Roman Tips?

[synagas]

Does anyone have any tips on getting started as Romans? I win the first battle with ease (can't kill immortal Hannibal), and I can move to take Carthage over, but won't last long with PO issues. For economy I get trade with everyone I can, and on first turn I build the resource building in every single settlement that has one. Yet within a few turns, I still barely have money in summer and lose it in winter. Not sure what to build even as disease breaks out because of the huge sanitation penalty and time it takes to build anything but a bunch of wells to counter it.

So, those doing well with Rome, what's your strategy to get the economy running?

Side note, can I do something about traits? I get so many a turn I need to constantly check and fire governors who pick up random negative ones that make them day to bad to use. What decides traits and gain? Had a really great guy become horrible in one turn getting religiously intolerant and harsh governor in a decently high PO province.

[nAssailant]

Two things that cause the largest malus for Public order: Food and "Native Discontent".

You can deal with the first, in most cases, by building a Granary and/or farms in at least one settlement in each province that needs more food. Italia, specifically, needs this dealt with. I will usually have my governor issue the "import food" edict, as well as start building a granary here. Once the food problem is out of the way, Italia will be your most loyal province with a very high public order.

Native discontent can be dealt with by upgrading your city/town centers. The tier I building will give you something like +50% Native Discontent, which will be giving you huge public order penalties in non-latin provinces. You can upgrade to a free/allied settlement which reduces the Native Discontent penalty significantly, at the cost of tax income; or, you can make the settlement a tributary/colony which will keep Native Discontent relatively high while also giving you more income.

You can upgrade to the allied/free settlements in places like Iberia, where there is little chance of immediate conflict. Since most of the money coming from Iberia is the gold/silver/marble/etc, you don't really need tax from here.

Sardinia/Corsica start off as Tributary settlements, but they're quickly converting to Latin and you really only need to get them some more food. I think you can increase the food from fishing here or just build a farm/granary. Whatever seems better, as dealing with food an sanitation here will quickly resolve any public order issues while also increasing your revenues.

Your single settlement in Greece is gonna have issues, however. You have two options: Garrison a legion here to maintain order, and make this settlement a tributary, or make them a free or allied settlement and focus your forces elsewhere.

In Africa, you can do what you want. You can keep your legion(s) there and make the settlements tributaries, colonies, or allied settlements. Carthage, however, should always be destroyed.

I'm not sure if the traits are random or if buildings/public order/etc. have some effect. At any rate, it's just something you're gonna have to deal with every turn. No one said managing an empire would be easy.

[synagas]

Two things that cause the largest malus for Public order: Food and "Native Discontent".

You can upgrade to the allied/free settlements in places like Iberia, where there is little chance of immediate conflict. Since most of the money coming from Iberia is the gold/silver/marble/etc, you don't really need tax from here.

What about the lack of defenders? When I look at the buildings for the allied settlements, they have no defensive units, which means I need to station legions there to prevent a snipe from an enemy army.

[ethi]

Regarding the main building with -50%/-80% taxes: You still have to pay upkeep for every building in the city so you're now loosing 1000+ money per turn and per city and the city isn't even defended by a garrison. The AI knows how to loot such a city with a 2 unit stack. It's probably best to just give up such worthless cities or gift them to the allied Iberian tribes.
Granaries definitely provide food in summer, too.
After research I could upgrade my units to a identical unit but with defense or attack stats increased by one.

[Swarbs]

and on first turn I build the resource building in every single settlement that has one

That's probably your main issue. Level 1 resource buildings have maintenance costs of 600 per turn, and often don't produce enough resources to justify that at the lowest level. Unless the resource is worth at least 12 then it will drain the economy, not boost it.

A level 1 timber building producing 50 timber with a resource value of 3 will only give 150 income for its 600 cost, so -450 net. Same with most of Rome's early resource buildings - if you've built all resource buildings they are probably draining your economy quite badly.

Expanding the silver and gold mines in Iberia to level 2 is a much better way to boost your early economy. Build them up to level 3 and you will get 375 gold / silver for a cost of just 1,800 making a net profit of around 7,500 from the gold and 3,000 from silver, although I guess this will degrade over time as the market price adjusts.

