Iron Harvest: When Farming Becomes Conquest
Chapter 136 - 8: Finance and Infrastructure

Chapter 136: Chapter 8: Finance and Infrastructure

Roman arrived at Sige Town on the 310th day.

He inspected his loyal troops.

It could only be said to be exceptionally good!

A well-trained army was formed!

Any army with considerable combat capabilities shared a common feature.

That is, it offered extremely high welfare benefits!

Even the elite barbarian soldiers and North Ice Pirates, those undisciplined, savage, and cruel fellows, could improve their quality of life through plundering wealth.

This ensured their basic combat strength.

Any elite soldier or strong general was paid for with money.

Naturally, Roman understood this principle well.

In his first month in Sige Town, he rapidly increased the income of the guards, making them more loyal.

During later mass recruitment, Roman readjusted the salary of the guards.

To sustain an army, one must not only pay them in money but also provide various kinds of in-kind subsidies.

The reason was simple, even the noble lords themselves could not afford to pay in cash.

Having only some surplus grains each year, they had no choice but to offset part of the army’s income with food.

Grain, cereals, vegetables, meat, fur, firewood, steel...

These goods could be directly used as wages to pay others.

The Black Iron King, the King of Divine Mystery, the King of Ice Island... these grand land kings had to provide their soldiers with a lot of salt every year to offset part of their salaries because they genuinely couldn’t afford them.

Roman previously did the same, offsetting with goods.

Too poor!

Maintaining an army was a bottomless financial drain.

soldiers, 2 copper coins per month, amounted to 144 gold coins a year.

That was about the annual income of most low-ranking nobles.

He would need to live without eating or drinking, without any expenses at all, to afford this amount of money.

Although Roman’s business with Morry was getting bigger, and each trade generally involved a sum around a hundred gold coins.

However, this was mainly through bartering goods.

Roman could come up with 500,000 pounds of salt but not a thousand gold coins.

So offsetting through goods was a good strategy.

But the drawback was, paying salaries became very troublesome! Super troublesome!

Not to mention Roman paid monthly.

At the end of each month, an entire day was needed to pay their remuneration—this also counted as a kind of indirect rest.

But wasting time was wasting time.

On rest days, one should take a proper rest, not sweat profusely, waiting in line to carry home tens of pounds of grain, salt, and meat.

As the economy of Sige Town developed and Roman had more resources at hand, he scrapped the in-kind offset model.

Every soldier received 3 copper coins and 10 pounds of salt each month.

That is to say, a soldier’s monthly pay was 5 copper coins.

In ten months, a soldier’s salary could buy a draft ox, and in twenty months, one could earn a gold coin.

And this was just the most basic salary.

The instructor level, like Jet and Dick.

The chamberlain level, like Kao and Nillie.

The Conquest Knight level, like Aaron and Green.

The managerial level, like Seth, Yaki, and Ruto.

The servant level, like Chef Bob, maids, and man-servants.

Their salary treatment would also be adjusted by rank.

Roman needed to pay about 300 gold coins a year to support his team.

If we were to hire all the craftsmen,

Vic, Lax, bricklayers, clothiers, leatherworkers, ironsmiths, and the like,

an additional 100 Gold Coins would be needed.

An annual expenditure of a whopping 400 Gold Coins could bankrupt all the lower Nobles.

But the higher the financial outlay, the happier Roman became.

It meant that Sige Town’s development Speed was terrifyingly fast.

...

The first snow had fallen for half a day, only leaving a thin layer of white frost on the plains and ground—it wasn’t a massive drop in temperature but merely a prelude to winter.

After the tense autumn sowing had ended,

the previously insufficient labor force suddenly felt much more relaxed.

Salt Mines, coal mines, and iron mines resumed operations, employing a total of six to seven hundred people.

More than two hundred were put to work at the Breeding farms, which was currently easy since the piglets and lambs were still young. The workforce would continue to grow in the future.

The livestock sheds, however, employed over four hundred people. The main issue was the difficulty of caring for the oxen, drawing horses, and wild horses, with at least ten tons of manure to be cleared away daily.

Not counting the population at the food camps and barracks,

around three hundred laborers in Sige Town were currently idle.

Of course, it was impossible for them to truly be at leisure.

For rapid development also had its disadvantages.

Sige Town was as though it had been bound to Roman’s chariot, running wildly into the distance without knowing how far it had gone, only to look back and discover pieces of furniture scattered all over that needed to be slowly picked up and put back together.

For instance, the housing for the miners and ironsmiths was temporary wooden shacks, extremely rudimentary and barely enough to shelter from the wind and the rain.

Autumn was bearable, but in winter, they couldn’t withstand the cold.

Roman previously had neither the time nor the manpower to build proper housing for them. The earliest ironsmiths even had to sleep on the ground—including Roman himself.

Out in the wilderness, they survived on dry food, because the distance was too great, they could only transport durable food such as slices of bread and jerky.

But this couldn’t continue indefinitely; a few months of hardship was just about bearable—just grit your teeth and get through it.

But no one could endure years of hardship without grinding their teeth to bits.

To achieve stable steel production, Roman first had to ensure his subjects had a stable living environment.

To that end, he needed to relocate some of the population and establish a new town next to the coal and iron processing plants.

That town would also need to be built with enduring brick houses to last.

And once built, if the two towns were to have transport links, an enduring and solid road was indispensable.

Ultimately, it all came down to infrastructure!!

Paving roads and building houses were major undertakings; no amount of labor thrown at them would be enough; they would only make a splash.

Worth mentioning was that the previously laid Salt Road was now beginning to crack, with dense fissures appearing, some sections even breaking into pieces.

But even the poorest lime road was better than a muddy dirt track.

When the roads cracked, Roman could send people to fill them with clay and lime, patching them up for use for another two or three years without issue, remaining smooth and stable for wheels to ride over fast and steady.

But how to repair those bumpy, uneven dirt tracks?

With Sige Town’s limited resources, they couldn’t produce cement and could only make lime; with coal now available, production would significantly increase.

Roman didn’t demand much from them.

Only to pave this hundred-kilometer lime road before winter ended—the main materials for a lime road were mud, broken stones, grass roots, sand, with the lime acting as a binder.

When he returned from the barracks to Origin Manor and passed by the classroom, he heard the clear sounds of reading emanating from the school,

where paper production had significantly increased.

The children’s learning load had intensified abruptly, focusing mainly on reading and arithmetic; three hours of self-study were dedicated to consolidating their knowledge, copying words.

But the greatest pressure was not on the students but on the teachers.

Sige Town had only about a dozen capable teachers, most of whom were slaves from Sea Castle.

Like Nillie, naturally intelligent and hardworking, after becoming a Maid to the lord of Sea Castle, she was required to master various management Skills.

Roman didn’t know the capabilities of the other Maids, but he was certain that someone like Nillie could stand on her own, more talented than Bigman and Hans.

But the prerequisite was giving her the right stage.