For generation upon generation, from the beginning of time, man has lived along the shores of the Nile or in a few oases spread across the desert, unable to make use of any land far from these sources of life giving water. Now the goddess Heket has looked upon the vast expanses of dry, dead land and grown unhappy. She has commanded you, the Architects of Egypt, to use your skills to bring life to those lands that have never known life.
You must search out plots of earth that Heket has blessed with the potential for extraordinary fertility. Build a pump, a cistern, and a system of aquaducts to bring the water of life to these fertile plots of land. As long as a plot is supplied with water, it will continue to produce a bounty of vegetables. But be warned, if the water supply is halted the vegetables will die, and it will take some time for them to grow anew when the water is restored.
Those architects who irrigate plots that see continuous, sustained use will be rewarded with the favor of Heket.
The detailed design for the Test of Life can be found at http://atitd.centauri.org/wiki/The_Test_Of_Life/Design
Depuis des générations, en fait depuis la nuit des temps, les hommes ont vécu le long des rives du Nil ou près des quelques oasis répartis dans le désert, ne pouvant pas utiliser les terres trop éloignées de ces sources d’eau si nécessaire à la vie. La déesse Heket regarda avec tristesse ces grandes étendues arides et mortes. Elle ordonna alors que vous, les architectes d’Egypte, utilisiez vos compétences pour amener la vie à ces terres qui n’en ont jamais abritée.
Vous devez rechercher les parcelles de terre qu’Heket a bénies d’un pouvoir de fertilité extraordinaire. Construisez une pompe, une citerne et un système d’aqueducs pour amener l’eau à ces terres fertiles. Tant qu’une de ces parcelles est irriguée elle fera pousser des légumes en abondance. Mais attention, si l’eau est coupée les légumes périront et ils mettront un certain temps à repousser une fois l’irrigation rétablie.
Les architectes qui irrigueront des parcelles exploitées de manière régulière et constante seront récompensés par Heket.
Pour plus d’information sur cette épreuve allez sur ce lien : http://atitd.centauri.org/wiki/The_Test_Of_Life/Design
Such jene Felder, die Heket mit dem Potential zu außergewöhnlicher Fruchtbarkeit segnete. Bau eine Pumpe, eine Zisterne und ein System von Aquädukten und bring das lebenspendende Wasser zu diesen fruchtbaren Flecken Erde. Solange das Feld mit Wasser versorgt ist, wird es Gemüse im Überfluss hervorbringen. Doch sei gewarnt! Sollte der Wasserzufluss versiegen, so werden die Früchte verdorren die Felder vertrocknen. Und es wird einige Zeit dauern bis von neuem etwas auf dem Feld wachsen wird nachdem der Wasserzufluss wiederhergestellt ist
Jene Architekten, welche Felder bewässern, die kontinuierlich und intensiv genutzt werden, werden mit dem Gunst Hekets belohnt.
1. Find the right spots where the soil is suited for sustained farming. These spots are scattered around egypt the way marble deposits are, and finding them should be of a difficulty comparable to marble prospecting or dowsing for ore. Each spot is suited for a particular kind of vegetable.
2. Build pumping stations on the edge of nearby water. The stations work like mini Deep Well Mines, using a single screwgear to move water into a reservoir at their top. The cost of a pumping station depends on its height and the size of its reservoir. There's a minimum distance between pumping stations, like with water mines.
3. Build cut stone aqueducts to bring the water to the fertile spots. Aqueducts come in pieces which can be straight, or corners, or Y or T junctions. They have to fit together so some kind of auto-aligning (like with brick rack alignment) will be needed. Each piece rests on a kind of pillar which is used to adjust its height. The cost of a piece depends on the size of its pillar.
4. Add leather waterspouts to the aqueduct pieces which are near the fertile spots. These spouts will tap water from the aqueduct and sprinkle it evenly over the surrounding terrain. Some sort of leather, oil, and iron bar arrangement seems appropriate.
5. Prepare the fertile spots by laying down a bed of dirt, saltpeter and whatever else seems reasonable, and seeding it with the appropriate vegetable seeds.
6. Maintain the irrigation system by regularly winding up the pumping stations so that their reservoirs don't run dry. You can do this yourself, or get people to help (possibly for a share of the veggies).
Aqueduct design
To get the proper flow of water, aqueduct pieces are slanted so that the side where water flows in is 1 foot higher than the side where water flows out. With junction pieces, the difference is 2 feet. The pieces have to match up in height as well as location. The first "piece" is the reservoir of a pumping station.
Terrain counts, so a 5-foot-tall piece built at 10 feet elevation will have water flowing in at 15 feet and water flowing out at 14 feet. If the next piece rests at 5 feet elevation, it will have to be 9 feet tall. This can make hills both a curse and a blessing -- you have to build tall enough to get over them, but they do make the individual pieces cheaper to build.
Water management
Every game hour, a reservoir will use one unit of water for each endpoint of its aqueduct system, and one unit of water for each waterspout attached to its system. (And endpoint with a waterspout counts as just one, though.)
As long as the vegetable beds get water, they will grow vegetables which can be harvested, a bit like the way a greenhouse works. The rate of growth will be slow: enough to be useful, but not enough to replace ordinary vegetable growing entirely. You'll have to harvest several times per RL day to get the full benefit.
If a reservoir runs dry, the beds attached to it begin to die. Once they're dead, they're gone, though the fertile spots themselves remain and can be refertilized and reseeded. Water can be pumped into the reservoir by winding up the pumps, the same way a Deep Well Mine pumps petroleum. How often this needs to be done depends on the size of the reservoir, but once per RL day should be enough for a smallish irrigation system.
Unlike with normal vegetable growing, these beds produce only vegetables and no extra seeds. If a bed dies, the seeds in it are lost.
Passing the test
I propose a simple system where an architect accumulates a point for every bed that gets water, every game hour. This puts the focus on the vegetable beds (with aqueduct construction being an overhead cost that needs to be minimized), and on maintaining them consistently. This maintenance can be either from raw effort, or simply from the beds being useful enough that everyone helps out with the pumping. Either is a good reason to reward an architect.
Test passing should be done like obelisks: the first architect who gets 5000 points will pass (that's 7 beds for about a game month), and after that you need 1/7th more points than the previous passing score. For further refinement, these points can be regional.
Test strategies
Since the aqueducts don't count for points directly, it's best to find fertile spots that are already near water. On the other hand, building and maintaining one big pumping station is easier than building many small ones. Architects would do well to add on to existing irrigation networks rather than starting their own.
One possible "gaming" strategy is for a successful architect to let all his or her vegetable beds die, so that a guildmate can then replant them and start collecting points. This is not necessarily bad (it encourages team play, and makes sure someone stays interested in maintaining the irrigation system), but it means that preparing a bed shouldn't be too cheap.