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Thread: [Question] DeI Economics

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    Summary's Avatar Biarchus
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    Default [Question] DeI Economics

    So I have figured out what mainly drives the Rome 2 DeI economy would be the screens below. In particular the empire maintenance and the tax modifier of the province itself battle it out and the resultant percentage is what directly impacts the income from each province.
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 



    So a province has a certain number of regions generating wealth from different types of income generators; subsistence, commerce, maritime commerce and industry. The total of this income is then multiplied by the difference between the Taxes modifier and the Empire Maintenance modifier. The formula is as follows;

    Province Income = (Sum of Region Income) X (Taxes - Empire Maintenance)

    So in the above case = (2,647+2,750+3,320+3,458) x ((100%+34%)-96.5%) = (12,175) x (37.5%) = 4,562

    The part of the formula in red has the highest impact on the Province Income generated, and so improving that value can change the outcome drastically.

    In the example below in the same campaign I own only two provinces in Africa.
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 



    Province Income = (2,393+2,862) x ((100%+86%)-96.5%) = (5,255) x (89.5%) = 4,702

    So, despite owning fewer regions in Africa, I make more Province Income than I am making in Latium. In another example below of Asia Minor province.
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 




    Province Income = (2,637+3,419+3,675+1,150) x ((100%+75%)-96.5%) = (10,881) x (78.5%) = 8,538

    As can be seen, the Regional Income of both Africa (5,255) and Asia (10,881) is lower than Latium (12,175), but due to the difference in the modifiers (89.5%), (79.5%) and (37.5%) respectively, I am making much more in the former two than in Latium.

    While empire maintenance is a flat percentage based on various factors, it is constant and applicable throughout the empire, and can't be changed individually from province to province. What can be changed is the Taxes modifier and for that purpose it is the most important economic modifier in the game. Now that I established that the question of this thread is the following:

    "What affects the Taxes modifier?"

    If I know the exact answer to that question I will have a better shot and maximizing my province output. Thanks to anyone who can help me solve this. I know increase the tax rate increases that Taxes modifier by an increment of +20%. Which means if I am to assume Lowest Tax increases it by 0%, Low Tax would be +20%, Medium Tax would be +40%, High Tax would be +60% and Highest Tax would be +80%. While that would be the easiest way to improve the Taxes to Empire Maintenance ratio it does come with its drawbacks to public order, population migration and settlement growth rates. So, I am really interested to know the other hidden factors in the game that affect this Taxes modifier, in particular the more variable ones, not the flat bonuses from technology, etc.
    Last edited by Summary; March 18, 2020 at 03:08 PM.

  2. #2

    Default Re: [Question] DeI Economics

    Outstanding work! Embarrassing that, after 7 years only now has someone figured out the economics of Rome 2 (in our defense, a woefully opaque game). Well done.

    Your point about the importance of taxes is good. Another salient question is how to maximize regional income pre taxes. Your Asia province netted you quite a bit more cash because both the regional income and net taxation were very high.

    I think we've determined that, usually, commerce > industry > maritime > agriculture. Solving how exactly to maximize regional income would be the second component to what you've discovered.

  3. #3
    Summary's Avatar Biarchus
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    Default Re: [Question] DeI Economics

    Quote Originally Posted by Basilius View Post
    Outstanding work! Embarrassing that, after 7 years only now has someone figured out the economics of Rome 2 (in our defense, a woefully opaque game). Well done.

    Your point about the importance of taxes is good. Another salient question is how to maximize regional income pre taxes. Your Asia province netted you quite a bit more cash because both the regional income and net taxation were very high.

