Always one Broke City

I've noticed that just about with every faction, excluding Rome after you conquer a couple of provinces, there is generally one city that is either your capital or just some random huge city that is thousands in debt. the ptolemaic (spelling?) empire has memphis or alexandria thousands in debt, carthage is another example off hand. I can't recall the others but why isnt the money evenly distributed? You'd think that such a major trading port as alexandria or carthage would be thousands in the positive, instead of holding the rest of your economy back?

That number is just how much city makes vs. how much its supporting, its not actually in debt or holding your economy back. If you go into the trading scroll you'll probably see that its making a good sum of cash, if the ports and other financial buildings are built anyhow.

The bigger the population, the bigger the amount of money that city pays for army upkeep. That's why it is usually your starting capitals that are the most 'in debt' because they are the biggest by far, usually they have 10 thousand and the rest have 3 thousand.

Just like Dayve said. The economy can't keep up with the city size, so the city ends up supporting more than it earns, since new buildings take ages to finish in huge cities. If you lose that city, you'll just find that you're earning less money (unless it had a massive garrison that was lost as well of course).

good to know
thanks

I could have sworn that the whole "capital city being stuck in perpatual destitution" was scripted or somehow preset. A while ago, when playing the Ptolemies, after one of my turns, Alexandria's income suddenly shot up from -2500 to positive 5600. This was over the course of a single turn. I don't even know what I did to make it happen, but all of a sudden I started making 8000 more mnai a year from Alexandria. I thought I may have broken a script or something that made my capital stuck in being poor, but I don't think RTW is moddable enough for that to be possible.

If not, then I really have no idea what happened. I don't even think I conquered any new territories that turn, and I know I didn't obtain trade rights with anyone. Usually, I'm too busy killing things to use diplomats.

It's all a big mystery. This calls for the obligatory shrug.

The way it is - and the way it has always been because this is hardcoded - is that the total upkeep expenditure for your faction is offset against each settlement's individual revenue in proportion to that settlement's population compared to the entire population of all settlements in your faction.

Thus, all cities provide revenue but the larger cities (especially your capital) take a greater proportion of the expense as they have more population. This is why larger cities are more likely to appear 'in the red'.