Income vs development vs PO vs food

[Paladin247]

I'm probably well past the mid pt in my first Dei campaign. Previously, I played a vanilla campaign and Dei is enormously better. Before that I played a lot of RSII. In fact there's a rhubarb thread over at RSII now about which is better RII or RS2 and I've recommended on that several times that they try this mod. I'm certainly sold esp. w/ the addition of Caesar's Legions which brings in the best of RSII, the named and numbered legions.

However, I find the Dei economy much more difficult than either vanilla or RSII. My current campaign as Rome is in year 167BC. I'm playing on normal difficulty with the Reduced Army Upkeep and No Garrison Penalty mods active. We're the most powerful faction, controlling 74 regions and 13 complete provinces around the Mediterranean ring. The army consists of eight legions and no fleets. The treasury runs anywhere from 150K-400K depending on what anti-adoption or other penalties we're being assessed. Our last fine to save a bunch of senators was 70K which reduced the treasury to 150K. We are at imperium 8 and influence 35% which has stayed pretty static. Income runs between 7K and 12K net per turn. Gross income is 31K with army maintenance at 20K. The income is mostly from trade 23K, slaves 4K and other 6K. Taxes are netting nothing because empire maintenance is 129%. Food surplus averages in the mid 200s which I've been careful of because I read in some guide that the worst thing you can do is run low on chow because if you do it's catastrophic and there's no way to quickly recover. I've built almost no province capitals past the second level because when I look at the food and PO penalties of doing that and then building the corresponding sub-buildings to the same level, it looks very counter productive. Right now I have all settlements at 100% PO and taxes are at the mid-pt in the slider (normal). The tech trees for economy and philosophy are completely developed and the building tree is developed thru the second tier.

I've tried to develop industries to fit the resources in the various provinces and only have a few military depots. The four legions in Gaul/Germania have just finished destroying the Boii and Atrebates and are enroute to manning the limes settlements facing the Pergamum who have shown no hostile intent. The four in the east have just finished defeating Parthia and their limes face the Roxolani who constantly demonstrate along the border.

So is this kind of normal financially or am I doing something incorrectly?

I posted a similar query over in the guides section, but it hasn't drawn any comment and has hardly any views.

[Chris_92]

I'm having similar issues, though my campaign as Rome (normal difficulty) is very young (45 Turns). I do have more than 11% Empire Maintenance though (which climbed up about 5% percent the last 15 rounds). This is not much in comparison to your 129% (!!!) but it's slowly starting to cripple my taxes, which are my main income right now. I had to change taxes to high in order to keep some income. I do run a couple of submods (Reduced Upkeepcost and Vanilla Taxation for Economics, besides others), so this may be a reason? The empire is pretty small btw, I'm still on the Italian Peninsula, though pushing up to Illyrium and Gallia.

Also, I noticed that my cities are pretty poor in comparison to my enemies. For example: Rome provides 750 Denarii each round, my richest town about 850 D. The enemies capitals gain more than 1300 each round. The Faction and Location doesn't matter, Barbaric Tribes have the same city income as Carthage and Alexandria (which are both still held by their original owners). Am I doing something wrong? I read the tutorials and tips about how to choose your buildings and specialise your Regions and I tried very hard to do so (Rome and the other provinces cities are focusing on agriculture for example, other regions on industry and so on). I guess my mods might be a reason for this, although my submods affect the AI on the same level as me. Or is the difference in income intended to give the AI some help?...

Sry to not answer your questions Paladin. But I have same problems (kind of), so maybe someone can help us both....

[Friar Chris]

Empire Management costs are horrendous. It doesn't help that the character traits/skills that reduce it only reduce it by 1/10th of what they claim to on the card, and there's no way of developing any infrastructure or stability that reduces empire management in any way; nor does e.g. the gradual conversion and stabilisation of a recently conquered region reduce the empire management penalty that new territory adds.

I've personally found food to be a major headache; public order is difficult too but since this is so keenly linked to food to determine what you can build, it's secondary. My empire struggles for food despite conscious investment in farming, city-centre food production buildings and fishing ports. Of course, you get a paradoxical issue with actually upgrading your farms and fishing ports to any decent level as the actual increase in food from higher tier buildings is not very good, while they slap huge public order penalties in exchange for them. Importing food is not only not a viable option in any serious long-run given the importance of edicts, but the amount of food it adds is so pitiful that you may as well not bother; you stand to lose more by not being able to use a better edict. Importing food is also not a very fair thing to slap on as a required gameplay concept when you've actually been half-responsible with your farming.

[pawelrut]

Trade is very importing in DeI, so try to get as many as you can.
Use the diplomats as governments ( you have too activate them, put them in the provinces that makes most many and press the button), and develop them to reduce the empire maintenance, this is will help a lot.
Develop the generals to reduce the empire maintenance.
If you have a good leader put him in the capital whiteout any troops, he will give you a global bonus that will bust the income.

