Gold, beautiful gold! Running your economy
Money, without it your empire is doomed. Making money seems to be one of the biggest stumbling blocks new players encounter. It really is quite easy when you know how.
Money is spent on many things; the only on-going expenses each turn are wages for your armies, family, and agents. You will probably lose a bit of money to corruption as your underlings decide to give themselves a well deserved bonus without bothering to ask you; well you are busy conquering the world so it’s quite thoughtful of them, really … kind of. Money is forked out as a one off sum each time you order a building or unit to be constructed. Note that queuing up items takes the money from your treasury now, even if the item will not be built for another 20 turns. Retraining or repairing a building costs money; the amount is proportional to the work needed. Retraining a unit from 1 man back up to 160 and equipping them with better weapons and armour costs much more than just re-equipping a 160 man unit in need of no new men.
The Big 50k
As your treasury hits a certain preset limit you will find your family members becoming more corrupt. That limit is 50, 000 denarii. It’s a good idea to try and keep below this figure to limit the vices, unless you have a real passion for seeing your might empire run by a family of gambling addicts, embezzlers, collectors of expensive vases, and dirty old men who spend entire fortunes on dancing girls. Every night. For the rest of their lives.
The not so big 13k
In BI the preset limit for corruption is much lower, just 13,000 denarii. This was actually raised from the original even tighter limit by the 1.6 patch. The patch also made the corruption traits a bit harder to gain by making it necessary for a governor to be in a forth level city before the game starts rolling that virtual dice to see if any traits from these lines are gained. The chances of gaining each trait are also much lower than in the original BI release.
Farming.
Farming provides a small part of your income, but you don’t have to do anything to start tapping into it. Your cities will farm automatically, although you can upgrade the farms yourself to bring in more cash and boost your population growth. As we discussed earlier this is seldom a good idea. Farm income depends on the quality of the farm land; provinces like the Nile delta have great farmlands and naturally make more money than the Sahara. It is important to know that farm income is not stable; a bad harvest will reduce your profits and a good one will boost them. You will not be notified of the harvests your cities are getting; you can find out by calling up the city’s trade information screen. As with so many things to do with farming you cannot influence the kind of harvests you get.
Basically farming is a nice, steady earner with no input or expenditure required. Just sit back and let the cash trickle in. You will not be able to rely on farming income alone; you must supplement it with other forms.
The exact formula for farming income, courtesy of Zukarakox:
Farming Output = % gained from base farming x 200 + Numbar gained from farms. (Its listed in the info of farms)
Farming Income = (72 + 4 x Level of Town(Town = 1, Large town = 2)) x Farming Output
Taxes.
Taxes can be summed up essentially as more people=more taxes. Breaking it down further than that requires some rather unpleasant looking maths and it’s really not important for anyone but the numerically minded stat loving player. If you really want to know more check this thread. Increasing your tax rate gets you more money, decreasing it gets you less. How shocking. Your difficulty level also appears to affect tax income; harder difficulties get slightly less then the base rate (normal) and easy gives slightly more.
Taxes are a steady flow of cash; you probably won’t pay much attention to them as they hum along in the background nicely.
Mining.
Mining is simple; if a province has mining resources then you can build mines to exploit them, if there are no resources there can be no mines. Mining resources can be spotted on the map; they look like little nuggets of metal. There are two different kinds of mining resources: gold and silver. I think that they bring in the same amount when mined, although in previous Total War games the amount was dependant on the resource type. There are two levels of mines; mines and mines +1. Mines +1 will bring you more money than simple mines but you have to build the plain mines first and the city the province belongs to must be at size 2 or more. You outlay more and bring more back, trading cash in hand now for extra cash at the start of each subsequent turn. I find that to be a fair exchange.
Mine income is stable, unlike the other forms of income. Mines never have bad harvests, they do not get blockaded and war does not put an end to the income. If a mine says it will generate 200 denarii per turn it will do so until it is destroyed or upgraded. Small but steady are the key words when talking about mining income. I always build mines when I have the opportunity, usually as a matter of some priority just behind roads, basic ports and any buildings I need to get the city happy.