    I think we've determined that, usually, commerce > industry > maritime > agriculture. Solving how exactly to maximize regional income would be the second component to what you've discovered.
    Thanks, I am a fairly well educated man, so it wasn't really tough to figure it out. Just needed a calculator and got to calculating .
    But that is my point exactly, regional income isn't that big of a factor pre Taxes/Empire Modification modifiers. As can be seen Latium has a total of 12,175 Regional Income while Asia has 10,881 which is about ~1,200 less but still it makes almost double the Provincial Income 8,538 versus Latium's 4,562. This is because Taxes modifier is the "Big Cahuna" of Rome 2 DeI. Take the example of Africa and it is even more evident, African Regional Income totals just 5,255 less than half that of Latium, but still it has a higher Provincial Income at 4,702.

    Increase Regional modifiers is fairly straight forward. It mainly depends on the regions themselves. Subsistence, Commerce, Maritime Commerce, Agriculture and Industry (further enhanced by their respective multipliers) are the five contributors to Regional Income. For the most part the province resources and nature (port, inland) plays a major role in determining this income. This income will basically only be limited by the impact on banditry, squalor, and food (public order to but less so). The best way to develop these provinces is to balance out the negatives with buildings that help managing them like - banditry, + sanitation, + food and + public order buildings, in that order.

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    Summary's Avatar Biarchus
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    Default Re: [Question] DeI Economics

    Ok so I did some test and a whole number of end turns later () I figured some important things in regards to the above mentioned.


    1. Agent skill tree and military general-governors skill trees are important. Really important. Because they can do much to improve the above-mentioned ratio.
    2. Depending on your empire size the two factors of the ratios; Taxes and Empire Maintenance have more or less impact.Say if you have one province, then improving Taxes modifier since the increments are much higher 3%>6%>9% is a better choice. But say you have 4 provinces or more. Then Empire Maintenance reduction reigns supreme in the overall End Turn Income. That is to say -1% Empire Maintenance across 4 provinces is going to give you a 4% increase versus 3% Taxes. This is assuming each province gives the same Provincial Income of course. But the much larger the empire the much larger this holds true because say you own 10 provinces, it is very rare for one of those provinces to be strong enough to outshine the other nine, therefore a modifier that flat out improves all ten together albeit by 1% is still better than one that increases only one province by 3%.
    3. Generals who lead armies can invest in skill traits that decrease Non-Mercenary Army upkeep, this doesn't improve Provincial Income but does help the overall End Turn Net Income. Again this fares better for larger empires with bigger and more number of stacks. It also allows you to technically have better armies. For example, since I play Sparta a lot (surprise surprise), unlocking all General's skill tree to reduce Non-Mercenary Upkeep can reduce it to a maximum of -15%. Might not sound as much but it actually is. Because military is pretty much the only major expense in the game and a flat out 15% reduction is huge. But that's not even the best part! The Sparta faction has access to two good tier hoplites early game the Homoioi Hoplitai and the Perioikoi Hoplitai. The Homoioi Hoplitai are the Spartan elites recruited from their citizenry, they cost 207 to upkeep, while the Perioikoi Hoplitai are from the second class of citizens and cost 182. Guess what with 15% reduction to upkeep you can now upkeep the Homoioi Hoplitai for much less, 175 to be precise. In other words upgrading melee stats through General's skill tree isn't as effective as having a more expensive unit that has better all round stats become way more affordable. The only limiting factor now would truly be the population. Whats more is that the more expensive the upkeep the better the marginal benefits. Remember the fact that a 5% increase to melee attack which is 5 for Perioikoi Hoplitai should be 5.025 melee attack, versus using a Homoioi Hoplitai is 6 melee attack, but more in other departments as well, including armor, melee defense, morale, weapon damage, etc.
    4. Slaves seems to be another modifier in that lot, but for the most part it is zero, I guess it is because I always end up killing or freeing all captives, slaves cause some unrest in the provinces but again can massively improve Provincial Income. I haven't yet played a campaign with slave taking as a focus, so it is difficult for me to tell what percentage I can maintain it on with a steadily expanding empire. Should be even better with Sparta since they get lesser public order penalties for enslaving.
    Last edited by Summary; March 18, 2020 at 06:51 PM.

