Economic help

I've been absent from the forum for a while, because I've been playing every opportunity I get. Anyways, I just finished the short campaign as the Julii (btw, how do you unlock the Macedonians without using a crack?). My biggest problems were economy and loyalty. Starting as the Seleucids, I want to try and avoid this. Aside from the basics (building economic structures, lots of ports, etc) how can I get a good economy built up? A major issue with the economy was the fact that most settlements had terrible loyalty, even with governors. Was I just cursed with bad luck (namely, a bunch of military governors with no management skills) or was I doing something wrong? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

expand early. build ports. economic buildings (other than port levels) are terrible inefficient.

problem with trying to build an economy in the mid to late game is that provicnes have such high pop that it becomes prohibitively difficult to control them with garrisons.

if you expand early and enslave/extreminate, you'll have a bunch of near empty (read: easily controllable) provinces that are providing approximately the same income as they would later in the game. (pop increases at an order of magnitude higher rate than income)

Play on large unit size, then follow this formula:

Rapid conquest, massacre and resettlement of peasants.

Expand the empire as quickly as you can. Kill all the inhabitants (once you get out of a solid, easily controlled core area) in every non-Roman town. Build peasant units in your "old" cities and march them to new ones. They can garrison there and then disband as new peasants arrive.

This restores population in massacre sites and relieves over-population in your older cities. Also, the loot from the completely looted cities doesn't hurt the treasury.

People are reluctant to massacre, which is a good thing.

However, even the most cold-hearted of us want big cities that will produce lots of high-end military units.

What matters in unit production, though, is BUILDINGS. If you conquer a big city, it will still have advanced buildings. Keep pouring in the peasants, and it will soon restore the population, too. Even if the town doesn't have the building you want yet, you won't have to wait long.