The other things I found most important were:

1. Address all food shortages asap with granaries. The -25% income penalty in Italia, Cathagenesis, Macedonia and Tarraconensis will cost you around 3,500 per turn
2. Build and expand resource buildings once you have the treasury / profits to expand them all the way to L3. Rather than try and build everything, use the trade scroll to find the most valuable resource then get that all the way to level 3. Wine is the best candidate after the gold and silver are maxed out.
3. Build industrial workshops. They provide more money than maintenance at every level, and their income is from trade so is boosted by roads and industrial buildings making them very valuable in Italia, Magna Graecia, Baetica and Carthagenesis

[Seggi911]

I think building up the resources even if they don't seem worth it isn't quite so bad because from my experiences the AI is more willing to trade if i had lots of goods to trade with. So i got alot more trade agreements by building the wine, olive oil, timber, iron even if they don't seem worth it on paper. When i added all the resources 5 factions that weren't willing to trade with me on the first few turns started to trade with me.

Also in case u don't know here is how food works: Even if your food icon at the top screen next to income and treasury is white meaning u have enough food "worldwide" u will probably have food shortage in some provinces which give heavy PO and income penalties.

In order to fix food shortages in some provinces that are not very fertile or where u have heavy food shortage due to buildings, for example italia, you can simply fix them by building granaries. Granaries will take the food surplus you have in other provinces and store in the provinces u have granaries in. So for example on turn 1 Italia has -81 food and Magna Graecia has +125. Now u build a granary in Italia and maybe develop the farm in Arretium and the granary in Italia will store the food surplus u have in Magna Graecia and give you +60 food in Italia.

In other words try to get high food supply in fertile regions and "move" the food to the not so furtile regions or heavily urban developed regions where u have lots of -food buildings like Roma in Italia by using granaries.

[sunajt]

Guys how about wars in Spain? My allies got declared war on and destroyed right after leaving me in a war with factions I don't really want to deal with just yet...Should I back them up or no...? How will be my diplomatic status when I ditch them? Thank you. Also very nice tips thank you all

[Swarbs]

I think building up the resources even if they don't seem worth it isn't quite so bad because from my experiences the AI is more willing to trade if i had lots of goods to trade with. So i got alot more trade agreements by building the wine, olive oil, timber, iron even if they don't seem worth it on paper. When i added all the resources 5 factions that weren't willing to trade with me on the first few turns started to trade with me.

This is true, although in my experience the willingness to trade is driven almost entirely by the 'strategic' resources, i.e. the iron and timber which unlock new buildings. Even then, the value of the extra trade routes may not fully offset the 600 maintenance cost.

In my campaign, the value of those buildings still wasn't there in the short term, although it will get better in the future once the long term trading partner bonuses come into play. Either way, building low value resource buildings is not going to turn around a failing economy in the short term, even if there are trade deals which can be made.

That's a big plus point for me at the moment - the game is much more subtle than Attila when it comes to trade, buildings and the economy - you can't expect to just build every trade resource building and see a massive spike in income as a result, you actually need to manage the economy and choose carefully when building.

Granaries will take the food surplus you have in other provinces and store in the provinces u have granaries in.

Are you sure about that? As Macedon I was able to generate food from granaries to prevent Macedonia falling into a food shortage. That food wasn't been transferred from any other province, as I only controlled one province at the start.

Maybe that's what's implied from the design of the buildings, but I think that type of implementation is beyond the capabilities of the Attila engine. So you can build granaries to resolve shortages in one province without needing to have a corresponding food surplus in another.

[Seggi911]

Are you sure about that? As Macedon I was able to generate food from granaries to prevent Macedonia falling into a food shortage. That food wasn't been transferred from any other province, as I only controlled one province at the start.

Maybe that's what's implied from the design of the buildings, but I think that type of implementation is beyond the capabilities of the Attila engine. So you can build granaries to resolve shortages in one province without needing to have a corresponding food surplus in another.

Well i thought thats how it works cause in the manuel it says: "During winter cattle and grain get major debuffs. As a result it is necessary to store grain to eat during winter. This is done through grain storage. It is improtant to note that grain storage depens on a food surplus during autumn/summer, so make sure your save up."

At first i thought u need a food surplus in the province u build the granary in but quickly realised thats not the case. So i thought it works if you have a factionwide food surplus but i guess from your experience it seems they just give 60 food no matter what.

Ok i did some testing with macedon and iam convinced that granaries just give the food no strings attached.

Granaries do two things, give base food from reserves and also increase the amount of food available to have for food imports from the import food edict.