  5. #5

    Default Re: [Question] DeI Economics

    Slaves seems to be another modifier in that lot, but for the most part it is zero, I guess it is because I always end up killing or freeing all captives, slaves cause some unrest in the provinces but again can massively improve Provincial Income. I haven't yet played a campaign with slave taking as a focus, so it is difficult for me to tell what percentage I can maintain it on with a steadily expanding empire. Should be even better with Sparta since they get lesser public order penalties for enslaving.
    IIRC this is a big mistake? I think Slaves are another income modifier. So the formula may be ((Taxes+Slaves)-Empire Maintenance) x regional income. Considering that slaves are the easiest to accumulate, if true, they are the most important ingredient here.

    Can anyone confirm?

  6. #6
    Jake Armitage's Avatar Artifex
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    Default Re: [Question] DeI Economics

    Thanks for the post, I'll see to read it more accurately and check if there are some key features I've personally missed.

    Before giving some answeres, as far as I know them and keep in mind that I may be wrong or not so specific sometimes..., I want to do just a couple of notes, merely as general introduction:

    - Keep in mind that people like Dresden and Litharion (and other older devs) know quite well every of these infos, one less, one more.
    You can build a serious and developed mod like DeI by passing hundreds of hours on modding it only.
    And modding means, at the end, just building a math system which can be played through the game engine.

    - The problem of Rome 2 economical system is that it builds just one value: money.
    No matter if it comes from a building, owning an empire or a single region etc... etc... It will always report how much money you get per turn and so how much money you have for recruiting and developing.
    I think that, weighting what above, you should consider DeI's economics more in a term of the campaign pace rather than see if its values are balanced between the various branches.
    To balance things perfectly you'll need to do a lot of tests and trials and, probably, at the end you'll come having a very similar economical campaign pace even if balanced in another way.
    True is that, with a perfected system for the various branches, micromanagement would surely gain (... and I'm a great fun of that )

    "What affects the Taxes modifier?"

    when you put in the equation the (2,647+2,750+3,320+3,458) part you have to consider that those values are obviously not fixed and basically composed by:

    - subsistence (fixed starting value), which can be affected via effects
    - every fixed regional and provincial effect (every region have some values regarding various things)
    - every non fixed regional and provincial effect (buildings,characters, events, intrigues, a lot of things...)
    - edicts
    - population system (it highly impacts economy, so in the case of those results about latium, check differences about pop)
    - supply system, depending on the status of the region
    - ... probably something else I don't remember now

    The final tax modifier comes (without considering all the possible variations above)

    - tax rate (yes values are correct, you can mod them inside db > taxes_levels_tables, while effects are db > taxes_effects_jct_tables)
    - factional effects (a lot...)
    - factional events (a lot...)
    - imperium level
    - politics and government (some)
    - ... probably something else I don't remember now

    After the 2 above, yeah, you'll have to consider slaves and maintenance, which values are again composed by a lot of variables...
    And in some cases it is not so simple to re-build where they come from...

    ----

    I think your points 1,2,3,4 are overall true

    ----

    I think the correct formula for every province is (which concept is the same of Basilius'):
    (REGa + REGb + REGc...) x (TAXES + SLAVES - EM)

    What I'm not sure about is where and how the EM is calculated, because when I did some test I obtained some weird results, so I opted for a VPS economical system instead of relying on EM as a limitator.
    You can check it here if you're courious about https://www.twcenter.net/forums/show...-upd-dec-01-19
    Last edited by Jake Armitage; March 19, 2020 at 02:46 PM.

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    Summary's Avatar Biarchus
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    Default Re: [Question] DeI Economics

    Quote Originally Posted by Basilius View Post
    IIRC this is a big mistake? I think Slaves are another income modifier. So the formula may be ((Taxes+Slaves)-Empire Maintenance) x regional income. Considering that slaves are the easiest to accumulate, if true, they are the most important ingredient here.

