I need a Loan

[Don Megel]

Yup, although I seem to have legions at my command and europe at my feet I appear to be no so adept at finances. I have neg 1k in several cities and am only just staying in the black from turn to turn. I understand this has more to do with a high population more than a lack of income but dont know what to do in order to curtail my cities growth. All taxes are at very high, I dont care if they revolt (I'd like for them to revolt as that would allow me to kill them all).

Is there any way short of moveing the garrison out of town and then squashing a revolt to stop the pop explosion? Such as dont build this building or do build that one.

I know this must have been talked about before but I cant find it.

Thanks

[lars573]

Your military supports is divided between all your cities and if they aren't making enough to keep up there chunk of the up keep they are in the negative. try replacing your city garrisions with town watch (or the non-Roman equivalent) and standing down a few legions. But that might not keep all your cities out of the red all the time.

[Haido]

See to it that you have roman temples as well. It helps alot.

[ToranagaSama]

Hi,

I don't reccommend this, but this is what happened to me in a my prolonged Prologue game.

I had a nice little empire going with about 4 provinces, and an uncertain financial circumstance. My oldest, northernmost and original City was a problem, as it was filled to the brim with people and the consequent related issues. It had negative financial returns, and I had just enough troops to keep things under control and to fend off any attack.

The Sentate in its infinite wisdom requested that I proceed North and Take a Barbarian city, as if I didn't have anything better to do! I didn't have enough troops to leave as a Guard, and to take the Barbarian city. In the past, the Senate armies had saved my bacon and protected this city. So, I decided to leave the city unguarded and proceed North. To my surprise (I had no Spies), almost as soon as I had made my move north, two Barbian arimies appeared out of nowhere and surrounded the city. Of course, I turned my troops around and headed back to defend the city, but I was too late, and the city was taken by the Barbarians.

I easily retook the city. The thing is though, the game treated the re-taking of the City as if it weren't *my* city to begin with, and presented me with the same options as if it were a *newly* conquered Barbarian/Opposing Faction's city. Giving me the same options to, Occupy, Enslave, or Exterminate, along with the commensurate monetary benefits for each. Being short on money, I said screw it, took the money and Exterminated them all.

This whole senario turned out to be just what the doctored ordered (american euphemisim), as not only did coup the windfall from the Extermination, BUT, with a smaller population the City was no longer suffering from the ills of over-population, and was now producing a SIGNIFICANT profit, where it had been a money loser.

The cost of all this? Well, the Senate might have been a little miffed, but screw them! The only other negative was a bit of damage to a couple of buildings, which was easily and quickly repaired. The city now produces a huge profit, has a *relatively* small population, and has all its advanced buildings to boot!!

I believe this may be one of the *unforeseen* quirky exploitations, that eventually will come to be disdained by serious players, but in the meantime....

[Bob the Insane]

Have you tried making a diplomatic move of offering to pay a tribute to a faction in return of a lump sum of cash now???? (an actual loan... )

[Don Megel]

A real loan, thats a good idea, didnt even think of that, lol.

Ive tried moveing the entire garrison out of the town. It grows red, says its going to rebel then the next turn they are happy again. I cant figure out how to make them revolt. Ive destroyed the sewers to hurt happnies but nothing... they now are 2k in the hole every turn.

[therother]

This whole senario turned out to be just what the doctored ordered (american euphemisim), as not only did coup the windfall from the Extermination, BUT, with a smaller population the City was no longer suffering from the ills of over-population, and was now producing a SIGNIFICANT profit, where it had been a money loser.

I think you are misunderstanding the profit/loss calculations a little.

Each city in your Empire has as obligation, commensurate to its population, to pay for all military units, naval vessels, agents and generals. If you look into the settlement details screen, you will see these expenditures as the first last two in the bottom Income bar. (Other expenditures, BTW, are for corruption, devastation, and entertainment.)

From what you say, it seems that your original city was bearing the lion share of this load. So when you slaughtered all those excess people, the load was more evenly spread between your other cities, and so it appeared that this city is now more profitable. What you should check, though, is whether you are making more money in the financial page of the faction overview scroll.

