Struggle in the Steam Age

Lawrence's new plan won the support of everyone present, because the fortress is more than 80 kilometers away from New Shore Port in a straight line, and the waterway is close to 100 kilometers. It takes about five hours to arrive even if you go down the river by boat. Therefore, from the perspective of economic layout, there is indeed a need for a densely populated city.

But it is not so easy for a city to develop. For example, the development of the Port of New Sauer was completely dependent on agriculture and water transportation at the beginning. After that, with the continuous increase of personnel, simple service industry, commerce and later industry gradually appeared. In this process, Lawrence and the others invested a lot of money and resources.

Fortunately, because various industries are developing smoothly, the future of this city is obviously bright. But even so, it will take a long time to recover those previous investments. For at least three to five years, the various incomes of the city alone can at most be equal to the daily expenditure of the city or have a slight surplus.

Although Lawrence is now running his own territory, he is not afraid to spend money. But he also wants every penny he spends to be worthwhile. Therefore, naturally there are relatively high requirements for this future new city. For example, it is hoped that various plans will be made from the beginning of construction to ensure that waste is reduced as much as possible.

So after dawn the next day, human scholars, Tauren shamans and Ratmen elders began to explore the surrounding environment under the protection of the army. Hope to find some resources that can be used for urban development in the future. And in the afternoon, a group of Loka murlocs also came here by boat and searched the nearby water system.

Lawrence thought it would take a while to find something of value, so he simply took Safir to go fishing by the river. But what I didn't expect was that just as the sky was getting dark and the two of them were about to finish their rods and go back to eat and fish at night, an attendant ran over and told them that some members of the previous expedition team had come back to report.

After communicating with the team members who came back to report, Lawrence realized that a lot of information could not be obtained by aerial reconnaissance alone, let alone that neither Lawrence nor Nora was very proficient in these things, so sometimes Even if those things are there, it is impossible to find those resources from the background environment.

Not to mention that Nora's investigation of this generation before was only when she went to the blue mountain meadow to investigate the goblin's movements. It's just for scouting by the way, so let alone go down to the ground for scouting, even aerial scouting is extremely rough. Therefore, the results of the investigation did not reveal anything other than confirming the distribution and movement of the goblin population in this area.

Of course, the puppet also mentioned the rushing rivers, azure blue alpine lakes and the surrounding lush jungle water system formed by this gradually rising terrain. It should be very good if the tourism industry is developed. But considering the current level of development on the island, Lawrence doesn't think it will attract enough travelers in a short time.

Because the development of tourism requires a series of infrastructure construction, but Lawrence previously formulated agriculture and medicine for the island as the core of development. Therefore, it is impossible to have enough resources to invest in tourism in a short period of time. And if you want to wait until the island naturally develops to those required levels, then it is estimated that you will have to wait for a long time.

And from this matter, we can also see a problem, that is, the overall planning of development. At least when Lawrence checked the information, he found that many areas had no plans for development. As a result, the situation was okay at the beginning of development, but as the development deepened, various problems would be exposed.

For example, the industrial zone and the agricultural zone were built without planning, which made it extremely difficult to expand the industrial zone when it grew. In those agricultural areas, because of industrial waste water, exhaust gas and noise, the fertile soil has become barren, and the farmland has also experienced obvious reductions in production or even failure.

When things develop to this point, the trouble will be big, because at that time, it will need to consume a lot of various resources to change the tangled situation, but even so, there will still be a lot of problems in the process of change. Irreversible trouble. For example, those newly created unemployed people and extremely difficult to restore land and water.

This is one reason why Lawrence attaches great importance to the armed reconnaissance teams sent around. These teams' detailed investigation of the environment around the fortress and the statistics of various resources will determine the future development direction and degree of the city and the entire island. .

In the next few hours, Lawrence took out the map and summoned the Book Demon to synthesize the investigation reports of the members of the scouting team and mark them on the map. This kind of survey report comes not only from the professionals in those teams, but also from ordinary members.

After synthesizing the investigations of these teams, Lawrence realized that the surrounding land was much richer than he had imagined before, which is why everyone was able to find enough resources on the first day of exploration. And there are many types of these resources, not only common animal and plant resources, but also some mineral resources that have never been explored before.

Among them, the most valuable plant resource is a large area of ​​Ainaxiang two or three kilometers away from here. According to the classification method of natural history, this is a perennial herb of Compositae. The Tauren used to use this kind of thing before, mainly for picking and bundling it into a bundle of raw materials for smoking to drive away those disgusting mosquitoes.

When Lawrence and the others went to the tauren tribe last time, the tauren burned these things to repel insects, but when they burned, the grass was smashed and mixed with other grasses, so Lawrence couldn't do it at all. What exactly is the specific condition for recognizing this herb.

And the expert who recognized this herbal medicine this time is from the Republic of Xinzhou, a medical student introduced by Zhu Yan. There used to be a herbal medicine shop in the family, but because of a wrong purchase of medicinal materials, the medicine shop went bankrupt, and then Zhu Yan repaid the bank loan for him and let him come to Lawrence's side.

Because of his previous occupation, the doctor named Li Ming carefully inspected every plant and tree in the forest immediately after entering the forest, and at the same time asked the native tauren warriors who accompanied him about the herbs they had used before. . As a result, the herb called Ainaxiang was quickly recognized.

According to Li Ming, this herb is a very important herb in the main points of Sinian. On the one hand, the whole plant can be used as medicine to treat wind-cold cold, head wind and headache, stop diarrhea and remove dampness. And if you have a toothache, applying it on your teeth can also treat toothache caused by red and swollen gums.

More importantly, this herbal medicine can be further processed through distillation and extraction to make it have higher added value. A very important product after extraction is mugwort oil, which can be used in various cosmetics and fragrance industries. At the same time, in the process of distillation and refining, a kind of medicinal material that is very popular in Sinian can also be produced: borneol.

These products continue to be popular in the world of ordinary people, and they can also be used in many extraordinary potions and rituals. So as long as it is manufactured, sales will definitely not be a problem.

Apparently, the fact that a large number of Ainaxiang can be found wild in this area shows that this area is very suitable for the growth of this herb. And the cultivation of this kind of herbal medicine can just be integrated into the overall agricultural development of Nova Sauer Island. So Lawrence quickly marked this industry and included it in the future key industries of the city.

In addition to Aina incense, there are more than a dozen similar spices and medicinal plants. However, unlike Ainaxiang, these spice plants are not large-scale, and their value is not higher than Ainaxiang. So there are no plans to plant them for the time being.