So by giving food from reservers u mean they just give straight up 60 food on lvl 1 and you don't have to have some kind of food surplus in summer or in a different province?

What about the lack of defenders? When I look at the buildings for the allied settlements, they have no defensive units, which means I need to station legions there to prevent a snipe from an enemy army.

Yes you will need to muster an army in roma and send it there. Or you change the town centers so they give garrison armys which i would advice against cause it will make it more than difficult to handle the public order penalty due to native discontent.

[Petellius]

Granaries do two things, give base food from reserves and also increase the amount of food available to have for food imports from the import food edict.

[Petellius]

Food reserves are only applied during winter.

[Seggi911]

Iam not 100% sure but i think that they don't work as intended then. I started a campaign as macedon build a granary, just rolled through some turns and checked the province detail tab every turn. The food from buildings stayed the same after every turn. If iam not mistaken it should have changed during winter and summer.

[synagas]

I think most of it is tied to fertility level with a global debuf in winter. So things won't decrease much if you use food reserves and fishing for food.

For armies, I don't see how I can afford one for a while to sit in defense, unless there is a super cheap unit worth using? Also, what does the first military tech actually do? Says it upgrades units to the same units. This a bug? I always work towards the +3 po first, so haven't gotten it between campaign restarts.

[Petellius]

We're fixing the independent states.

[synagas]

Gotcha. Also, is there a reason to get most of the trade goods? Anything at 6 or under seems to never equate to a high enough value to even cover the cost of the building. I am building timber (value 2), simply because I need it for my docks, as even at max level, it costs me 1100 a turn. The 9% increase in trade won't compensate for that. Other resources aren't as bad, but when the cost is 1800 for Tier 3, goods need to be worth 4.8 just to break even. So 5+ is something at Tier 3, but barely worth it and not until that point.

Also, what exactly is a trade route? I get trading with the AI, but my ports have 1,2 or even 3 possible trade routes, but not sure what exactly that means. Doesn't seem to limit number of people I trade with, so... what does it do? And how is trade calculated for a province? Is that just another name for commerce?

[denzo]

Turn 1: get all the resources building constructing. You only need 1 of each, so you can skip the duplicate olive and wine. Do trade deals with anyone who is willing to give you the max amount of demand payment. Don’t do trade deals with anyone who won’t give you max payment. Set taxes to highest or second highest. Increased taxes on italia magna Gracia, bread and games every where else.
Turn 2: public lands in every province that is having food shortages. Then public wells to provinces with squalor issues.
Turn 3: make a trade deal with everyone who is willing to give you max payment. This will be pretty much everyone. You will get an insane amount of money and you will be able to pay for another round of upgrades on your resource buildings as well as a lot towards fixing food, sanitation, and public order across the empire.
Turns 4-10: buy peace with the Gauls in northern Italy. Make peace with Carthage and get a ton of money. Focus on maximizing the economy of magna gracia first, then italia. Continue to upgrade resource buildings as their income scales really well. Get the Latin culture rolling as much as you can in Spain, they will be your second economic powerhouse once they are latinized.
By mid teens turn, you should have an economy that should snowball you through the rest of the game.

[sunajt]

Turn 1: get all the resources building constructing. You only need 1 of each, so you can skip the duplicate olive and wine. Do trade deals with anyone who is willing to give you the max amount of demand payment. Don’t do trade deals with anyone who won’t give you max payment. Set taxes to highest or second highest. Increased taxes on italia magna Gracia, bread and games every where else.
Turn 2: public lands in every province that is having food shortages. Then public wells to provinces with squalor issues.
Turn 3: make a trade deal with everyone who is willing to give you max payment. This will be pretty much everyone. You will get an insane amount of money and you will be able to pay for another round of upgrades on your resource buildings as well as a lot towards fixing food, sanitation, and public order across the empire.
Turns 4-10: buy peace with the Gauls in northern Italy. Make peace with Carthage and get a ton of money. Focus on maximizing the economy of magna gracia first, then italia. Continue to upgrade resource buildings as their income scales really well. Get the Latin culture rolling as much as you can in Spain, they will be your second economic powerhouse once they are latinized.
By mid teens turn, you should have an economy that should snowball you through the rest of the game.

I went with export food edict in Magna Gracia...Is increased taxes better one? Thank you

[synagas]

I think some of it depends on PO. Increase taxes is a big hit, while export food is none. Also, the more food you can export, the more money to get, so might be worth it when you can export hundreds of food.