    Can anyone confirm?
    They aren't the most important nor reliable ingredient since the value can wildly fluctuate based on your warring and captives. But yes, that is what I meant when I said Slaves is another modifier, you just put in correctly in the formula. It does help with the final Provincial Income albeit costing public order.

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    Summary's Avatar Biarchus
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    Default Re: [Question] DeI Economics

    @ Jake Armitage

    I know the values of Regional Incomes aren't fixed, they depend on the building layout in the region. But there is a maximum potential for that, if you have to balance out squalor, public order, food consumption and banditry from buildings. While it is true you can build entirely economic focused buildings, you province will suffer from many problems like the afore-mentioned. So in actuality there are only so many desirable building permutations you can follow. That is why I am more interested in the later half of the equation in particular the multipliers.

    Taxes and Empire Maintenance modifiers are so important, I started a new campaign to test them out, and I am literally rolling in money and able to blitz my way past factions. I am just greedy and desire to know more about the hidden numbers so I can maximize.

  9. #9

    Default Re: [Question] DeI Economics

    I'm not sure that slaves do fluctuate wildly. With the sell/buy slaves edict you can keep them at a consistent number. Many people around here have advocated for something like 90% slave population in an economic province.

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    Jake Armitage's Avatar Artifex
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    Default Re: [Question] DeI Economics

    @ Summary

    Gotcha, keep up reporting please, detailed infos taken directly from the game are extremly interesting

  11. #11

    Default Re: [Question] DeI Economics

    Hey Summary, thanks for putting this together. I have an economy guide over here you might appreciate: https://www.twcenter.net/forums/show...-Economy-Guide

    Its intended to be a bit more of a layman’s guide than a technical resource, so I don’t go into the formulas - but I appreciate you doing so.

    As a few others have said, Slavery is actually the most powerful of the modifiers. You correctly identify that taxes, slaves, and empire maintenance are all post-modifiers that calculate after all of the base income and income class multipliers are applied. Because they calculate last, the have the biggest impact. And yes, it’s a flat % of (100+ taxes + slave income - EM). However both taxes and EM are harder to min-max than slaves. There are two aspects to slavery: the slave population and the slave income. Slave population caps at 90%, but with edicts and buildings, slave income can exceed 100%. Many of those buildings can also offset the public order penalty - with both slave resource settlements, commercial stimulation edict and a slave trader in the provincial capital, I’ve brought the PO penalty to 0 with 90% slave population.

    But to your question about the tax rate - which yes is also very important - it’s as Jake says very complicated. Here are the factors that I know can go into it, but there may be others:
    Agent dignitary - massively important. This increases tax rate by both a flat value and a scalded value by agent level.
    Tax slider rate
    Generals with the governor skill tree
    Regional effects - ranging from -20% to +20%. This is why Aegyptos and Latium are so rich
    Factional effects - pretty minor, but some factions have a + or -
    Balance of power - also minor
    Buildings - some buildings have local tax rate effect like the Eastern tax collector, while some have a factional effect like the gold settlement building
    Edicts like tax harvesting

    Another note on empire maintenance. Modifiers to it are a % reduction of the base rate. So for example, early game you might have a 20% EM. A 1% reduction doesn’t bring it to 19%. It brings it to 19.8%. However by late game you may have a base rate of 150% even while your displayed rate is 80%, and so adding another 1% would bring it down to 78.5%. This means that early game, you should focus on slaves and tax rate, while later game you should focus on EM. Your point about EM being factionwide while tax rate is (mostly) by province is correct. But I also find that by late game you really only have 1-3 provinces bringing in any relevant amount of income, so it’s not really applicable to your entire empire.

    Hope that helps. Happy to field any other questions either here or on my guide post.

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    Summary's Avatar Biarchus
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    Default Re: [Question] DeI Economics

    @ Plotemaios Soter

    Thanks bruh that reply really helps, see things my way albeit with a bit more perspective. I will look into the link cheers!

    P.S. What map shader are you using it looks dank!
    Last edited by Summary; March 20, 2020 at 04:45 AM.

