Another economy question

[Gith]

I'm gonna make it two this week, as the economy is frustrating me. Why is it that occasionally the upkeep of a garrison is ridiculously high? For instance, I've got a city with 3 militia hoplites, a general and his cavalry, and 2 units of milita cavalry, and the upkeep is somewhere around 1900 denarii - way over what the cost should be.

Does upkeep increase for a unit as it gets further away from the city it is built in? I don't -think- I've moved any units out to fight anywhere else, but maybe I'm wrong.

[Soulflame]

The upkeep for your entire army is split between the population of your cities. Thus if you have 1000 gold expenses for your entire army, and city A has 800 people in it, and city B 200, city A will have 800 gold expenses listed in its city scroll, and City B 200 gold.
This is also why larger cities usually give less gold (the amount of people increases more then the income of a city increases).

[Spuddicus]

Actually, your miltary unit upkeep costs are spread out among your cities.
The 1900 you're seeing is that city's 'share' of the total military cost.
How that percentage share is allocated I'm not sure, though I think it's a combination of population, income and expenses.

[KurnoustheHunter]

Hi Gith,

At first I was equally confused about how some of my cities with awesome improvement had say -$500 and newly conquered areas gave me +$1700.

The answer is that the costs of the empire (generals salaries + unit upkeep etc etc) are divided out to your regions proportionate to their population.

So a town with 2000 people out of an empire of 10,000 will pay 1/5 of the empires up keep where as a town with 5,000 will pay 1/2 of the upkeep regardless of how many units are stationed there.

In my example I noticed that those -negetive $ cities were huge 10,000 + whilst my $1000+ all had a 3000 or under.

Hope thise explaination helps.

[Gith]

Ahh...okay. So is there any good solution to this? I realize that if I were to somehow...cut down on the population, another city would just pick up the tab, right?

[Tamur]

Right, so what it means is that the citizens in that city are sitting on their arses watching the telly instead of getting out and producing goods.

Make sure you've upgraded your ports, trader/market/forum/etc, roads/paved/roads/highways, and farmland. Farmland doesn't do a lot for income, but upgrades do create public order via keeping everyone well fed.

Make sure you've got plenty (i.e. three or more) trade agreements active at any one time, and that you haven't got rebels hanging out on your highway system robbing your provinces' goods.

Plenty to keep you and your treasury busy for a while!

[Grifman]

Ahh...okay. So is there any good solution to this? I realize that if I were to somehow...cut down on the population, another city would just pick up the tab, right?

Why do you care? It's irrelevant on a city by city basis. All you should care about is your overall bottom line, not how much of your military cost is allocated to any one particular city. If you change the allocation to something else, it's not going to change your overall profit at all, so it's irrelevant. It's just internal bookkeeping.

Grifman

[Gith]

More or less the conclusion I came to. Sure, one city is at -800 denarii profit wise, but overall I'm making 15,000 denarii a year...so it isn't a big deal. I guess I'm just anal retentive about the income of each individual city.