get back with interest sooner or later.

At the same time, in the city of Astapor, although Ian's new army officers were still in training, the first round of 'pawn selection' for the Ghis Legion's slave soldiers had ended.

These people were all selected from the slaves on both sides of the Worm River.As long as they can pass the first period of training, they can officially obtain the status of third-class slaves.The eliminated ones just return to their hometowns to work, and will not be killed directly in accordance with the Astapor tradition. According to Luo Er, this alone has made the slaves grateful.

Soon the first batch of [-] slaves walked into the former Unsullied military camp in Astapor. The training camp in Astapor was simply not enough to accommodate more troops, so Ian could only send The number of pawns selected in the first round was set at [-].

In order to ensure the smooth progress of the military expansion, Ian ordered the construction of three large military camps outside the city of Astapor, but it will take a lot of time before these military camps can be used.

So Ian withdrew two thousand Unsullied from the barracks and stationed them in his three pyramids.

The good news is that during the process of arranging to vacate the camp for recruits, he was surprised to find that Astapor still had a large number of 'semi-finished' Unsullied who had been trained for only three years, and their number had reached a sufficient number. There are 6000 people.

This is why the good masters promised themselves at the beginning that if they waited another year, they could get another two thousand Unsullied.

If these 6000 people strictly followed the standards of the Unsullied, there would be at least two thousand elimination targets.

But for Ian, these semi-finished products that have been eliminated by number theory have all reached the elite standard, so he does not plan to eliminate any of them, and does not need them to obtain the pointed helmet of the Unsullied.

These people have not passed the most complete Unsullied training, and their loyalty may not reach the level of the Unsullied, so after selecting all 16 people over the age of 3000 from the semi-finished product, Ian did not mix them into Among the original Unsullied, they were organized separately as the First Legion of Gith.

As for the remaining 3000 semi-finished products that are not old enough, Ian decided to let them continue training until they are of the right age.

After dealing with the matter of military expansion, Ian quickly returned to the work of further improving the fifth-class slavery system.

Celia had shown Ian Jumao two versions of the promotion mechanism before, but Ian was not particularly satisfied.

One is because of the efficiency of promotion. If the efficiency of promotion is too low, it will be difficult to quickly increase the enthusiasm of the slaves. Ian doesn't know what will happen after the long night, so what he needs is a quick and miraculous way in a short period of time.

However, if the promotion efficiency is too high, the slave level will depreciate. The value of the slave level is not entirely in the treatment, but also in comparison. Only when there are enough people below them, can the slaves gain enough superiority because of the level.

In less than a month after the release of the fifth-class slavery system, the number of people who have obtained the status of third-class slaves has reached [-].After the first phase of training for these slave soldiers is completed next month, the number will be close to [-].

This made Ian feel lucky. If it wasn't for the false accusations of those bad slaves that made him capture more than 4 freemen on the Worm River as new slaves, the class of third-class slaves might not be so valuable anymore.

For this, the solution that Ian thought of for the time being was to maintain the high efficiency of promotion, and at the same time try to continuously add a large number of low-level slaves.

After all, according to the city lord Fermor, there are more than 400 million slaves in the Lazarin area north of Slave Bay. Ahh, the population.

After Ian conquered the region, he could easily obtain an extremely large number of low-level slave resources.

Compared with the first point, the second point caused Ian a lot of headaches. He found that no matter how he designed the relevant mechanism, he could not guarantee the fairness of promotion.

Because no matter what the mechanism itself is, the final inspection of labor results and the arrangement of personnel promotion need to be done by people. As we all know, people are the most unreliable.

Even in the modern age where information is so advanced, anti-F is still a huge problem, not to mention this era when information is blocked and imperial power does not come down to the county?
But it will not work if this problem is not solved. The problem of injustice is fatal.

Ian's previous arrangements had made the slaves' situation surrounded by despair. This promotion mechanism was the only hope Ian left for them, and it was also a key means for Ian to ensure that they worked hard for themselves.

However, if the promotion mechanism cannot ensure fairness, and if the officials below and the high-level slaves are allowed to work together and operate artificially, the situation of the low-level slaves will become completely desperate, and this despair will make the slaves more desperate than ever. Be dangerous.

A slave does not envy a master, but a superior slave.

Therefore, solving the problem of fairness in promotion has become the top priority of Ian's next work.

(End of this chapter)