Cambyses was over the moon that such a golden opportunity had presented itself.


    Usually, Alexander was very astute and methodical with his maths, but today it seemed he was having one of those days where nothing seems to go right for oneself.


    Days where people have hugepses in concentration, leading to mistakes that would normally never happen.


    And this fortunate urrence had happened by coincidence on her orientation day, presenting Cambyses with a silver bullet by which she could cement her mark on the council.


    ''Hahaha, the heavens have truly blessed me today,'' Cambysesughed out in her heart, ecstatic that she could increase her reputation and not least bother that she would have to do it by stepping a bit on Alexander''s reputation and proving him wrong.


    Noticing that all the men were expectantly looking at her for her exnation, she decided to longer keep them waiting.


    Tapping her index finger on the table, Cambyses began," The first reason the twelve hundred square kilometers (1,200 sq km) answer is wrong is because it does not take into ount the three crop rotation into ount."


    "From what I''m told, in this farming method, one-third (?) of thend is left fallow, meaning only two-thirds (?) of the total avablend is used. So. we will actually need one thousand sixteen hundred square kilometers (1,600 sq. km) ofnd, and not twelve hundred square kilometers (1,200 sq km)."


    Then without losing any steam, she ced her long finger on the table and continued, "Secondly, the lord''s math assumes that the entirety of the obtainednd will be good arablend. That is clearly wishful thinking, as only a tiny fraction of the total ownednd is actually farnd. "


    Cambyses then waved her palmed and said, "For instance, let''s take thend surrounding Zanzan city itself. Yes. we might control one thousand square kilometers (1,000 sq. km) on the map, but the majority of it is the hilly, barren area in the Cisrian hills, full of rocky thin soil, totally unsuitable for cultivation."


    "So we must find out how much of Zanzan''snd is actually suitable for farming." Cambyses proposed.


    Then she continued, "We know that even in good, fertile provinces, the amount of arablend would not exceed a third (33%) of the totalnd avable. But for a barren ce like the Zanzan province, even half that amount might be optimistic. A more likely figure will be one-tenth (10%). And that puts the requirednd at sixteen thousand square kilometers (16,000 sq. km)."


    "But" Cambyses reminded, "Since we will be nting crops twice a year, this drops of eight square kilometers (8,000 sq. km)."


    Cambyses here paused a bit to savor the faces of the men around her which ranged from pleasantly surprised to bbergasted, and one particr one who was very flushed and embarrassed.


    ''Hmmm, Italy also only had a pre-industrial arablend of just 10%,'' Alexander thought of a tidbit of information as he tried to distract himself from the huge embarrassment he was suffering at Cambyses''s hands.


    Cambyses, after a bit of basking in her own glory, then sinctly finished the third and ultimate point, "Andst of all, in the first calction, there is no consideration of ck. ording to the previous calction, we will only be able to produce the bare minimum, whereas, in reality, we must produce some excess to store for times of emergency."


    "So the total requirednd area should be at least ten thousand square kilometers (10,000 sq km)."


    As Cambyses finished showing her workings and sent a ''Praise me!'' look at Alexander, the men around the table simplymented, ''Another monster''.


    They were aware that Cambyses ran the medical camp before and all of them were very impressed by how she had managed to stymie the spread of the gue by following Alexander''s orders.


    But giving instructions to a few ves and doctors was in no wayparable to making state-level decisions.


    Thus they had assumed her to be just another pretty face that Alexander had bought here to bolster his own faction.


    But it seems they were wrong in that assessment.


    Very wrong.


    The young girl seemed perfectly capable of holding her own against them and even Theocles, who was Cambyses''s former boss was caught surprised by this disy.


    But instead of feeling down or even jealous, Theocles only piously thought, ''As expected of the lord''s consort. How can we mortalspare to a vessel chosen by the gods?''


    While these men were having their thoughts and musings, Alexander was himself thinking and evaluating the whole urrence.


