Money 'Issues' Leading to Corruption and other Negative Traits

[Guyus Germanicus]

I have recently rediscovered RTW and set out with the Julii. 20 turns down i'm swimming in gold, I lower taxes to normal to be greeted by useless accessor, I raise them to go over the 50k threshold and everyone's fingers become sticky!

The purpose of this thread is to determine what other members do with their gold.

I share your pain to a certain extent. Usually, for me, it takes alittle while before I work up to the serious money bag stage. And each faction varies a bit on how much they tend to accummulate. The Brutii can be swimming in dough once they are fully established in Greece, and if they manage to grab Rhodes as well.

Personally, when the money becomes a potential corrupting influence on my faction members I do a couple things. I try to keep the treasury balance a little below 50k. Someone has said that 50k is the threshold for when the AI tests your faction members more frequently as to whether they should acquire a bad money trait. And that at the higher money levels the test increases in frequency. I guess I'll take their word for that, but I think it's actually a little below the 50k threshold. In truth, I don't know.

My first order of business is to tie up treasury funds by scheduling out into the future my building projects. That subtracts from the bottomline quickly.

When money is easy, I bribe diplomats or rebel faction members. If I can replace the money I've spent on bribes quickly, I don't mind coughing up a large amounts on a bribe.

I may buy mercenaries rather than recruit units from cities, depending on the need of the moment. If I'm swimming in cash and one of my cities is growing slowly, I'll buy a bunch of barbarian mercenaries (in the case of the Julii) and disband them in or near the city that needs the population growth. Recruiting a lot of home grown troops can be counterproductive if you're trying to grow your cities past the next administrative threshold.

I also give cash gifts to allied factions, especially the non-Roman ones. I don't know if this actually builds any goodwill within the game logic but I do it anyway. If an ally has his city beseiged by an enemy, I may try to bribe the enemy away on my ally's behalf.

Of course, you can slow your treasury growth down by changing the nature of your building strategy to emphasize military buildings rather than farms, markets, infrastructure and ports. But then you flirt with acquiring bad character traits for your faction members acting as governors.

I always like spending money on Cretan archers and mercenary slingers whether I really need them at the moment or not. They will come in handy later. So, if you've got the cash, send a general on a mission to Apollonia and Crete in the years 262 BC, 252 BC, 242 BC and 232 BC (if you haven't had the Marius event yet.) you can acquire one Cretan at Appollonia and two on the island of Crete. Just remember to send your general in a 4-5 ship fleet and have an escort fleet of at least 3 ships as back up. The pirates are thick in the waters around Crete. Oh yes, and when you land your general on Crete, don't dock your fleet west of Kydonia amd have him step off the boat there. He'll likely get ambushed by a small rebel army just outside the city. Instead, move your fleet around the south side of the island until you get to a point just east of Kydonia before you have your faction member land. Once you buy your mercenaries, don't let the faction member linger over a turn. That rebel army waiting in ambush west of Kydonia will attack you. Get back on the ship and get out of there.

The reason the Julii do well in the early game with cash is the close proximity of their early cities. Capture Segesta, Patavium and Mediolanum and you have a star formation of five cities in close proximity to each other. You have no distance from capital penalty of any significance. You have a star shaped web of trade routes. And three of those cities have port capability. (Segesta doesn't usually grow enough to become 'port-able' (no pun intended) until many years down the road. I often use the population of Segesta as a recruit feeder for my other cities so I goose their population growth at Segesta's expense. I figure I'm not losing much doing that to Segesta since it's such a slow grower.

I don't know if you've noticed this in your Julii games. But my experience has been when playing the Julii that in the mid-game or late-game my allies the Brutii and Scipii like send lots of small little armies to run around in my territory. They'll plant themselves on bridges blocking my troop movements and just making a general nuisance of themselves. So, to counter that I build a series of forts separating my territory from the Senate and the Brutii. Then I station a few extra units in these forts so when necessary, I will move the extra units out to the adjacent gameboard squares around the fort to block access into my terriroty. That keeps my home territory clear of 'friendly' non-faction units. Having an ally block my roads and bridges costs me movement points. It will cost you some extra money to build the forts and recruit the extra units, but it's worth it to me to keep my roads open.

I also invest in lots of spies to light up the game board so I can see what's coming. Stationing spies in the mountains north of the Alps to keep an eye on the goings on in Germany and Gaul gives me some advance warning of any barbarian treachery or sneaky armies poking their nose through the Alpine passes to attack my Cisalpine cities.

It may even behoove you to build forts on certain high spots where rebels frequent. It beats having to send armies up steep mountain sides to eliminate them. And it supposedly discourages the appearance of bandits in the vicinity of the fort.

Anyway, there's a few thought for you about spending your extra cash. Hope it's helpful.