Parthia economy broken

[♠ Thomas Cochrane ♠]

Id like to query if this is just me, but I doubt it cus Ive tried a range of different workarounds. The province maintenance when playing as Parthia becomes so exorbitant you cannot afford a single building. I have to have a full stack of levies out raiding in order to sustain the economy in order to construct any building above level 1. This is on every difficulty from Easy up. I normally play only on legendary, and now I can't play on easy, what's going on? It's like buildings aren't giving me money, they're only taking it. The expenses listed under "other" are through the roof - its damn annoying. I havent been able to get past turn 12 or so, and once I get to Imperium II, i'm done for.
Oh and rebellions are impossible to avoid, despite garrison and edict and neutral tax rate.

[Apio Claudio]

Parthia is a faction i will try eventually since i love playing with them, but now i'm focused on my roman campaign.

Is the economy that broken or you still trying to get the hang of it ? Took me 3 attempts and some tips from the community to get me going on, although sometimes i do not understand why in one year i have an insane profit and then the other i ve a terrible ones (even looking at the weather conditions), but since i m sitting on 2 million denarii i m fine and don't mind if in a turn i m not making money.

When i jumped into the parthian campaign i noticed they have a really low income, 1 k per turn, without trade agreements, i think, only looked at that, nothing else.

Lets hope someone with a parthian campaign can help you

[Erik Hammarstrom]

The Parthian economy is not broken at all, it is simply a matter of understanding AE game mechanics and manage your empire accordingly. Personally I find Parthia too easy, even at VH. After destroying Bactria I have 20k+ surplus income at turn 60 ready to take on the Selecuid Empire.

My best advice is that you should always take control of entire regions to lessen the influence of conflicting cultures and avoid unrest. If you have to, let you conquerd provinces be self governing and change it after a few years when public disorder is at calmer levels.

Dont forget to be agressive. Your cav is more powerful than you think. Attack the Bactrians and crush them with the weight of your cataphracts. Take out thier elepthants with ranged units. Build resourse buildings and let the Selecuids trade profits pay for your expansion, then turn on them when you are done consolidating your rule over Bactria and fully built up your economy.

[Fraxinicus]

A quick guide to building in AE as an Eastern faction (I'm assuming Parthia has mostly the same buildings as Armenia):

1. Build as many farms as you need to have positive food even in winter. Only use cattle farms, or the farms that provide a lot of public order and state culture (if you need more PO and culture spread). Ignore granaries.
2. Build one well per province and upgrade it as much as possible.
3. Build and fully upgrade any available trade good buildings (and always have at least one trade agreement, preferably as many as possible).
4. Fill out any free building slots with the artisan workshop branch that boosts industrial income. If you somehow have spare slots after all this, then build the other workshop branch as well. Ignore quarries, as the corruption penalty will outweigh the added income in fully upgraded provinces.
5. Once corruption becomes a problem due to empire size, consider building one governor's palace per province (provided the +10% effective tax boost from the -corruption gives you more income than a fully upgraded artisan workshop).
6. Upgrade main settlements only to the extent that one well and at most 4 farms per province will be able to support them. The added income from even the max-level tribute settlement is not worth the upgrade costs, or the lost income of replacing workshops with farms or wells.
7. Commercial ports are the way to go, unless you think you can make more money by having a fishing port and then replacing a farm with some other building. One military port per ocean will be enough.

And as Parthia, you'll need to rely on AoR units for every non-cav and non-archer role, which means making use of the otherwise lackluster tributary settlement line. You can check which units you can recruit in an area after you conquer it, by bringing up the building tree from the settlement in question and mousing over the first building in the tributary branch. I know that you can pick up pikemen in Amaseia in northern Anatolia, and you can get passable Greek spear infantry all over the place.

You have really good cav that is as affordable as mid-level melee infantry for other factions. With one fully upgraded province you should be able to support at least one stack with 10+ lancers. You're pretty much invincible at that point, especially if you can find AoR infantry who have good melee defence (I'm thinking Bactria's land might help you there).

[Seresox]

I played parthia alot and i dont see a problem with the economy, you make crazy amounts of money while having 7 settlements, 100k income per round, with 5 armies consisting of the royal cataphracts for the most part.