The Fall of the Scippi/How to build an Economy

[IceWolf]

The Scippi rose to great power. They controlled the entire isle of Sicily and all the Numidian/Carthaginian territories in Africa except for the territory east of Thaspus. They had 2 1/2 fine armies and two good fleets. The future looked bright.
Then revolts occurred in Syracuse (it went Greek then Rebel with 1150 rebel army), libayaneum went back to Carthage along with Cirta, Corduaba (a royal pain of a territory, those people are never happy for long). My fleet was destroyed by Pirates and in the end I had only one army left that was land locked in Carthage.
My econ went negative when the revolts occurred (they happened pretty much all at once, despite lowering taxes). The econ never recovered, my 1 1/2 stacks were ground into dust after narrow losses trying to re-take Libby and Syracuse. i was farked.
In retrospect i seem to have expanded too fast. Besides roads and ports, what do i need to build to get a sustaining economy and prevent unrest? Thanks,

IceWolf

[César Victor]

I've found that if you ever take a hammering on your frontier towns, you need to retreat and regroup and stabalize the part of the empire you still have under your control. If not for my fellow Orghers and their advice on here, my Julii campaign may have gone in the same direction as your Scipii.

All is not lost though. You should focus your forces in a small area that can be easily defended. Build the roads, ports and forums/markets required for a stable economy and pump out the armies. Have 4-5 close provinces build two legion units and a cavalry unit. In three turns, you will have 8-10 cohorts of legionaires and a nice stack of cavalry for balance. Use the next turn to build auxilia and in the space of two years you have a full stack army ready to be blooded.

Just focus your empire in one area and slowly regain what you lost. Don't bother about ships and fleets until you have a stable economy and empire.

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

Hi IceWolf,
All I can do now is provide you a link to one of my posts (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1435304&postcount=3) on how to prevent general unrest, I'm in a little bit of a hurry right now so I can't give a full responce, sorry about that. Cheers!

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

Hi again Icewolf,
Happiness and financial expansion are not too hard to manage. Happiness is, however, the hardest to maintain of these two.

The best way of keeping happiness at it's maximum is by opening up the city scroll and clicking on the settlement details button on the left hand side of the scroll. I always select the "always show settlement details box" as this saves you clicking this button in the future. Then all you have to do is look at the happiness section and place your mouse over the different symbols. These show you what it means. If you review the negative section then you will see the things that are effecting the problem. If the problem is distance to capital try moving your capital closer to the centre of your lands. This can be done by the button on the left hand side of the settlement details scroll. If the problem is unrest then you can follow my previous guide to help remove it. If the problem is high taxes then reduce the tax rate to medium. Of course there are other things such as squalor, un-curable and culture penalty which destroying would cause you more negatives than positives.

Another way of keeping happiness at its maximum is by building temples with law effects and happiness effects such as temples of Jupiter. That can both benefit your economy, by decreasing corruption, and increase population happiness two fold rather than single fold like another non-law boosting temple. Another way you can keep the population happy is by making it a rule to exterminate all cities which are over the city level. That can prevent squalor by reducing the amount of people in the city. Also, if the conquered settlement has another faction's temple in it, then destroy it and build one of your own law boosting ones, you can get them up to maximum level unlike the enemy one there previously. Remember that law boosting buildings have much more effect that happiness boosting buildings. Try to build, in order of priority, law, happiness, health. Also bear in mind that moving a large garrison in can help you save the settlement! In safe regions, this means once which are unlikely to be attacked, draft in peasants and town watch or equivalent units to boost happiness, sadly the effect of the garrison is proportionate to settlement size so please expect to have to have a larger garrison in larger cities. Also you could try moving in a better governor with higher influence. However he may cause other sorts of unrest through his traits. If his penalty points (-5% per point) out weigh his positive points (+5% per point) then he is not really worth having. Also try to avoid leaving the settlement with no garrison, in that case there is 15% unrest caused by having an empty settlement. Finally, if all else fails, the settlement is rioting and you can see no way of appeasing them, gather your garrison and leave the settlement abandoned. Then return, recapture it and exterminate.

As for your economy - this should come second after the settlement is stable. Try building ports, traders, roads and farms - which ever one will get you the most income first - you can check this by placing your mouse over the water marked trade symbol in the building menu - the one with the highest number on this region is the best. Also think about where you are placing the building. Farming income is the least realisable form of income, it varies depending on the province, so look at the farming base rate on the population growth section of the details scroll, the higher this rating then the higher the chances of getting a higher income and better harvests. Building a market or other sort of land trading structure on an island with no other regions on it is not going to help you as much as constructing a port. Also constructing a port in the middle of nowhere where there are few or no other ports nearby to trade with, such as in the red sea, then building a land trader would help more. Roads often help anywhere yet that is not always the case, sometimes they offer no bonuses whatsoever other than allowing faster movement of your army. If you are very poor and all settlements are losing money or not making enough together to satisfy your empire then it often leaves you with two choices - you either go out conquering till you get back in the "green" or you can disband your forces which probably are causing the problem. Another way of boosting your economy is by constructing a powerful navy to attack ships which are blockading your ports henceforth stopping all sea-trade income. It is also a good idea to destroy rebels on your lands as they block off land trade and, if they are standing on a port, sea trade too. Destroying them reduces the amount of "detestation" which is negative to income from farming.

Good luck with dealing with your economy and rebel slaves, cheers!

BTW, thanks for your patience!