I was wondering if anyone can give me a little help with my economy. Playing as the Romans I'm just about to finish off Carthage. Now I would think that the massive increases in cities and population to my empire would cause my treasury to be full to the brim (it's not) however I do have a massive army upkeep but my army size has not increased since I brought my hammer down on Africa and my economy gets worse every turn despite the above mentioned supposed boons to my economy.
Now I have been musing on why this is and I've got several ideas.
1. My economy was doing spectacularly well when Quintis Fabius Maximus was my national leader, he had several good leadership traits, which in turn (I believe) gave my governors good economy traits. His son however, (my current national leader) Sextus the Coward, is a rotten apple with god awful leadership traits. I believe that he may be the root of most of my economic woes.
2. Because of the war with Carthage and my massive army upkeep, I've been avoiding building infrastructure. Mostly because I don't have any money to spare. I've been unable to build up farming, tax collection, vineyards and mines, this could be impacting my economy spectacularly.
3. The aforementioned army upkeep could actually be impacting the biggest strain on my economy. At the moment I've got five mobile full stacks and garrison forces across my empire with large garrison forces in Illyria and the Iberian coast. Personally I think all of my armed forces are neccessary and are perhaps not even enough, so I can't exactly reduce them.
So what do I do? Send Sextus the Coward on a "luxury cruise"? Or cut my army in half and use the money to build infrastructure? It won't be long till I'm permanantly in the red in which case Macedon and the Gallaeci will overun my borders which is of course unacceptable. What do I do?