Trade.
Ah, now we are talking about real money. Trade is more expensive to set up and gets more expensive as you try to make it more efficient. It is unreliable; roads and ports can be blocked by enemy or rebel armies and this will hurt your income. You cannot trade with people you are at war with so it is easy to trash your economy with a badly timed war. Trade really requires you to send diplomats to pester people for trade agreements. Those are the downsides, now the upside: huge quantities of cash.
Salivating yet? Probably, the prospect of huge piles of cash to spend on cities and armies can have that effect. I would ask that you try to dribble into a bucket or something instead of making a mess on the floor; I only just had the slaves polish the mosaics.
Roads and land trade.
Roads carry out land trade. Land trade is represented by little caravans rolling along the roads on the campaign map. More caravans = more trade = more money. The better road types can take more caravans; therefore it is a great idea to always upgrade your roads. This also boosts your army and agents move speeds inside your empire, so that’s a win-win situation. Froggy loves roads; you should love them too. Um, ok if froggy is honest roads do have a single downside: they speed enemy movement too, so if someone invades you will have less time to react. However I do find this to be a tiny fly in a very big, pleasant smelling tub of ointment. Any enemy or rebel army parked on a road will halt the flow of caravans, cutting off part of your trade. Smack the army with extreme prejudice to restore the cash flow.
Land trade appears to take place between all of your cities automatically, as long as they are linked by a road. This nets you a small income which appears to grow depending on how good the roads are between the two places. It also seems that land trade will take place with neutral or allied factions if you have a road connection even if you do not have a trade agreement. It is suspected that you have to know about a city (as in you can see it on the campaign map, even if it is currently under the fog of war) before you can trade with it. Problematically you will not trade with all the cities you know about. Trading partners are selected automatically each turn by your merchants; they will select the partner who will bring in the most profit.
Ports and sea trade.
Each level of port can sustain one trade route up to a maximum of three when a dockyard is built. You will see a blue dashed line with tiny ships sailing along it flowing between your port and the trade partner. Trade partners are chosen each turn according to how much profit they will bring you; your merchants automatically select the best partner. You do not need to build any ships to trade. You may find the AI blockades your trade ports when you are at war; you will need warships to lift the blockade and restore your sea trade income to the targeted province. Shorter sea trade routes will make more money than longer ones. If an importing city is too far away no trade will take place, i.e. Londinium is not keen on selling to Alexandria because it’s a slightly long trip, especially when there is that nice Tara place right nearby. This does mean that cities tend to trade with the same partners, game after game.
Trade agreements.
A thorny subject and the main source of mystery. According to the manual a trade agreement boosts the amount made from trade between the two partners. Trade agreements increase the number of markets you can sell to, according to CA’s FAQ. I suspect this means potential markets you can sell to, as opposed to letting you trade with more people at once. Since your merchants will automatically trade with the most profitable market each turn having more to chose from is a good thing. Collecting trade agreements is generally easy and acts as good training for your diplomats.
Trade buildings.
The trade family of buildings (trader, market, forum etc) increases trade income in their home province. Thanks to the researchers over in the Ludus Magna we now know that the first trader building adds 10% to the trade income from land trade (the local settlement only), and 10% to all exporting routes. A further 10% is added for each increased level. So build trade buildings as and when you can, and rejoice in the extra benefits they bring, such as trainable agents like spies. Do note that these buildings increase population growth very slightly. The distance between land trading partners has no affect on how much the routes make, unlike sea trade.
So, to sum up trade: build roads and ports everywhere as quickly as possible. Upgrade them whenever possible. Get trade agreements, and try to remain at least neutral with most factions as war prevents trade. Build the trade family of buildings to boost profits. Keep your roads clear and an eye on your ports to spot those rare blockades. Combined with your farms and mines this should make you plenty of money, even if it is a bit vague and arcane.