How often do you guys use cheats?

[Suraknar]

Great wealth was still needed to construct things. First there's the materials, which may well have been the most important thing. Slaves themselves were hardly free, needing to be purchased, fed and equipped with tools. And construction incidentally was one of the few areas where free labour was used far more than slaves, because of its seasonal nature. It was not good value for money to buy a whole bunch of slaves that then only can work in summer. Free poor men were cheaper, you could pay them and then send them on their way to fend for themselves.

And that Cicero quote about the nerves of war being infinite money wasn't there for nothing either.

Oh I am not saying everything was free, some armies as you pointed out were professional, even in citizen armies the citizens had to afford their own gear, that much is clear, yet, building a stable could be a community affair, the king or emperor would not be sending funds for things like that in remote cities, building a palace and raising a personal army specially a professional one would indeed require much.

Food is the commodity people would pay for most of the time, grain to feed armies etc. That much is certain. It is why I just did not mod everything down to 0 cost (as well as the fact that the game would be unbalanced), but striving every turn to build one stable building or a blacksmith in one city amongst 20, I found that game breaking from this point of view. It makes no sense to me that you can have en empire with hundreds of thousands of citizens (and slaves) and not enough money to build a barracks...

The game has us assume the lead of Empires and Kingdoms yet the royal treasury is literally empty. I just do not think that this much micromanagement is fun under this premise, so I fill up the treasury and apply macroeconomics instead permitting me to focus on Diplomacy, and Warefare in a higher degree, which to me become more representative of the role that Kings and Emperors back then would fill. It makes for a more enjoyable game for me that way.

maybe there is a better way to balance the game, instead of having to do this, but I do not know where to change it, to raise for instance the amount of money coming from taxes per citizen until an economical equilibrium is reached necessary for the undertakings of the game.

The alternative would be to mod all costs down by a factor of 10 or more to reach that kind of macroeconomic equilibrium, and then the starting treasure would actually represent an Empires capital in a more realistic manner.

It is faster to raise one number thought rather than try to balance all costs.