Extravagant versus miserly vices...

It has been reiterated here that having your tresury end a turn above the 50,000 mark triggers your family members pack on vices related to luxury, such as extravagant, etc. Playing carthage, I noticed that if the turn-end treasury is close to zero, the family members tend to get another line of traits: miserly... At one point, all my governors had it: even the public heroes and vitors... The line reduces building costs but raises population discontent: so is not that good at all, especially for those provinces far from the capital...

Well, the way I look at it, once your treasury passes 50K, you're obviously doing something right, and all the bad taxation vices in the world won't slow your economy down enough to stop you.

If it goes above 50K and stays above 50K, you're probably right. In my Bruti game, even having an entire family with zero management didn't stop me from passing the million mark, and couldn't keep me from turning a profit every single turn. It just reduced the vast amount of money I was making. But, a lot of times you can pass the 50K mark by scrimping for a few turns. That can wind up hurting you in the long run, by costing you management points from the extravagant/corruption vices that it brings so you make less money once you've spent that excess.