How to get out of dept?

[FredrickIIOfPrussia]

I was playing as Scipii and I took over Carthage. About ten turns latter the city goes into dept and the population was unhappy. I built a bunch of crap and the people were happy but the city was -3000. In ten more turns I was in deep shit so I tried leaving the city with no troops garrisoned in there. I took it back, and went into dept again. The cities near Carthage started to go into dept and eventually I was near -50k

Basically my question is how do you get out of dept. I read a thread but the only thing people said was disband troops and mercenaries. I tried it and for some strange reason It only got worse.

[Ratwar]

You're not in debt, the city simply wasn't making as much money as the cost of your troops divided up by population. As long as your main treasury is in the positives, don't worry.

Basically, that part of the interface was designed by a retarted monkey.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Basically, that part of the interface was designed by a retarted monkey.

Truer words were never spoken

You can see what your city actually is generating for income by looking at the trade sheet. There's an icon in the city view screen for it. What you see on the campaign map is what Ratwar is describing.....the distributed cost shouldered by that particular city, not what it is actually generating.

And as mentioned, as long as your treasury is showing a profit on the financial screen, you needn't worry about those seemingly negative income figures.

[FredrickIIOfPrussia]

But my money is going down, im not profiting, and I think it's cause of carthage. I tried taking cities, but i cant create/retrain troops since my treasury is in the negatives.

[FredrickIIOfPrussia]

Oh ok. Thanks guys :)

[ReluctantSamurai]

but i cant create/retrain troops since my treasury is in the negatives.

One can certainly go broke quite easily in RTW. Just try one of the minor Eastern factions

But seriously, take a look at your financial screen. Look at how much you are getting from farming, trade, mining, and taxes. Other than tributes, pillaging, and corruption (yes, you can actually have a + value for it), those are the mainstay of your economy.

On the debit side, you will have maintenance costs for your armies, payroll for your family members...spies...assassins...diplomats, and the negative side of the corruption.

If your bi-annual income is in the red, then you are indeed losing money and will need to take measures to correct this.

The biggest drain on your income is always maintenance costs for troops. If that figure is above 50% of your gross income, then you need to disband enough troops to get that figure at 50% or less. Conversely, you can attempt to increase your income by improving farms, and securing trade agreements with your neighbors. Trade provides far and above the largest share of income. You should build ports wherever you can, and upgrade them as you can afford to. The larger the port, the more trade it can handle.

Also take a look at temples that increase tradeable goods. Better roads will increase trade traffic overland and has the added benefit of enabling your armies to move further in a turn. And don't overlook ancillaries for governors that increase income...they can be quite handy and you can pass them to succeeding generations.

All-in-all, it usually takes me more time to take care of business than fighting battles when I play, but I'm one of those logistics freaks that like to micro-manage everything

If you can, post a screen-shot of your financial screen, and I can give you MHO on what you need to do.

[GJScarritt]

Hello all. I just got RTW yesterday (and I'm not used to the controls so that's a huge learning curve for me, but I'm working on it). But there's something that I've always wondered about (been reading up on RTW for the last 2 weeks). Once you have several cities with Ports, will they trade (and make money - ooh - glorious, gleeming GOLD) with each other, meaning trade with others is less important? No-where have I found where it explicitely say yes, just hints or inferences.

I do know that the more trading partners you have (or should I say, the more cities/opportunities), the more likely your individual City Merchants will find the best deals (with-in a certain range of your city (and what that range is?) - doubt your Port city in Greece would ever trade with a Port city in Britain).

[GJScarritt]

Eeek, no modify button. My apoligies to the original OP for hi-jacking his thread, but his question did relate to my question.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Once you have several cities with Ports, will they trade (and make money - ooh - glorious, gleeming GOLD) with each other

Yes, your cities will trade with each other. Within the "view city" screen, there is a button that lets you view not only which cities an individual city is trading with, but what is being traded and how much. Very useful.

Point to note: a simple port can handle one trade route and build biremes. A shipwright can handle two trade routes and build triremes. A dockyard can handle three trade routes and build quinquiremes (the level you can build is determined by faction).

Trade agreements with your immediate neighbors will increase trade traffic. Even if you don't have an agreement, you will be trading with them but the volume will be much lower (you can view this by looking at the trading screen before and after;-))

Paved roads (if your faction can build them) also increase trade traffic. And don't neglect temples that increase tradeable goods (for those factions that have them).