I would suggest not, especially if you had trade buildings/ports in this settlement. Whilst farming and mining incomes seem to be invariant to population change, trade and taxes certainly aren’t. Administration, I think, might be a 2nd order effect, in that it seems to depend on the overall income of the settlement and the management ability of your governor – he needs at least some management ability to get some extra money, and you can get quite a fair bit with the right man in the right city. One of my level 8 management governors reaps in ~1500 denarii per turn in admin alone.

Ok, perhaps a very simple example will help. Take two of my cities, Patavium with a population of 32885 and Segestica with 6799 citizens (well, men, it seems women and children aren’t counted!). I'm paying pay 96518 denarii in unit upkeep, and 16000 in wages. Overall population is something in the order of 550,000 men.

Patavium
Income:
Farming 1120
Mining 0
Taxes 887
Trade 2290
Admin 171
Total 4468

Expenditure:
Wages 975
Upkeep 5881
Corruption 859
Total 7715

Profit: -3247

Segestica
Income:
Farming 320
Mining 875
Taxes 744
Trade 1206
Total 3145

Expenditure:
Wages 201
Upkeep 1216
Corruption 314
Total 1731

Profit 1414

So, looking at it this way, Segestica is making a fortune, but Patavium is losing money hand over fist. But the truth is different. Patavium is putting 4468 in my kitty per turn (which is pretty low, my most profitable cities rake in >10000), whilst Segestica is putting 3145. If I were to slaughter the population down to the level of Segestica, it would indeed make it appear as if the city is now making a profit, but my income in taxes, trade, and probably admin would have been hit, making my overall income lower, and therefore losing money overall. I estimate that a loss of 25,000 citizens would decrease income by over 1,000 denarii[*]. This would, of course, be offset by the looting income, and perhaps the Senate bounty and any entertainment/garrison costs you no longer need, but in the long run I think you're better off managing your discontent.
[*] (4468 - ~1000) - ~1800 =~ +1700 profit

[ToranagaSama]

Dude, FIRST, let me say THANK YOU for the effort, because I am at a true loss to comprehend how RTW's economic systems works! It is the bane of my RTW existence. Bare with me cause I haven't taken a math class, nor dealt with much of it since my Wall St. days, so w/o a calc or a computer I, seriously, can't even add!!! hahaha....

BUT, words and logic are my business!!

OK, using your example, -3247 +1414 = -1833, so you're operating at a loss.

If you exterminate the good folks of Pativium, then you'll still have the income infrastucture, and one would hope the Income dervied from it, particularly, Trade, Mining and Farming.

I'm not sure I've got this at all, but taking your words and my experience:

"If I were to slaughter the population down to the level of Segestica, it would indeed make it appear as if the city is now making a profit,...."

From the above, Pativum would now be making a "profit", correct?

If so, then even if Pativium produced a zero sum profit, then along with Segestica's profit, overall you're in the black with a profit of 1414.

This is MUCH better than being in the red with a net -1833.

Maybe I'm missing something???

The way I see it, is that no matter what the population level, nor the taxes received from that population, if that City operates at a LOSS, its an albatross.

Eliminating that Loss, even if it's just a Zero sum gain, Overall, your Income *should* result in a Net Gain by the amount of the Loss.

The key to all this, I *believe* is in understanding the relationship of Population/Population Loss to Expenditures. It would seem in the experience I described, the population loss (Extermination), consequently reduced Expenditures to a level resultant to Profit, and the consequent overall Net Gain.

Thank you again for your comments.

I'd appreciate your thoughts.

[Kraxis]

ToranagaSama, it seems to me that he meant that those two cities were representatives of the sizes, not that they were the only cities.

[Don Megel]

Well that campain is now a victum of the save corruption bug...yay...

But, it was my understanding that the loss in money came from corruption in over populated cities. Thus, if you drop the pop, corruption lessens and you get more money. I know you'd also loose some tax revenue but I think it evens out..but then again I could be wrong...

[ToranagaSama]

Ahhhh.....isn't *Corruption*, counted as Positive income?
Maybe you mean *Squalor*?

Kraxis, perhaps your correct, in which case, my head hurts. ;)

[Count Fudgula]

I think the Upkeep remains the same no matter what the pop of the cities, it just gets spread around differently, and as it is such a large proportion of the costs you'll be in bigger debt if you cut the population, which in turn reduces taxes and some other stuff (hmm, bit vague here, does population effect trade/farming?). Also, I think wages are for your generals and likewise won't decrease if you cut the pop.

