Economy, food and squalor questions

[Aenima]

RE economy: how is this best managed? I understand that PO is always the main focus, as is food, since negative stats there can ruin income. But once PO and food are stable, what are the best ways of increasing revenue? There are so many base buildings (ie a port, metal works, forum, etc) which then further branch off into different variants, and then there's the distinction of wealth vs tax generated. Am I right in saying that it depends on how much tax your main settlement buildings generates and that you base what kind of buildings to make from there? Truly feel lost when it comes to that.

When it comes to winter I find (early game, mind you) that my income drops by about 3K. My understanding is that it related to food, for which it seems that a granary or two along with maybe a farm/fishery is enough to keep a province in the green, and if the province is in a surplus I can sell it for more money. But come winter there's aways that drop in income; does food-building selection influence how much money is lost in winter or is it just a set amount?

Lastly, squalor; not sure if it's a bug, the buildings aren't telling me all there is or something but I recently noticed that some provicnes appear to be bugged in that, whilst most follow the pattern of displaying squalor/sanititaion in terms of the buildings that are in a settlement or province, some had much higher squalor levels despite the PO being good, food being in surplus and no plague active. The same stats for squalor/PO applied to all buildings in the affected provinces and, whilst the sanitation appeared to reflect the buildings I'd made, the squalor was far higher than the building descriptions showed I should have. Is this likely to be some kind of a bug or is there another mechanic I don't understand at play here? thanks.

[Killobyte]

I've only played the mod for 7-10 hours so far. After my initial Macedonian fail, was mostly learning the ropes, and I failed miserably. My second one was with the arab faction and my economy, squalor and public order went to tits up, absolute chaos. My third play was far more coherent.

Basically it very much depends on the faction, fertility and province, since some factions have different buildings and traits compared with others.

1. Food. If you have a very bad fertility, you obviously have to use more slots for food production and create synergies between building to maximise the production. This has to be calculated for all seasons, so even if your territory gets -10 , -30 food in the winter, you can compensate with an edict and buy some food, so you wont have to sacrifice a building slot just for that, and focus on economy, or squalor. This way you have plenty of food in most seasons and compensate with the winter, but mind you that if you have surplus of food you can be prepared for events and harsh seasons.

2. Secondly, sanitation. Very important. Some factions, and provinces, have different buildings of sanitation, some weaker, like in desert lands, some better. In the Armenian campaign, a fully upgraded well can supply enough sanitation if managed correctly. Good calculated sanitation is purely mathematical, since I have never had events or other reasons why my squalor would go down. So calculating your squalor to the amount of squalor consuming buildings is enough. Maybe I'm wrong, but I had no issues with that so far.

3. Lastly, the remaining slots should be used for economy / military or public order, since the two above are more important. Economy is useless without the two, you can get negative traits that can disturb your economy drastically. Public order bonuses are useless if you have no food or squalor. economy will collapse as well, and military would perish and lose integrity without food, or gold, but you can't have gold without food.

Game seems to be very well balanced between the building but you have to find and create these synergies depending on the territory and factions. There are some building from my play-through with Armenia that I don't see the point in building, maybe i should verify even more, but so far I found a very good balance. this is probably because I own 3 fully provinces and they have similarities in term of fertility and bonuses.

Keep learning, take it slow, do not conquer settlements by settlements because you will never sustain them. It take a tremendous amount of time and resources to rebuild. It gets easier if you have a LOT of gold but that is late game, even then you have to keep a small army near to protect from rebellions.

Good luck