    For many this instance might seem like a simple math calction gone astray, after all, Alexander was actively engaging in a conversation while he multitasked the solution inside his head.


    But still, it was not like it was just an innocent little miscement of a zero or a decimal point or the error margin was small and within a rounding error.


    That could have been forgiven.


    Bu the numbers were orders of magnitudes off.


    Almost by a factor of ten, a one thousand percent (1000%) discrepancy.


    This was never going to be eptable to Alexander or anyone else for the matter, and so he repeatedly chastised himself for not being careful enough which led to this huge error percentage.


    He had missed not one, not two, but three crucial points.


    ''ck! Oh god, I can''t believe I forgot about ck!'' Missing the third point particrly stung Alexander and hempooned for making such a basic error.


    ck was the amodation one made in the mathematical calctions to correct for any assumption error and usually, it involved multiplying the value with a factor greater than one.


    For example, the most famous of ck would be the safety factor which was 2.5 times the calcted value, and every engineer who has ever made anything structural, i.e- designed to support weight, would use this value.


    And thus this practice became pretty basic knowledge for every engineering major which made Alexander''spse all the more egregious.


    It was gross negligence on his part no doubt.


    ''I''ve been getting too cocky,'' He self-reflected as he recalled that he had experienced the same feeling in Adhan with Pasha Farzah.


    And so he repeatedly berated himself for making the same mistake twice.


    On the other hand, Alexander did not doubt Cambyses''s mathematical result.


    In fact, he found them to be very urate.


    Though Cambyses had seemingly assumed and rounded off many things, the answer of ten thousand square kilometers (10,000 sq km)nd for two hundred thousand (200,000) people was surprisingly spot on.


    In fact, it was scarily spot.


    And the reason was because the province of  Zanzan''s totalnd area was around three hundred thousand thirty to three hundred thousand fifty square kilometers (330,000 - 350.000 sq km).


    And it was said that it had a poption of around six and a half to seven million people (6,500,000 - 7,000,000).


    This gave a poption density of 20 per square kilometer (20 men per sq km), just like in Cambyses''s calction.


    As a matter of fact, this could be extrapted to all of Adhania, which had a total area of around four million square kilometers (4,000,000 sq km) and a poption of around seventy to eighty million (70,000,000 - 80,000,000), which gave the same rough poption density of 20 men per sq km.


    And this was not even the most remarkable part.


    The most astounding part was that this value of 20 men per sq km was even followed in Alexander''s previous life, as evidenced by the Roman empire.


    At its peak, the Roman empire was around four million square kilometers (4,000,000 sq km) in area and had a poption of seventy to seventy-five million (70,000,000 - 75,000, 000), which, as you guessed, produced the magic poption density of around 20 men per sq km.


    So from this example, it could be seen that the averagend really could only feed up to twenty people per square kilometer, or one man per five hectares.


    Some ces might have excess food, like the good arable farnds around the banks of rivers and deltas, which can then grow into cities, as evidenced by mostrge, ancient cities situated by the banks of rivers and near the coasts.


    And some ces might have no agricultural value, like hills, mountains deserts, swamps, and marshes and the poption around it would be mostly small and tribal.


    But on average, one man per five hectares was the food-producing capacity of thend, even when ''advanced techniques'' such as the three-crop rotation, horse cor, and natural manure were used.


    And the only way to increase that capacity would be to industrialize and use heavy machinery to quickly cultivate vast swaths ofnd, while at the same time using copious amounts of various synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides to boost the yield.


    Or, if such high-tech solutions were not possible, the only low-tech option avable would be to introduce potatoes.


    These little buggers had insane yields, and historically, after they were introduced to Europe, the poption density went from 20 men per square kilometer to 100 hundred per square kilometer and in some ces to even 120 men per square kilometer.


    And knowing this Alexander in the past years had searched high and low for these little globules of goodness, searching desperately for even the tiniest sniff of the thing.


    But s! It was to avail.


    No traveler, no merchant, and certainly no one he knew that ever seen or heard of the famed potato.