  13. #13

    Default Re: [Question] DeI Economics

    Thanks for your work, i'll try to factor it into my economy and administration overhaul when I get around to writing out my overview for it.

  14. #14

    Default Re: [Question] DeI Economics

    I was going to add to this thread...but everyone already here has confirmed all that I know to be true about DeI's economics, so I have no information that hasn't already been mentioned here.

    I definitely agree that the formula of (REGa + REGb + REGc...) x (TAXES + SLAVES - EM) is as correct as can be, as Jake has stated.

    I usually build buildings to maximise my economy's output as much as possible, but as has been said, there's still a certain optimal level to build buildings to for each region when factoring in building mali and region boni/mali, but I also inject as much historical roleplay as I can when deciding what buildings to put where; I tend to pre-plan provinces based on historical info, DeI regional effects, and maritime "provinces" on the campaign map that are shared by ports because the terrestial and maritime provinces a port is a part of don't always match up.

    Furthermore, I agree others that one of the simplest and most effective ways of increasing regular turn-to-turn income is to minimize empire maintenance and to maximize slaves in your empire. I usually roleplay campaign characters' skills but I'll probably have to start focusing more on EM reduction later in campaigns. I never release battle captives, unless I'm specifically trying to manipulate my diplomatic relations with enemies or enemies-of-enemies; I use the Commercial Stimulation edict to increase my slave population (but generally only in provinces that produce some amount of commercial income) and I use the Sell Slaves edict only if a province is having public order issues due to too large of a slave population. If I'm going to declare war exclusively to take battle captives to increase my slave population, it will only be in times of very great need, because that would be historically unrealistic for many/most factions. From what I understand, for most ancient peoples of this period, getting slaves was a result of war and wars were not a result of needing slaves...can anyone with better historical knowledge chime in about that? Furthermore, from what I know, "slavery" was not exactly the same for all ancient peoples, their social status and treatment could vary from place to place, but all ancient peoples would take battle captives as laborers of some kind. But I'm starting to get a bit tangential with my historical roleplay...

    Though, the one thing I didn't already know and learned here...

    Quote Originally Posted by Ptolemaios Soter View Post
    Another note on empire maintenance. Modifiers to it are a % reduction of the base rate. So for example, early game you might have a 20% EM. A 1% reduction doesn’t bring it to 19%. It brings it to 19.8%. However by late game you may have a base rate of 150% even while your displayed rate is 80%, and so adding another 1% would bring it down to 78.5%. This means that early game, you should focus on slaves and tax rate, while later game you should focus on EM.
    Thanks for that tidbit, Soter! I'll definitely keep that in mind for any of my campaigns that last that long.

  15. #15

    Default Re: [Question] DeI Economics

    Very interesting information in this thread.

    I personally concluded that EM is the biggest pain in the butt across all my campaigns ( when it comes to economy ).
    This is greatly impacted by turns per year though. The more tpy , the easier it gets to manage it , because governor generals/admirals and ''dignitaries'' die slower , and their traits is what makes most of the difference. The next big help comes from libraries , which are also useful for completing research trees.

    So on a 4tpy scenario , i ended up using the zeal + authority build on dignitaries and the governor/bureaucrat build on generals/admirals dedicated to cities from early to late game with no exceptions.
    At first , the difference in your economy is marginal , but as you expand you have those sweet traits up and ready and are able to keep empire maintenance to around 5% , depending on how old your generals/agents are.
    On a 12tpy scenario , i usually don't take that path until mid-game.

    When i first started playing this game with DEI , i had late campaigns get utterly destroyed due to empire maintenance. I simply got broke. If you reach that point , there is no coming back.
    You can't just start investing into reducing EM in late game , because you won't have the time to level everyone up and pick the right trees.
    Once i figured out how to deal with that , late game became a joke , income is always huge , and you can even forget about regional income bonuses/squalor etc , just go all out -EM , -banditry buildings
    have a couple of military recruitment areas and GL HF.

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