[Don Megel]

Squalar, thats what Im thinking of, if I kill off the troublsom pesants dosent that go down and thus save me money?

[TinCow]

The way I see it, is that no matter what the population level, nor the taxes received from that population, if that City operates at a LOSS, its an albatross.

Eliminating that Loss, even if it's just a Zero sum gain, Overall, your Income *should* result in a Net Gain by the amount of the Loss.

What you're missing is that the upkeep load will shift. While the newly de-populated city will be making a profit, the other cities in your empire will see a decrease in their income. Unless you lost a large number of units in the process, your military upkeep will remain the same. Upkeep is paid by cities in proportion to their population, so think of it like this:

You have two cities, A and B. City A has 75% of your population and City B has 25% of your population. City A has an income from trade, taxes, etc. of 600 and City B has an income of 300. If your overall upkeep is 1000 dinarii, City A will pay for 750 of that (75%) and City B will pay for 250 of that (25%). This means City A will display a loss of 150 dinarii per turn while City B will display a profit of 50 dinarii per turn.

Now, if you exterminate City A such that its population drops to the same as City B, you get the following scenario. Cities A and B now have 50% of the population of your empire each. Thus, they both pay 50% of the upkeep. City A will thus pay 500 and City B will thus pay 500. Since City B has been untouched, its income remains the same at 300 and it will show a loss of 200. Assuming City A keeps the same income, it will now show a profit of 100. As such, even though the numbers make it look like you have 'fixed' City A, you still have the same total income.

However, now take into account the fact that exterimating a city will dramatically reduce its tax income and may destroy some trade buildings, and you see that City A will actually have its income decreased, even if the numbers still 'show' an improvement. When you have a huge empire, this can be particularly hard to spot because the financial 'shift' will be so small for each of your other cities that you probably won't notice the drop. However, the reality is that you have simply shifted the payment burden onto the other cities while reducing the income of the de-populated one.

In simpler terms, income is city specific while upkeep is born by the entire empire. Regardless of how much your city's income changes, the upkeep will remain the same. You can shift it around a bit to make it look prettier, but in the end you still have to pay it.

[therother]

In simpler terms, income is city specific while upkeep is born by the entire empire. Regardless of how much your city's income changes, the upkeep will remain the same. You can shift it around a bit to make it look prettier, but in the end you still have to pay it.

Thank you, I was going to write a more simple post like this one, but you've saved me the effort.

Just to annoy you all, I'm going to now detail a situation where it is very much in your interest to butcher the population. Say you have taken a huge (30,000+), inland city from a rival, which is far away from your capital (let's say a 60% penalty), has a high culture penalty at 60%, has got lots of squalor at 130% - the AI seems strangely adverse to building water supply buildings- has 30% unrest from all the upheaval. To balance all that you've garrisoned an army made up 19 units of Urban Cohorts, are having to hold both daily games and races (+60%), have low taxes (+30%), and you have a good influence governor (say +20% to public order) and even after all that, it's still on the verge of rioting.

Well, then you would be spending: (19* 320) + (4*400) = 7680 denarii to keep the city in not very good order at all. This makes very little sense, especially as you'll probably want those legionaries for other, more taxing, duties than garrison duty.

In this case, as you will probably be getting less than 3000 denarii income - without sea trading you aren't going to get much better - and you may be suffering from residual devastation from the fight to "liberate" the city, as well as the inevitable corruption, which will be a significant proportion of your income as you are in the far flung regions of your empire. In such cases, you may very well be served in leaving it to revolt and going all Dalek on the population. You would then lose much less per turn overall. You can then build the city back up properly, building the water supply (and perhaps growth temple) buildings early and ensuring that squalor doesn’t get as much of a fold hold.

So what I'm saying is that it's not a hard and fast rule: assess the situation individually, gauge how long it will take for those penalties to subside, and the city to return to profitability. Unfortunately you must calculate province "upkeep" yourself by subtracting the upkeep of both the region defence units (mountain passes, bridges, forest ambushers, etc.) & the garrison units in the city itself, and any necessary entertainment and happiness construction costs (such as replacing cultural building and constructing/improving health buildings). Unrest usually goes pretty quickly, whereas you can assist the cultural integration for the locals by replacing their Cultural building (temples and entertainment) with good Roman establishments. So if you deem that you can afford to wait for the city to become profitable again, then I recommend that you do so.

