Money, money, money

[hundurinn]

I'm playing as Julii. I've destroyed the Gauls, Spaniards and I'm now attacking Dacia. I have a big territory, my faction is the largest and strongest.

I'm loosing money and loosing it fast. Only in 3-4 turns I've gone from 6000 to -10000. I got 3 citys which are loosing around 1000-2500 denariis each year and I got all the taxes on very high.

HOW, how can I gain money in those citys. Is it supposed to be like that?

[Colovion]

Without a detailed description of buildings you have built in your cities it's kind of tough to help.

But I can suggest to build more roads, build buildings which increase trade, get trade rights with everyone and their mom and build farms etc...

oh and also make sure that you don't have a bunch of armies just sitting around collecting their money without even fighting - sometimes it's good to let a few good men go back to their homes.

[hundurinn]

I have trade rights to almost everyone. I've upgraded all the roads, farms and tradebuildings. Still the money just keeps going down.

[Colovion]

you have loads of people in your cities? That's strange that you can't keep a cashflow once you've buffed up everything. How many provinces do you have? Is squalor a big problem? You're not the first person to say that running a huge empire isn't easy ;)

[Quietus]

There are many candidates as why you're having trouble:
1. Do you have ports? Upgraded?
2. How big is your army? Each unit cost an upkeep per turn. Garrisons?
3. Do you take care of Rebels and Bandits? They block trade inland. Search and destroy them (or at least bribe).
4. There may be others; You have to give more input about your situation.


Perhaps you'll be interested to read my Julii guide in the RTW Guide section?

Also, click Escape>Game Options>check Manage All Settlements. You choose what you build if you haven't done it already.

[Orvis Tertia]

I am in the late-middle game now as Julii--I own all of Gaul and Spain plus a couple other territories. My cash flow was not nearly what it should have been, so I changed the option so that I could manage all of my cities. The cities that were on automanage were building way too many troops, and it was creating a real drag on my economy. Even on the frontier, I'm finding that I can reduce my garrisons in most towns to a few militia as long as I have an army within a turn or two's march that can deal with any threats. If you are leaving Hastati and Velites as garrisons in all of your towns, then you are probably spending more on upkeep than you need to spend.

Something else you could look at is whether or not you have any territories that are not producing but are instead just dragging your economy. For instance, I conquered Ireland in my dazzling rush across the British Isles, but I soon realized it wasn't making me any money, but it was costing me money to keep some troops there to deal with rebels. So I tried to sell the province, but none of my allies would buy it from me. I ended up giving it to the Senate as a gift. I was hoping that it would revolt and the Senate would pay me to go take it back, but no such luck yet. Regardless, I don't have to worry about guarding it anymore.

[ChaosLord]

Well, you don't really have to worry about individual city income, just overall income. The larger a city is the more of a share of your total armys upkeep it pays. So if you have a big army your big cities will probably been running - or low amounts. For example, in my game Carthage(my capital) is running -781 a year. This is because its paying out 5.1k for my army because it has 43k pop. And to put that in persepctive, i'm paying out 45k total per year to keep up my army, so Carthage is carrying a pretty good part of it.

To save cash i'd just do what you're already doing, reduce and change garrisons far from the front to Town Watch units. You could also demolish uneeded buildings in those regions too, like barracks and so forth if you're planning on using them only for income and not for producing units. I only have 20 regions at the moment though, I know it'll only get worse as things go on. But i'm pretty sure by converting garrisons and scrapping uneeded stuff I can stay making a good amount of cash.

[RedKnight]

Good suggestions here. Some other ideas to kick around; sometimes applicable, sometimes not:

1) Only warm bodies count toward maintaining peace. So only build peasants for that purpose (alone), not more expensive troops.

2) I used to have real cash flow problems before I started making Happy buildings a lot more seriously (as soon as you can). Also note the difference between (for Julii) Bacchus and Jupiter: Both give the exact same Happiness per level (except at Pantheon) BUT Jupiter ALSO gives more income, because it produces happiness through law. Then at the Pantheon level, both produce 1% growth and 10% law, but Bacchus gives 50% happiness whereas Jupiter only 35%. Upshot is to build Bacchus close to Capitol and Jupiter farther away (IF it's a money-making province... I'm still figuring out just which are or aren't though - it's not as simple as MTW where coastal trade provinces = megabucks, period). Also you can easily e.g. build Ceres at first (below population 2000) if you need the help building up, then scrap it and build something else. But overall, who needs help building up population?... they come TOO fast, laugh.

3) You can transfer people between towns by moving and disbanding peasants.

4) If you Exterminate everybody in towns farther from your capitol, this makes them MUCH more ruly. Sure it may not be your "style", but it works! You make a lot of cash up front, and they need far less troops to control them (= less maintenance = more profit). Then, most of the culture difference is gone by the time they get big. Some folks even exterminate their home provinces from time to time when they get unruly - just move your men out, tax it high, then attack when it revolts.

5) Don't make military buildings and blacksmiths all over the place. If you don't mind a lot of moving around, you can get by with a half dozen, coming from super-built provinces. For example I kept one Gaul city with the neato Grove of Abnoba, +2 missiles, which churns out all my archers - they've all got gold-plated arrows.

6) Keep any new family in a city with a big library (probably your capitol) for a few turns, til they build a nice big retinue - don't move them out the first second they appear (unless you need to and/or have more libraries elsewhere). Note that I don't think they will get a retinue if you put them in the queue for weapon upgrades - I think they're not "there" when in the q. Anyone else seen this?

Hope this helps!

[Orvis Tertia]

I hadn't noticed whether buildings have upkeep costs, but if they do, then I'll be using my wrecking ball tonight.

[Doug-Thompson]

What is it with the Julii? I look at the production charts and the finance charts during my Brutii game and notice that the Julii tanked for a long time, as if their whole economy collapsed. It eventually recovered.

Do the Julii just do great while they're conquering and plundering, then collapse when they get big, or what?

Brutii have the toughest opening battles but the richest conquests. Julii seem to have the easiest opening battle but the poorest conquests. Scipii seem to have it tough both ways.

[Orvis Tertia]

Just off the cuff, without actually examining it in-game, I suspect that the problem with the Julii is that they have a pretty easy time expanding, but their provinces aren't nearly as rich as those to the south and east. That means that they conquer a lot of territory, but at some point the expenses of administering all of that territory start to overtake the income generated by it. And most of the cities conquered are small to begin with and take a lot of building to make them profitable. In my own campaign, I had a treasury of consistently over 40K for a period at the height of my expansion, but as I started to grind out the northernmost provinces and the Spanish peninsula, my income started to suffer. I am getting back on track now by reducing my garrisons in Western Europe, were there are no more threats except for rebels.