Yep, and it's not even a divine triumph
Was missing a few provinces to get the Divine Triumph. Also only 17/30 provinces with Latin Christian majority and still needing a few techs - mostly military.
I defeated Persia before moving to the ERE. The ERE's trade is just that good.
I've posted an image of nearly fully upgraded Venetia + how much money it makes on normal taxes. Unfortunately, the governor was brand new. With an experienced guy, the net profit goes to around 10,000.
This campaign was on normal. I wasn't willing to go further than the minor victory on hard. Seriously, early is a grind of tiny battles. If you go only to save the Western half of the empire, you can enjoy the middle and late game greatly (and ignore the victory requirements for anything beyond Minor Victory). But fighting the Persians and the ERE was a ginormous grind of huge, hour-long battles over and over and over. Mind you, the AI did manage to win a few due to the sheer amount of troops involved (I had 5 armies against Persia, 9 and 3 full fleets against the ERE).
There is some satisfaction with my final borders though. I'm not sure if I can still score the divine triumph by continuing to play, but I'll likely move on to the Vandals or Burgundians once the next (and hopefully last for a while) DLC is out.
Re: Yep, and it's not even a divine triumph
Just curious, what was your corruption in the end?
Re: Yep, and it's not even a divine triumph
82% - the final tier of civic research gives you -10% (and in a few turns, I'd get another -3% from the final civic tech).
In places like Liguria, Venetia and Magna Graecia, with the governor bonus, a spy investigating corruption and the ecumenical matters edict, it goes down to 53% (which is why Magna Graecia and Venetia, when fully upgraded and optimized, can yield about 10K to 11k by themselves).
Corruption really has never been an issue. I suppose it's harsher when you're playing a barbarian faction and your expansion brings corruption levels from nothing to around 80%, stalling your income as you expand. For the WRE, it's stable. You just don't expect buildings to add their full value, but concentrating on a province is still very worthwhile.
I've had about 15k to 20k income during the majority of the game, probably peaking to around 40k just before my big push against Persia. The trick, for the Romans anyways, is that food is paramount, industry generally sucks. Best provinces are those with extra food sources: ports, olives and wine (dried fruits). Focus on those, and you become rich.
