New to RS2, basic questions

[Aenima]

I've read through the FAQs and similar posts but I still don't feel I have even much of a basic grasp of a few things regarding RS2, particularly the economy.

When looking at roads, markets, ports and even happiness buildings they show both a bonus and a penalty....how does that work? I understand that the idea was to show maintenance costs etc, but the way it's presented makes no sense to me - it stopped me trying to build buildings for fear that it would lose me public order/money instead of improving it due to how confusing it is. Can someone explains how this works? Is it ever a bad idea to keep building advanced markets, roads, etc or are the downsides truly minor? Between the misunderstanding of what penalties/bonuses would result from building something and the sheer number of buildings I was just utterly stumped by settlement management and felt as though I had absolutely no idea what was going on.


Recruitment also doesn't make much sense to me - I built the first level barracks in settlements but wasn't able to recruit anything there, ie in Dyrachhium. Are there other buildings that need to be present so you can actually recruit troops? Is there some kind of culture system at work that will eventually "unlock" recruitment?

They may seem basic, and perhaps the answers are obvious, but I've not been able to figure it out, even reading through the FAQs and linked threads. DVK's many posts and threads trying to explain how the game works are great, but, bless him, they just seem extremely long-winded and at the end of it I don't feel like things are cleared up, but if anything the concepts of taxation, public order, improving my economy just feel even more confusing and complex.

Do things work relatively simply in this game or is there a seriously complex design as to how buildings and economies improve? I honestly feel clueless when playing and trying to plan things so if someone in the know could shed some light on it I'd really appreciate it. This looks like a really interesting mod but it just seems so complex and intricate that it scares me away! Thanks

[tungri_centurio]

don't be scaredthe downsides are minor compared to the good sides
building roads,ports,river ports lead to more and more trade so you don't really feel the tax penalty's
you have to find a balance between buildings that have the penalty and that have not.
i always build roads,then trade networks,buildings that improve law(less corruption)mines,tempels for trade,law,extra tax bonus
markets,the main tempel is the most importent one(for romans jupiter,for greeks ares...)
also important are the academy but im asume thats for all mods out there.


for military you need atleast tier 2 oppidium(colonization),goverment determination and tribal justice,that unlockes
than client state or citizenship i believe, to unloch all recruitable units.
i think you also need to be a military settlement or merged one(no recruits in a economic settlement)

for high tier units you also need to build: supply of army rations.

hope it helps a bit

[romanius24]

I usually just build stuff like in vanilla and dont pay attention to penalties.
The penalties seem to be there just because they would have existed in real life but i just kept building stuff and my economy got better anyway.Not sure if they actually have any effect.


Recruitment is more complex, it takes a while to get a city ready to recruit soldiers.

[_Tartaros_]

i think the some bonus or penalties are connected to you homelandsituation. in your basic regions they offer a bonus and an easy live. in more distant regions, that are not your culture, they reflect more negative effects

[Ovidius Empiricus]

Always build roads. Trade will go up, taxes will go down. Those two factors aren't equal in a region -- indeed, I'm fairly sure you're always going to lose more in taxes than you get back in trade, so that's a negative. However, the law bonus does two things: it helps to reduce corruption (meaning you lose less money, meaning you gain it), and it means higher public order so you can quickly and easily keep taxes at a high level (never very high) without negative consequences like rebellions or inefficient governors with bad traits. But even leaving aside all of that, it's not simply about money. Your armies move faster on them. That makes a big difference, which is hard to quantify, especially as your empire gets larger and you need to defend very distant borders with troops that are recruited somewhere deep in the interior. Even in culturally-Roman areas (assuming that's your campaign) where things like corruption and public order aren't an issue, you need roads as a prerequisite for the tax-collection buildings, and those will more than make up for the slight cost of maintaining the road. So just don't worry about it. It's an investment that you ought to make, because in the end you will get more than enough out of it, even if it does end up costing you something. You really can't win this game simply by getting rich -- you need to use that money for something, and roads are a very useful construction project. The same kind of thing goes for ports, academies, aqueducts, and a few others I won't bring up for now unless you have a question about them -- they really need to be everywhere, even though they do cost you. On the other hand, temples that only provide happiness simply aren't needed if you have the rest of your infrastructure in place, so those costs really are something that you can avoid, meaning you shouldn't build them unless you just have lots of money you feel like you need to burn.