Port trading is related to a sea-lane grid. This is depicted in-game by all those little merchantmen sails moving between cities (and covered wagons on land). So in order to trade with another port, that port has to be a part of the local grid.

Hope that helps.

[GJScarritt]

Yes, thank you for such an in-depth answer. I'm hoping the rest of my questions will make more sense once I get more into the game (if I can just make it through that openiing 'practice' game so I can actually play a Campaign - game keeps crashing, once made it all the way till I started to besiege that target city, rest of the time it's towards the end of the practice Gaul battle). <<shrugs>>

[Guyus Germanicus]

Someone has already answered the basic question that started the thread. But it bears repeating - the game distributes your carrying costs (the cost of your army, faction members, diplomats, spies, etc) according to its own internal formula. Your only coherent figure for your bottomline is in your faction icon's folder for your treasury. Of course, if you add all the money figures for all of your cities' icons from the mapboard, you can get your bottomline figure. But that's not very practical. M2TW works completely different. There your cities reflect on their city icon on the mapbaord the amount of money they're producing so you can more easily see what they're doing for your treasury. That's the downside of RTW's city icons. Unless you open up (double click) the city's icon and check the left-hand side detail window and look closely at where your profits are coming from, you don't know how the city is actually doing.

A couple points of advice are in order for new players. Don't neglect farms. Forget what some of the old advice columns have said about squalor and farms. You need farms to increase your profits. You also need to produce farms in cities where you have stationed faction members as governors. If you neglect building farms for a 'governed' city, your faction member can develop bad character traits for farming which lowers your farm profits in that city. Not good.

Squalor can eventually be neutralized in any city as it can bring population growth to a standstill over time. Once ZPG is reached, squalor stops increasing and the public unrest due to squalor stops growing. But do not stop building farms just because your squalor is growing. You need most of your cities to grow to get to the next administration level building so you can build more advanced military units, etc. Some cities are very slow growers - Sparta, Salona, sometimes Athens. Even Ariminum and Arretium can grow too slowly if you are recruiting troops heavily from them. A temple of Ceres can help them, plus staying on top of farm building, health buildings and markets. Markets confer a minor population growth benefit.

When I play the Greek Cities, Aphrodite is a good choice for Rhodes or Kydonia or even Athens if you need faster population growth. Freya shrines are a must for the early going if playing the Germans. After your cities reach their highest admin buildings, you can tear them down and build shrines to Donar and Woten.

Many players run into financial trouble by over-expanding their military or garrisoning their safe cities with high-priced units. Use peasants to garrison your safe cities. Keep a small pickup force of decent troops stationed between groups of your cities so it can deal with the occasional rebel armies that crop up. That way you dont have to have an army of expensive troops stationed in every city. If you're money is still tight, cull your military for excess units. Once you get better at the combat phase of the game you'll find you need less units to win the battles. Also, mind your carrying costs for certain units. Barbarian mercs, Cretan archers, and merc slingers are expensive. If you can accomplish their purpose in your army with a home grown unit, replace them to reduce your carrying costs. Most merc cavalry is cheap. But the Sarmations can be expensive.

That's my quickie advice for the moment.

[Razz]

I find it best not to build farms, at least not till end game.

[ReluctantSamurai]

I find it best not to build farms, at least not till end game.

I will have to respectfully disagree with that comment. If you play one of the economy-poor Eastern factions (Parthia, Armenia, Pontus), or the likewise poor barbarian factions (Germania, Scythia, Dacia, Spain, Britannia) it is absolutely essential to get your cities to grow to the point where you can begin to recruit your top tier troops. Otherwise, you will not be able to compete with the overwhelming power of the Roman factions.

For these factions (and you can throw Numidia into that mix), you need to build as many farms as you can afford as early as possible, and in some cases, build fertility temples to even further accelerate the growth process. You can slow the process down at a later date (by tearing down fertility temples, depleting the population with troop training, etc) and eventually reach ZPG (Zero Population Growth).

Just my 2denarii...............

[Guyus Germanicus]

If you play one of the economy-poor Eastern factions (Parthia, Armenia, Pontus), or the likewise poor barbarian factions (Germania, Scythia, Dacia, Spain, Britannia) it is absolutely essential to get your cities to grow to the point where you can begin to recruit your top tier troops. Otherwise, you will not be able to compete with the overwhelming power of the Roman factions.