One point to note is, unlike in pervious TW games, there is now a hard limit (20 units of peasants, I suppose, or 19 with a good Governor) to the garrison pubic order bonus. Previously you could pacify any province by moving in gigantic peasant armies. This is no longer so.

Incidentally, I'm currently in the process of collating what I can find out about the financial system into a guide of sorts. It's very much going to be a work in progress, even after it's "finished". Assuming, of course, that I can find the time to complete it, and that it comes up to scratch, i.e. that it doesn't make things even more muddy those not particularly mathematically inclined, you may see it in a few days.

[Don Megel]

THanks for that simplified explanation, I am terrible at math.

My new question, then, is about squalar. How do I prevetn it? Would moveing the population to smaller cities via peasant units help with this? Once it happens how do I fix it? Would I be a bad person for prodding that one city into revolt and killing its people just cuz they have given me so much trouble?

[Inuyasha12]

I beleive that squalor is bad, slum-like living conditions. Building public baths/sewers and acueducts like aforementioned can begin to lower this. Also if a city begins to overpopulate and you haven't made the next goverment building to upgrade it it will begin to get very high squalor. A massacre can of course lower squalor tremendously because youre killing 1/3 of the populace. Also many members have been saying how you can lower squalor from newly conquered cities via peasant units(making them in the city you want to lower squalor in and disbanding them in another). Also a more horrid way has been talked about, sending the plague to a overly populated city via infected general or agent...

Also i think that better farms can also lower squalor?
And there might be a temple bonus too..

Also i want to personally thank Therother and Tincrow for your explainations, they've made many thing clearer to me and i beleive many others.

Thank you.

[therother]

By far the best way to eliminate squalor is forward planning. You want your cities to be as large as possible. So don't allow those cities to develop slums in the first place. Construct water supply buildings for each settlement level before you reach the next city level. If you don't, squalor will become a nightmare. If you do, your cities will eventually level themselves out, as squalor will eventually balance out your growth rate.

Also i think that better farms can also lower squalor?
And there might be a temple bonus too..

Temples, definitely. For example, Juro is the Brutii version, although pantheons bestow a wide range of bonuses, from public health to unit experience. Not sure about farms, perhaps as a 2nd order effect?

Thank you.

Glad to help.

BTW, if anyone’s interested, I'm just getting the hang of the garrison loyalty bonus. It has to do with the ratio of troops to the population. In this case we would have ~1600 troop to 30000 plebs. That's 5.3% of the population. I estimate that should give a garrison bonus of around 35%. The relationship seems to be somewhat linear, but I think it may diverge. The problem is that it's a little clunky, in that it varies in steps of 5%.

Anyway, this is rough and ready to be sure, but it gives you a reasonable guesstimate:

Garrison bonus ~= -2.8 + 701*(garrison strength/population)

So –2.8 + 701*(1600/30000) ~ 35%, which is about right

Health warning: this won't even be remotely accurate as the expression in the brackets approaches 1! I will try to simplify this ASAP.

Edit: These calculations only hold true for large units sizes. The game appears to scale the garrison effect according to the average size of the units in the game. So two units of Hastati have the same relatively effect from small to huge unit sizes. Ergo you need to scale appropriately. Multiple the result of the equation by the following factors to get the right result:

• 4 for small
• 2 for normal
• 0.5 for Huge

[andrewt]

Squalor is all about planning. Unless you're going for huge city (24,000 population), it isn't much of a problem at all. A few public order buildings (temples, arenas, execution squares) would solve the problem. The sewer line raises both public order and population growth so it's mostly for growing the population, not maintaining public order. The increased squalor from increased population will cancel out the public order bonus.

For huge cities, build farm improvements in such a way that you barely get to 24,000. You don't want to exceed 24,000 as you'll just get increased squalor and you'll need a bigger garrison to maintain order. A good trick for factions that have a temple like Ceres' (population growth) is to build it to get to 24,000 then destroy it and replace it after you build the imperial palace.

As for garrisons, use peasants. 100 upkeep for 120 units make them the cheapest for garrison duty.

[therother]

All right, as part of my investigation of the financial model, I've done a few experiments with the effect of decreasing/increasing populations. I’ll just post the figures and comment at the end. This was on Medium difficulty.