Some buildings, like a temple of Ceres for example, would be good in some places but not others, depending on the what the native culture is in the area. (That is determined by the first "building" listed in a region, which can't be built or destroyed.) In other cases, it's not the culture which does it but the region's location on a trade route or access to a specific resource like amber or salt or glass or whatever. This gets a little complicated, but you can always check what a building's immediate effects will be by looking at the settlement's "details" window. Look at what the taxes/growth/happiness/etc. figures look like before you put the building in the construction queue and see what happens after it goes into the queue. If there's no difference before/after, you may not want to build it there at all. But, there are again prerequisites that you need to think about, not just immediate gains and losses. I always aim to build aqueducts everywhere eventually, because it provides happiness and health/growth. So, I don't particularly care whether the forum will make the settlement more profitable, and I don't bother to check that; what I'm doing when I build the forum is making the aqueduct available. (That's one example of a prerequisite that I happen to remember, but there are others that you should check by referring to the building tree window, and/or the details window of a specific building). It's also the case sometimes that you won't actually see an income gain from something right away, but only once another building is in place, like Curias or Economic regions, I think -- so just keep making those sorts of improvements and it'll work out in the end. Which buildings are present also has very complicated effects on a governor's traits/ancillaries, but to make it as simple as possible, just try to do generally what a good governor would do there to make life better. You'll probably be making the right choice. Give them academies, keep them healthy and happy, increase trading/farming/mining, minimize/eliminate corruption -- those ought to be your goals, basically, and doing that's going to make your governor all-around pretty awesome, which is by far more important than what any single building is doing by itself. Outlying regions, which aren't a "Roman" culture, will be making quite a bit less in taxes proportionally no matter what, but you can still get a lot out of them with trade/mining, as well as giving them the best governors they can get. One other thing to mention is to make sure you never leave a lot of money in the bank with some governor just sitting on his hands for a turn -- just keep building everywhere you can, and you should be doing pretty well.

Recruitment is a trickier subject. Playing as Rome, for a long time you'll only be able to recruit units in culturally-Roman areas, and what you're going to do as you expand is make new places "more Roman." You can make some areas "client states" (or as I prefer, annex them and eventually grant citizenship) to recruit some new units that way (the building info window will tell you what, if anything, those units are). However, after the Marian reforms, this is not enough. The people need citizenship, and you need to build the most advanced Roman oppida/fortresses, army supplies and perhaps a few other things (again, see the info in the building details, to get the requirements). This is a very long and costly process, so you should really focus on doing this in only specific regions here and there (preferably ones that already have some of the necessary infrastructure, like foundries and economic/fortified regions, to save yourself time/money). The fact is, you don't need to recruit from every region, and those will be the places you've picked out to get your fancy new legions, while the rest are just going to be about supporting your economy.

[Ye Olde Fahrt]

Maybe you already have, but if not you could do far worse than reading the Rome 1 Turn - Should it be like this? thread. A gem of a thread, not least to give a good overview for allowing things to take their time instead of rushing them.

[ur-Lord Tedric]

Thanks to my colleague with the wonderful and emotive handle for the recommendation....

I'd also recommend this: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...ut-RS2-is-here

And these - where I'm not sure all are available now:

[tone]

There have been some minor changes to some of the traits triggers and also significant changes in buildings costs and bonuses/ penalties since those illustrations were done. . However the principles remain the same

[Alavaria]

Always build roads. Trade will go up, taxes will go down. Those two factors aren't equal in a region -- indeed, I'm fairly sure you're always going to lose more in taxes than you get back in trade, so that's a negative.

In city and above, you frequently will reach the point where your taxes won't go down any further. It's better to increase law (less corruption), more trade, or get a higher tax rate (needs more public order)