The RTW II Economy - Research, Tips and Strategies

[Oleander Ardens]

I always loved to play the eco game in every TW game and I also graduated in this direction. In any case there are some new features in the game and it would be nice if we could share our knowledge and dig a bit deeper in some areas. I think it works best if you guys write what you impressions and conclusions are and then we try to confirm it by other posters. Links to hard evidence of pages in the encyclopedia are very wellcome.

Maybe this could also help other persons to write a guide. So first the rough ideas and afterwards the fine filter. It should help also myself to throw a couple of questions for myself into the room.

Personally I could not play all that much and I'm only 50 turns in my h/h Suebi campaign in which I have just conquered Silesia, Bohemia, Suebia, Germania Magna as well as Germania Minor. All in all 13 regions within 5 provinces, with 4 tradable ressources - glass, leather, timber and lead - as well as a single gold mine. I'm earning 9000+ per turn and have trade agreements with most Celtic neighbours, some Iberian factions plus Rome, the Illyrians and Athen.


So lets get started:

Trade

It seems pretty straightforward. Not every ressources seems as valuable as a trade good. The Glasswares from Germania minor are getting me roughly three times as much as leather with factions which have none of them and do neither import them. To produce more you have to upgrade your city and this causes increasingly hefty penalties on public order and food. Obviously with limited ressources those city upgrades make more sense for the player to go for the goods with a much higher return for similar? penalties and similar? monetary cost. As usually a ressource in a big province is more valuable then one in a small one!

Obviously export is more valuable then import, but it you can make some decent denarii from the latter. Trade partners with more tradable ressources and more regions are more valuable then those will less of both. But how much? Another with which needs to be checked.

I also have to investigate if your own goods are consumed at home. In my current game everything seems to get exported. Needs a check.

BTW has anybody seen a ressource in a provincial capital? I so far not and I looked at many regions on the map planner. This makes it more likely that the capital city of the province boosts the economy of the whole province. I will try to understand that in more detail later.

Overall trade works pretty much like in Shogun II apart form the fact that you have no trade nodes and more ressources in your provinces. A very important and highly valuable part of your economy.


Macroeconomics


Trade politics

I had no luck with trade agreements in the first 25 or so turns as the Suebi, later it became a lot easier, even if I had to send roughly 5x the trade value per turn to a neutral faction (yellow face) to get a deal. Some factions offered it, with a meager monetary demand. Now I seem to be a highly sought after trade partner.

Important! Trade agreements are united with a non-aggression pact an excellent stepping stone towards a confederation. I got access to the Silesian lands after offering it to my green faced friends in the east which were struggeling in a war against a Scythian faction.


Faction-wide

Obviously gold and food are faction-shared ressources. The tax level is global as well as a faction bonus, be it natural, obtained by an event a technology and possibly a leader. Needs to get checked.

A food surplus gives you a nice faction-wide bonus in growth & army replenishment, however I have no idea which amount of food if needed, possibly in relation to the number of owned regions and if there are different levels.

Provincial level

Public order gets calculated for the whole province. Effects from the provincial capital & various buildings too? Bigger provinces are certainly more attractive in economic terms, but how much? This means of course it may be wise to upgrade there first (Smaller ones, especially at the frontiers may be better for military reasons, especially due to more recruitment and relatively more walled cities with bigger garrison troops. Many effects of the military sphere work on this level, for example from temples.

So specialisation should be once again the name of the game. Germania Magna and Suebia are my large provinces and so far I have three military buildings among those 7 regions. They are relatively safe from attack and have a considerable amount of increasingly developed farms and harbours so I will switch the military tech supported by temples to the small frontier provinces and go to more cultural buildings to keep the order in check which is high but going downwards despite the dignitaries doing their work. Right now everything is calm so it should be easily doable.


Please add

Regional level

Most eco buildings deliver at a regional level. The wealth is taxed first there and then added for each province before flowing into your factions coffins.

Overall untangling the links at the provincial and regional levels will take a bit of testing and in this case the loading times are obviously a bit long. While playing they actually bother me very little.


Agents

Dignitary

Can increase the tax rate and growth and increase public order by spreading your culture while managing the civic part. They can reduce the upkeep of our stack while looking into the military business. Needs a lot of research.

General & Statesmen

Can reduce the upkeep and the recruitment costs, have an impact on public order. Need research.



I will leave it there and add more and more as my and your research goes along. Thanks guys.

[Oleander Ardens]

Reserved for further use. Thanks

[BroskiDerpman]

Not trying to derail the thread but if you want to use cavalry in your armies play as Averni and use Noble cav. They can beat Parthia's cataphracts and Rome's praetorian cav head on. Essentially the best heavy cav.

Not sure how much they cost though, does anybody know? I want to know if it's feasible to get an army of OathSworn and a few Noble cav with just a few settlements supporting the army.

[Oleander Ardens]

Army units are due to their upkeep, which is the biggest cost factor of course part of the economy and their specific efficiency does play a considerable role. Still I want to focus that thread mostly one income side of things. The payoffs between occupation, sacking and razing may be of interest though. At the first sight the net gain by sacking & razing is quite high and seems to be linked to the development of the city. So far in my Suebi game I have only occupied, has the land has been Germanic apart from the Bohemian land of the Boii. I could use their buildings without any penalty - no Celtic temples - and wanted to get a couple of core provinces.

BTW, does anybody know if sacking or razing costs a building slot? Another thing to check later, I'm on a short holiday.

[BroskiDerpman]

From my previous TW experience sacking/razing damages a building/slot, you could repair it for a small cost or demolish the building and create something else.

[Bramborough]

About 150 turns into first Roman campaign. Re looting: I've mostly been occupying regions, but entering Libya, decided to sack a few settlements to see how it would work out. I didn't nuke out the specific numbers, but following is my general impression:

Pros:
- Substantial immediate boost to treasury. Self explanatory.
- Boosts slave population, increasing factionwide economy. One doesn't get the enslavement of captives option with straight occupation.

Cons:
- All buildings substantially damaged; repair costs amount to roughly 70-80% of the initial treasury income. This isn't necessarily a big concern, however, if one intends to wholesale replace existing buildings with own-faction structures, AND has sufficient treasury to do so immediately (so all those construction sites don't turn into slums).
- Doubles the provincial unrest penalty (and therefore doubles the number of turns required to eradicate it).
- Boosts slave population, increasing factionwide public order penalties. Not exactly "factionwide" perhaps, but slave pop in all your provinces will increase, although the closer provinces' will be higher. Looting Cyrene/Augila in Libya led to high slave pop order penalties (-10 or worse) in Phazania/Africa, and lower (say, -7 to -9) in home provinces Italia, Cisalpina, etc. This wasn't ALL just from those two cities, of course. I'd been enslaving defeated armies/fleets since beginning my North Africa campaign, but definitely noticed a big boost (or hit, however one wants to look at it) upon the looting of these 2 cities.

Overall, I'd say looting is not the way to go if one wants to permanently retain a province and incorporate as a usefully-functioning economic component of the empire. The headaches of trying to restore public order and tying up one's forces in military occupation just take too long. HOWEVER:

An idea which has occurred to me is using an undesired province (or even just a region or two outside one's own full provinces) as a "training ground" for generals. Go in, loot cities, don't garrison, let public order spiral out of control. Rebel army appears, and your army general now gets to put another whopping on them for more rank boost, with no diplomatic penalties. Rinse and repeat. This might be a good way to keep providing battles to rank up generals in between major campaigns. Just take care to do this to a landlocked settlement, as rebel port cities tend to get blockaded (but not attacked) by AI factions, and permanent stalemate ensues.