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]

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).

[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.