Tarentum, my capital, population 31,619 men, extensively connected via sea trade routes.

Farms 1036
Mining 0
Taxes 1000
Trade 6985
Admin 1623
Total 10644

Upkeep 5723
Wages 937
Total 6660

Profit +3984

Now I hacked the population down to just 5,000 men.

Farms 1036
Mining 0
Taxes 654
Trade 5886
Admin 1263
Total 8839

Upkeep 950
Wages 155
Total 1105

Profit +7734

The 'profit' figures are identical to the figures shown on the main campaign map.

Take home message: overall income fell by 1805 denarii or 17%. I fast-forwarded 6 turns to see if there was any knock on effects from the population decline (like loss of trade routes, especially imports) but there didn't seem to be any, and my population was regenerating at lightening speed as squalor had dropped from 110% to 15%! That gave me a growth rate of a mighty 10%. At that rate, I'd be back to its previous size in less than 10 years (20 turns)!

One thing I would comment on is that the Settlement details screen has a different value for trade income than the Trade Details screen. For instance, the former has the 6985 I quoted above, whilst the later has 5885. The game uses the 6985 value in calculating the income from each city, so perhaps it is the accurate value. Perhaps I'm getting trade income that I can't see, for gaming reasons, i.e. a from a city I don't have trading rights, or current map information. Or it could be a bug.

Hmm, okay, just tried it with Croton and with that city income was more seriously hit. Income was slashed from 6000 per turn to less than 3000. Perhaps Tarentum was shielded by being the capital? Or was it the numerous established sea trade routes? I'm sure there is an answer. Experiments continue...

[sunsmountain]

Health warning: this won't even be remotely accurate as the expression in the brackets approaches 1! I will try to simplify this ASAP.

Indeed, Please! Taking your 1600 soldiers and 30000:

700 * 1600/30000 = 37,33% public order, which rounds to 35%. Good enough! What do you think CA programmers used? Order = 0 + 700*X, or 2.8 + 701*X?
(for Large).

Now people in other threads are using your guesstimate to do calculations, making them more complicated than necessary, and leading to difference of up to 8%, for no other reason than standard deviations in these trial functions(!)

[Kraxis]

sunsmountain 'the Necromancer'.

How did you come by to answer in a thread this old?

[sunsmountain]

therother quoted it in this thread/post:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...530#post743530


I thought this thread was still actual, since another user used the formula therother quoted, but it wasnt. Sorry for necromancing, but how about Lock thread and move to archive/graveyard?

[Kraxis]

Hey don't feel sorry! It was relevant to you, and there was no broken rules, so by all means it should stay open. I was just very surprised that such an old thread was apparently brought back to life for no obvious reason.
That is called Necromancy.

[therother]

There have been a few attempts to quantify the garrison effect. Dorkus also made an attempt, which he reports here. The actual thread where we discussed it is still in the Colosseum somewhere.

The problem is, as I allude to above, and in the link, garrison is only approximately linear. When X is relatively small, the thing diverges.

Also, there are problems near the transitions. A similar thing affects the distance to capital formula.

A few examples using 700X:

[Fisherking]

You know with countless playings, I have not seen that any of that holds true… I have sent spies to see what a city’s income was before capture & if it was loosing money then it will be loosing money when you take it… except if you trash the population & then it makes money.

I often incite the cities to rebel so I can wipe them out & make money for a time at least. I think it is a matter of corruption as that figure is both positive or negative on the ledger… the actual method it works by is unknown to me but killing population is the only way I have found to handle some cities…. AND it doesn’t matter if it starts as your or if you capture it. There are a few cities that never loose money & a few that always loose money but most others to varying degrees are managed by reducing population…. Some times plague is your friend.

The best thing to do is to keep an Onager close by so you can assault the city when it revolts. This will usually happen when the riots start killing troops. Take the garrison out just leaving your governor alone…also it is not a good time to build anything new as it will be lost anyway. I have noticed that other cities become less likely to rebel when you kill population so if you have several cities try to do them all in the same time frame, even waiting a turn for that other city to rebel before recapturing a city can help…hey, your are loosing money anyway so one more turn won’t hurt that much.

Anyway I am not so pleased with the actual working of the economy in this game but yes killing population dose prove profitable...the only down side is in small towns where it takes forever before you can build troops...but there are ways around that too. Peasants work well for moving populations...