Roman cash

[BiggBudd]

Am playing as Gauls, im 15 yr in to mine campaign, I controll "france", left "Italy" to the romans, they havnt expanded anywhere, yet when i look at money graph they have over 80k!!!
We all started at the same money 5k, how have they got to 80k all ready?
As i share a border can i expect serveral stacks to suddenly appear? [am using 0 recuit time]
Should i preempt an attack by raiding/leveling their best city?
Will i get an big cash bonus if i do? [ ie the more money they have, the more u get from captureing?]

[Deus ret.]

1. Romans are rich in RTRPE, almost as rich as Macedon. So yes, it's quite normal to see them amass huge amounts of cash.

2. Given the, well, not so bright RTW AI you can basically always expect an attack if you have something in its range, even a mere port. And with 0-turn recruitment, you can be pretty sure that you won't have as much breathing space between the approaching waves.

3. Depends on your house rules, on how you expect a possible war to go, and on your overall strategic situation. Striking at their core provinces might be a better idea if the war has already started, since their armies will then be heading towards you and they'll probably have very few forces left in central Italy.

4. IIRC the amount of cash gained from looting depends on the city size and thus on the number of killed inhabitants....but I might be wrong in that.