RTW Economics

[Lord Thesaurian]

Up till now ive always stimulated my economy by constantly expanding. But Im growing weary of this "fly by the seat of ur pants" method, so I was wondering if anyone could give me a rundown of RTW economics.

[Xavier Dragnesi]

Well expanding is a major part of economics. This is cos the things that drains most of your money are troops. Therefore, you have two options. Either 1: Expand a little, but then only keep a small army. Or 2: Disband most of your army after each war. Even so, you must expand to some degree, as your starting cities in RTW will never give you enough to maintain a good sized army. Basically, the larger you faction is i.e. the more cities it has, then the more troops it can maintain, and therefore the greater income can be produced.

[SonOfAlexander]

Having a good economy is bloody difficult if you aren't expanding constantly. I know what you mean, I HATE having to expand always ! Anyway, you must keep your army in check. They must be as small as possible otherwise they will be too exspensive, yet they must be able to defend you! You should be able to find a strong defensive troop with low upkeep with most factions - and stay away from mercanaries! They have huge upkeep costs, so should only be used when you are expansionist.

Spending a large part of the early game just building markets/traders etc. can give you a nucleus of fantastic commerce later on. You will have to rely on other factions to do the same though, but they usually do.

Good luck - the 1st point is the most important!

[Lord Thesaurian]

right. one of my main questions is: do settlements pay for upkeep and the state pays for the initial recruitment cost or what? how does all that work?

[Selifator]

Upkeep for armies and generals is paid by the population of your faction, therefore larger settlements will pay a larger part of the total upkeep. All the money that you earn from trading, diplomacy, looting, goes into the treasury. All costs such as upkeep, recruitment, diplomacy and construction are then paid from this.

[Lord Thesaurian]

ok. somehow I always inevitably go bankrupt (towns go to low income and my cities go bankrupt) and then I have to pull a blitz just to survive.

[Entropy Judge]

Build Docks, and upgrade them - naval trade is the single biggest money-maker in Rome.

Take Greece first, as well as the Mediterranean islands - Greece has many cities in close proximity, skyrocketing naval trade, most of the islands have several nearby ports (especially Rhodes and Salamis), and Rhodes also has the Colossus, which boosts naval trade.

If you do those, you shouldn't have any money problems unless you regularly use full-stack armies simply because you can. A moderate army size will allow you to build up a significant cash reserve if you wish, but you should never be forced to conquer to maintain your cash flow if you take Greece and upgrade the Docks.

Regarding the actual economics: Each city makes a certain amount of money per turn, based on Trade (both land and naval), Taxation (Low, Normal, High, or Very High), Mining (if you have Mines), and Farming (can be a Bad, Average, or Good Harvest). As I said above, naval Trade is the best for lining your pockets; Mining is dependant on the region, and Farming is based on the Farm level and the local fertility rate. I normally keep Taxes at High if there's a Governor in the Settlement, as I recall reading that it produced the best Management traits. It doesn't particularly matter.

[Kharnan]

Hmm I never had any probs with economy in Rome, is it even possible to go bankrupt? (unless you really try to).

Generally build ports, markets, roads, do not slaughter captured city (enslave them- it speeds up growth of your other towns), try to have trading rights with entire world, always remember to expand cities economically before you build barracks, etc. It will slow your tech, but you don't need 10 stacks full of Urban Cohort on turn 2.

[tuna]

I too have never had any problem with economy, at least until I'm approaching the end of the game. For most the game I'm actually overflowing with money and have to send diplomats ahead to bribe enemy generals just to stay under 50,000 dinarii, above which you'll start getting a lot of corruption negatives.

The first major thing you can do is play as the Brutii. You are the closest to Greece and the many rich and tightly packed cities there. Most of your senate missions will involve taking Greek cities. You can keep expanding east without hitting a single major obstacle until Egypt. You also will very likely control 4 of the wonders on the map by the time you've taken your 12th to 15th city. Including one that gives a happiness bonus to all your cities (in theory allowing you to keep tax rates higher) and one that gives you a 40% bonus on top of all naval trade.

The other major thing you have to do is classify each city as either economic or land military. Your economic cities will easily be able to build your navies since they have ports anyway. And many more should be economic than military. For example, when I play as the Brutii, I will only have one military city (one of the two I start with in Italy) until I take either Sparta or Athens in southern greece, both of which have a lot of military buildings already. And that might be my ~6th city. The choice of which cities to make military are pretty obvious in the game: the bigger cities you capture are at more advanced levels and already have many military buildings, so I just use those ones. The smaller cities all go economic.

For your few military cities, you're going to want at least paved roads, at least a basic port, and land clearance. Also a wall appropriate for the city's location. This is a general upgrade path beyond that:
-barracks
-blacksmith
-temple/sewers (to keep population growth at a decent rate. You are taking population from your army every turn but you still want these places to grow and advance the fastest so you can tech up your army. NO FARMS PAST LAND CLEARANCE)
-other military production places you want (you dont need infantry and cavalry and ranged at every city, in fact I like to specialize with most of my military cities doing just infanty and then maybe 1 or 2 doing just cavalry and ranged.)
-any public order buildings so you can keep your tax rate at Very High
-any other economic buildings that you have time before you have reached upgrade population

For your many economic cities, you're also going to want appropriate sized walls and land clearance. Besides that:
-mines (they pay for themselves in 10 turns no matter what you do)
-roads(increase land trade and move your armies much much faster. Important for both moving your armies to the front and defending your cities)
-ports (sea trade is much bigger than land trade, especially after you've taken Rhodes and get a fat 40% bonus. Plus you can build ships)
-markets (increase trade and tax income)
-public order buildings so you can keep the tax rate at Very High

In general:
-always use peasants to garrison cities. The public order bonus from garrisons is based on the number of individual soldiers, not how good they are, so a 120 man peasant unit lets you build a garrison in 2/3 the time that it would take for another unit, with an even lower fraction of the upkeep costs. Enemies will very rarely force battle when sieging you, so you have a few turns to get a real army there.
-Always keep tax rates as high as possible in every city, with the key factor being that you must keep public order at at least 75%. Lower and bad stuff starts to happen, but higher doesnt give you any real bonus. So always keep taxes as high as possible without going below 75, which means that almost all your cities will be able to have Very High taxes for the first half of the game.
-Do not build farms above land clearance. Your cities start to implode upon themselves after their pop gets above 24,000, and while you can destroy other bonuses to population growth like temples and sewers, you can't destroy farms.
-Set the AI to the lowest level of spending possible, and then set each AI controlled city to Financial Spending Policy. This will make you the most money, and the AI spends your money like crap anyway.
-Some of the senate missions will give you cash bonuses, which are especially nice towards the beginning of a game
-when you're destroying an AI faction, you can almost always have a skilled diplomat negotiate a nice payment to you in return for a ceasefire. So Take a few cities, negotiate for them to pay me 3000 a turn for 4 turns, retrain my injured units, and then get back to war with them just in time. And then repeat. The AI isnt smart about this kind of thing. I've gotten 4 or 5 payment treaties from the Greeks alone in a single game. In the off turns I just fought Macedon.

[Haxiel]

This is why Greece should be your #1 priority, at least in economic terms. Difficulty is set on H/H




I don't garrison cities with peasants, in fact I almost never recruit peasants, only if I'm transferring population from one settlement to another or if public order in a city is low. I recruit and do not disband any unit save it's at militia level and then only if it is being replaced with a higher rank unit. I am not as efficient as I could be, but it seems that controlling a few key ports will make you rich no matter what.