Financial Management

[Tidybeard]

Out of interest, what sort of spending policies do you folks have in RTW? Right now, I'm playing as Carthage, have about 21 settlements under my control and something like 60K in the bank, profiting at about 1-2K per turn. I'm not a big spender as I worry about running out, while I know if I plow cash into troops and utilise them quickly enough, I'll get it all back anyway, either through loss of troops (reduced upkeep) or taken settlements.

In short, do people prefer making as much as possible or just enough to keep them in credit and generally get it spent?

[StealthEvo]

I hate having spare cash laying around. So i'll invest it quick smart into building and Units. Useful for rainy days if I go into the red. I can just cancel a building or three.

[Plant]

There is no point leaving money left around. There is no bank to earn interest. Money left unused is a waste of potential use. The longer you leave your money alone, the more potential you have wasted. Less armies raised, less buidings built, and less cities conquered as a source of income. Bets way of thinking about it is that if you are not spending money, you are not investing your money. Spending money at the start of the game is worth exponentially more turns passes. There is no point is saving money for future use; in fact you are behind by not using your money. It's practically impossible to be losing money, if you do, you just conquer another city with the huge armies which are taking up your upkeep.

[ScottishAdam]

There is no point leaving money left around. There is no bank to earn interest. Money left unused is a waste of potential use. The longer you leave your money alone, the more potential you have wasted. Less armies raised, less buidings built, and less cities conquered as a source of income. Bets way of thinking about it is that if you are not spending money, you are not investing your money. Spending money at the start of the game is worth exponentially more turns passes. There is no point is saving money for future use; in fact you are behind by not using your money. It's practically impossible to be losing money, if you do, you just conquer another city with the huge armies which are taking up your upkeep.

Not really. The amount of money you have adds to your civilisations overall rating and power. It is also very useful to have money to bribe others

[Plant]

Not really. The amount of money you have adds to your civilisations overall rating and power. It is also very useful to have money to bribe others

The ratings are meaningless. Why would you care about artificially inflating your power rating for? Why bribe when you can use the same amount of money to conquer several cities and do so faster? Bribing a city of an army is so much more expensive than to build an army.

Tidybeard, I don't understand how you are losing money. The only major way to lose money is through upkeeping an army. If you have such a large army, that you are losing money, then why don't you use the army to play the game?

[ScottishAdam]

The ratings are meaningless. Why would you care about artificially inflating your power rating for? Why bribe when you can use the same amount of money to conquer several cities and do so faster? Bribing a city of an army is so much more expensive than to build an army.

Tidybeard, I don't understand how you are losing money. The only major way to lose money is through upkeeping an army. If you have such a large army, that you are losing money, then why don't you use the army to play the game?

Why would I care about the ratings? this goes towards how other civilisations see you. If you are very powerful no one will really attack you. If you are very weak you will see yourself being bullied by everyone around you. Its essential to have as good a rating as possible

[Plant]

Why would I care about the ratings? this goes towards how other civilisations see you. If you are very powerful no one will really attack you. If you are very weak you will see yourself being bullied by everyone around you. Its essential to have as good a rating as possible

Why would you care how the other factions ee you? They all declare war on you anyways, if you haven't already declared war on them.

Think of the scenario. You have a big army in egypt that you are using to take over cities there. You have had to almost empty some of your own garrisons in your cities to get the army over there. You have 400 town milita in one of your cities and an army of 2000 rebels are ready to attack it. You have no time to get any reinforcements up and you have 80,000 gold. All you need to do is bribe them. Rather than them taking over the city and raising it to the ground.

If you spent that gold in the first place, you wouldn't need to waste money to bribe them away. Rebels don't attack cities anyways, or at least not in my games. And with the money well spent on armies, you've probably well on your way to conquering another faction.

Btw do you mean razing, not raising? They have 2 totally opposite meanings.

[Tidybeard]

Those are very good points. What about loss-making per turn though? Do you like to limit how much you are losing each turn (e.g. keep it at no more than 5,000-or-so loss), or do you not really think about that?

[Entropy Judge]

How much you lose per turn only matters if you're in the red, and even then only if it prevents you from getting back in the black. The only times I worry about how much I'm spending is if I'm trying to save up enough for expensive buildings (15K Barracks, 32K Port, and such - those are not Vanilla examples, though).

[Plant]

Why would I be losing money? Money is only lost through upkeep. Ideally you want to have as large an army as possible with a little left over perhaps for upgrading cities, but when I play, it usually ends up that I am having such a large income that I can build units in every city with enough for important buildings every turn.

[Genius of the Restoration]

I echo that. After the first 10 turns or so I can afford every unit and building that I want. That said, I only buy effective buildings and don't go around trying to upgrade all my markets etc. because there are better ways to spend your money.

[shikaka]

I echo that. After the first 10 turns or so I can afford every unit and building that I want. That said, I only buy effective buildings and don't go around trying to upgrade all my markets etc. because there are better ways to spend your money.

Hehe, I just wanted to add that.

It is worth upgrading markets until you get the spies, and a few markets here or there to get assasins. But the bigger upgrades cost so much that you will most likely never get it back.

Also, you can save some if you want with skipping barracks/stables/bowyers in 'economy' settlements. Like if you have Antioch, where you upgrade all the recruitment buildings, it doesn't make much sense to do the same in Damascus and Cyprus too.
edit: also, the top level units are sometimes not necessery. Like I have never used cata camels with Parthia. Never use poeni with Carthage (only sacred band from temple), never use noble cavalry with germania (only gothic cav from temple), etc.

[Tidybeard]

I echo that. After the first 10 turns or so I can afford every unit and building that I want. That said, I only buy effective buildings and don't go around trying to upgrade all my markets etc. because there are better ways to spend your money.

10 turns? I can't afford to fix the temple roof after 100. I don't know how you folks do it.

[Entropy Judge]

Ports, Roads, and Swords. Lots and lots of swords.

[Tidybeard]

Aside from economic buildings, hyper-aggressive expansion then?

[Genius of the Restoration]

Expanding like crazy. Start conquering from turn one and keep going to fuel your economy.

While I've got no hard and fast rule about what I build, because that depends on each situation, a helpful building order for money issues might be: Ports, roads, trader (market and higher only if you want the units they let you recruit, they get more expensive and the trade benefits drop out quickly in value), shrines.

[Vice]

What I dont get is how the computer manages like 5-10 (full) stacks of men while only have like 5-10 cities...and when putting a spy in there reveals how they are in the negative and I mean BIG negative like over -2500...they still keep on going and pumping out men ships and all kinds of other crap even though there cities are losing money like mad...

And I am talking VH/VH here...

[tudor93]

What I dont get is how the computer manages like 5-10 (full) stacks of men while only have like 5-10 cities...and when putting a spy in there reveals how they are in the negative and I mean BIG negative like over -2500...they still keep on going and pumping out men ships and all kinds of other crap even though there cities are losing money like mad...

And I am talking VH/VH here...

yeah .... or how they build more ships even if I block their ports

[Fireright]

Early Game...clobber nearby rebel type stuff or easy pickings...do the economic stuff, ports, roads etc, over the military stuff to give yerself an income base. When the 'financial housework' is done, get the show on the road and get clobbering the map

Top tip if playing BI....don't bother building port stuff at Petra...there aint no point What a gaff eh?!

[shikaka]

Top tip if playing BI....don't bother building port stuff at Petra...there aint no point What a gaff eh?!

This is the same in vanilla RTW too. The 'middle Nile delta city' will not make (at least visible) trade with the port.