I'm at level 7 and my empire maintenance is at 64%, I have 12 legions and 4 fleets, I make 15k every turn, and this is on very hard and no Reduced Army Upkeep mod.

The building system is very complex so you need to read and compare what every building gives and takes.
It takes time to develop your provinces, I destroy and build new buildings whit time.
The 200 food is a bit much, I try to stay at 100, the thing to watch for is not to take too many settlements at once, the AI get big food cheats so you don't get to many food producing buildings.
So reducing food production to 100, and investing it in cash building will also help.

[Friar Chris]

Use the diplomats as governments ( you have too activate them, put them in the provinces that makes most many and press the button), and develop them to reduce the empire maintenance, this is will help a lot.
Develop the generals to reduce the empire maintenance.
lp.

As I just said - all those governor and general character skills traits that offer 1%, 2%, 3% reduction in empire maintenance? They only actually reduce the maintenance by 1/10th of that - the traits that 'reduce empire maintenance by 1%' only reduce it by 0.1%. They're almost worthless.

[Chris_92]

on that topic:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?667992-Struggling-with-Empire-Maintenance/page2

Guess I have to figure the mod out a bit more. It's more complex than I thought (which is a good thing)

[KAM 2150]

For me they work, when my top governor and general died in 3 turns I had big maintenance impact.

[Augustusng]

There was a post that explained how this works a few days ago, but I can't find it now. Basically, those empire maintenance reduction traits only give a very small amount in the early game, but are more important later on, as they reduce your existing empire maintenance costs by a certain percentage, rather than subtracting from your empire maintenance. Something like that.

[Paladin247]

Powerut, thanks for your insights. I implemented all. I first destroyed all the cattle farms which I'd read previously are worthless. Then I changed a lot of fishing ports to trading ports. Then I changed some farms to trading posts. Then I upgraded all settlements to level III and the associated subdivisions upgraded accordingly. I also posted my faction leader in Rome to degrade empire maintenance. The results have been spectacular. Within ~thirty turns income is now stable at 20+K. Food has decreased to just under 200 and is easily managed. I put the faction leader in Rome and empire maintenance as a result had decreased about 1% per GT; now reduced from 129% to 105%. Well done. Plus rep

[valky]

I assume that was my posting

As said, the tiny numbers are gettin' often underestimated..in my Seleucid campaign my maintenance was down to -37.4% at Imp level ~6.7 and income of 63k. Also I use every general I don't need (I field only 4 active armies after lvl 5) for governor duties. With high PO, you'll most likely trigger the honest trait-line, if they haven't reached the 3-trait limit -> -2/4/6% maintenance + -3% each from 'political reformer'. Works fine with cheap navy too, since there is only 1 offense line to unlock.
Further 6 Dignitaries with another -4-6% each (expert supervisor + political reformer)

Add in research and possible general ranks and you'll have at least another -10%

Since I took the liberty to check each of my generals/dignitaries; my reduction would be (base)*76% (might have missed a number or 2). Though I can't say what my real-value is and if there are also straight penalties, which can't be reduced. ANd probably there is diminishing return too, else it'd end up in a reduction of *100% ++

Oh, I play with 12 turns guess with 4 turns it's prolly unlikely to reach those numbers or even come close to *80-90%

[rjacko10]

Oh, I play with 12 turns

Valky - you seem like some one who knows what's going on.

Do you think the 12tpy edition is properly balanced? I found that my industrial building chain income had not be reduced (unlike all other building chain incomes). Therefore industry generates far too much money compared to 4tpy version.

There maybe other examples but I stopped using 12tpy after this point.. and made this thread:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...n-on-4TPY-game

[valky]

It's really hard so say, concerning the buildings. Am usually a food-gatherer, since some upgrades will hit you friggin' hard (research?) and depending on the culture I go with 3-4 yellow building in the main city, food/temple in minor and only when there are leftover, I'll place an industry building.

But despite that, it doesn't matter building-wise if you play either 4 or 12 tpy, the biggest issue would be your dignitaries and generals. (<- also deployed as governor)
Since you can cater them and have them a very (very very very) long time, they nearly negate the full impact of your maintenance level and give you crazy bonus'.

For a 12 tpy balance I'd reduce the impact of empire maintenance skills, reduce the tax-impact and maybe even lower the PO boost - which can be cranked up to slightly insane levels. I.e. after like 150-170 turn - in my campaigns, I start to build up 2-3 super-food/money producing provinces, where 1 dignitary & 1 generals stands guard, who easily negate the penalty ^^ and you'll most likely have 2+ combat generals then with the +3 PO boost as well.
Funny thing, they are usually like 35-40 years old then....

But it is nice to see enemy generals being lvl 8+ as well..

[it would also be much easier to re-balance the skills instead of buildings]

The fast-dying stuff was one of the reasons, I disliked RomeII at first and rather played Shogun II (DMS but vanilla turn-restriction) instead or switched to some RPGs I still had to finish.