Quote Originally Posted by Urg View Post
More money = more soldiers = more conquest.

I like traders/markets and other money making buildings.

If its 210 per turn per building/upgrade, thats still 8,400 every ten years for a basic trader/market. Very useful.
The point Amelius Paulus is trying to make is that initially, the best method of quickly making money involves rushing with plenty of troops, swiftly conquering several settlements, raise the happiness in those new settlements to acceptable levels (enough so that most of your troops can move on instead of having to assume the role of a garrison), and continue conquering. Obviously, your biggest asset with this strategy is your soldiers, and money is put to better use training new troops rather than building a market that makes a comparably small sum compared to conquering (consider this: 10 years = 40 turns, in which, as you say and as I assume to be correct, a market will make 8,400 mnai; in 40 turns, an experienced player can capture 3 to 5 settlements, adding thousands or tens of thousands to his population and new trade routes, etc., which will altogether bring in much more money than a market).

However, what I compared here are two rather extreme strategies. I doubt that many people would elect to concentrate all of their resources on training troops and capturing settlements at the complete expense of their infrastructure, or the reverse, that many people would choose to pour all of their money into buildings and leave none for their military.

Personally, I do build markets and appreciate their function - not in increasing trade, but in increasing the population growth rate. More population = more income from taxes. My economic strategy for my Getai campaign relies mostly on this crucial and simple fact.