Quarry (Civ3)/Civilopedia

Quarrying was the most common means of extracting stone from hills during the Middle Ages. The oldest surface-mining 
technique in history, it consists essentially of digging a hole at the base of a hill known to have quality stone deposits 
and using masons and quarriers to dig out the biggest pieces (to be shaped later). Quarrying is an incredibly inefficient 
process, with a huge degree of waste in both material and labor (since all the useless rock around the good bits has to be 
carried out of the quarry). Nonetheless, until the development of underground mining techniques, most stone buildings 
were constructed from quarried stone, and quarries were highly coveted features of a lord's lands. A lord could often 
extract considerable prices for quarrying rights in his domain, when he had no need or desire to build a new castle.