.....

I have to ditto Samurai's comments, especially as it concerns the poorer factions. Parthia starves for funds in the early game even on the easy campaign difficulty. Since I play with large units, I know that recruiting barbarian spearmen for the Brits, Germans and the Gauls really takes a chunk out of your city populations. Encouraging growth in barbarian cities is a necessity. You want to get to recruiting your best troops as early in the game as you can before the Romans have a chance to build up their cities.

The Seleucids have a very important 'wonder' in the Hanging Gardens near Seleucia. It multiplies farm profits. If you're playing against the Seleucids with the Parthians or Ptolemies, you want to capture Seleucia to gain the benefit of that wonder. It really increases your treasury. When I first started playing RTW's Seleucid faction, I was always impressed by the quick rise of my treasury in the early game. But more than once, I got caught up in developing my military buildings putting off building farms. My treasury slowly dried up and when the other factions in the region started pressuring me on every front, I had no cash reserves to replace losses or start new building projects. For the longest time I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. Then I started prioritizing farms into my building plans. It really made a difference.

I learned as time went by that my fear of squalor in my cities due to growth was leading to a false assumption about the impact of building farms. I think some of that fear was due to the way RTW tallies your cities' individual treasuries on the mapboard (mentioned earlier in this thread) giving the illusion that they're not producing anything for your treasury. Then when you have to lower taxes because of increased squalor, it appears that farm caused growth is hurting your profitability in that city. Again, that's a game design quirk. Farm profits are not affected by lowering your city's tax rate. Lowering the tax rate only affects tax revenue. But if you have to lower the tax rate for squalor/public order concerns and you haven't built farms in that city, THEN you're profits from the city definitely will be hurting.

I also used to think that all my cities for whichever faction I played simply grew too fast. I thought that squalor was always on the borderline of being out of control and was absolutely THE main cause of all my public order concerns. But that was a game anxiety of mine, an illusion. That's when I started noticing that certain cities are really very slow growers and constantly need goosing to get them to reach the next admin building threshold.

The only cities I've never had any trouble getting to grow are Alexandria and Memphis. Syracuse, depending on which faction you're playing, can end up being a slow grower. Rhodes has to be goosed. Carthage usually grows at a steady pace. But if you're recruiting heavy, even there it behooves you to take time out from building a military structure to building the next level farm.

Antioch grows at a snail's pace (as does Sparta). And when I'm playing the Seleucids, I usually build the Hephaestus temple series there to increase my armament advantage. That means I'll recruit even more from that city which means to replace the losses in population you need to grow it faster. That means - build farms and public health buildings.

Armenia's home cities are nearly stagnant growers. They reach a squalor level that nearly nullifies their growth and it's next to impossible to get them to the next admin level. Hence, if you're playing Armenia, you need to get on the stick and take Seleucia, Sinope or Antioch ASAP so you can get yourself a real grower of a city where you can recruit your best troops. Because it's very unlikely you're ever going to get your original homeland cities to serious size.

Guess I've rattled on enough here.

[ReluctantSamurai]

I learned as time went by that my fear of squalor in my cities due to growth was leading to a false assumption about the impact of building farms.

Exactly. For richer factions, there's no need to rush the building of farms...many cities grow fast enough without the added push from improved farmland. However, at some point, most cities come to a growth standstill (a desirable thing only after you have achieved the highest tier for that city) and need to be nudged, as you have pointed out. A few selected cities rarely need more than tier1 farmland...Alexandria, Memphis, and Carthage come to mind, as they have the provincial grain bonus to move them along. Even with max-level farming and a fertility temple, I still find the need to have a governor with population boosting traits and/or ancillaries to reach the top tier in size for some cities. Rhodes is a tough one to get to 24k, as pointed out, as are places like Salamis, Sparta, Damascus, and some of the coastal cities along the Adriatic and eastern Med.

I play Armenia quite a lot and I have never gotten either of their two starting cities to 24k. Nowadays, I don't even try. As long as they can produce Cataphract Archers at 12k, I'm happy. The best thing, as mentioned, is to push quickly into richer territory.

Farm management is a tricky thing to manage, but certainly not the squalor monster many folks portray it as, as pointed out.