Running an Empire

Politics should not be a side thought due to the huge impact it can have in the future. The political mechanics are based upon popularity and ultimately votes. We will take the senate of rome as our example.

The political system works by members of the family gaining political rank through endevours such as winning battles, capturing cities and completing main objectives. Now you are all probably wondering what the hell is gravitas, well this is how important the member of the family is by the deeds they have accomplished through winning battles etc. By becoming more powerful you can spend these influence points to gain a political title such as aedile or console etc. The more powerful that person becomes the more influence you will have in the senate. Influence points can only be spent to the general whom is winning the battles and capturing cities, you can not just simply secure promotion on any general of your family.

The overall influence is determined by the members of the family even whom are dead. You can as previously stated spend influence points to bribe, assassinate, secure promotion or marriage but doing so will of course take some power away from your overall influence. Think of your total influence as the total amount of points you have to spend on political actions. You wish to increase this as much as possible but there may be times you have no option but to say, adopt one of the other family generals whom of which may be on the frontline therefor that particular family would be gaining influence from battles.

Marriage should only be considered and used when another political party is more powerful thus you gaining more influence. Never marry to another family if they are less powerful as they will gain more power and not you. Assassinations should be used to take care of those powerful individual family members which you do not have direct control over. Those are referred to as statesmen and can become very powerful. But you must weight up the benefits of an assassination as failure may result in multiple assassination attempts and greatly lower your overall influence. Bribing is a key component as gaining full military control by bribing generals to your family will result in absolute authority in the battlefield therefore your family gaining all the influence.

You can replace generals in the field so they become statesmen which i highly recommend you do in peace time. Do this for high gravitas characters whom have gained at least on or two promotions. You must go into character details and there will be a option to replace the general or admiral of the army. If you find yourself at war during any period and you wish your own family members to take control of the army once again simply replace the general or admiral in question.

Eventually you will become to powerful and a all out civil war will break out with all other politcal families marching on the capital to try take control of the empire for themselves. You can of course control where the political influence will be by specifically winning and moving your armies around the fronts ensuring the right generals win battles and influence. The choice where the political power will be is ultimately in your hands so choose wisely as it may be the last thing you do!

The civil tree is one of the most important aspects to maintain a rapid growing empire. However striking a key balance between military and civil policies is a decision you will have to take into account at the very beginning of a campaign. This is not to say your strategy will not change because change is inevitable however it will certainly make things a lot easier come the later stages.

So you have made your decision your either going for full military power, developing economic power through trade and production or finally constructing religious buildings to spread culture and improve public order (there are other stats which can be improved such as commerce).

Whatever strategy you have chosen there will always be a need to balance both military and civil policies out. Both tech policies are broken down into another three smaller tech trees which can hugely impact on the overall direction and playing style you choose. Do you research certain tech to gain troop superiority, or do you research a tech which enables construction of more valuable economic buildings. You must at all times consider the consequences constructing certain buildings as there are stats such as negative public order which can hugely impact the growth on the entire empire. A fine balance can be stuck by developing entertainment and high public order religious buildings within a province capital city. All other smaller cities can focus on economic and food buildings which should balance out food production and overall happiness in a province.

I would strongly suggest to focus on civil matters which once a balance of all three tech trees within the civil policy are striken you will gain an economic powerhouse advantage to quickly dominate neighbouring factions. That is not to say you should neglect the military policies however researching the best units at the begging has an adverse effect on the growth and empire economy as a whole. You may well go down this route but bare in mind you need a strong financial backbone with a surplus of food to maintain your armies and fleets.

So you are wondering how do we make shed loads of money in quick time.Trade agreements are your friend, trust me i have excess of 5000+ just through trade alone which mostly comes from the eastern empires and those of Athens and Seleucids. Taking into consideration future expansion trade agreements are by far the easiest way to gain income even with your worst enemy (you may just personally declare a faction an enemy even if you haven’t went to war before, yes I am looking at you Carthage!).

Trade of course scales up depending on the infrastructure you have developed within your provinces as well as certain techs which can modify the efficiency of tax tariffs etc. Trade can become your main income however do not over extend by raising armies and fleets with no margin of financial backlash. What i mean is if your trade is coming from certain areas of the world then protect these routes and chose your enemies carefully. One war can escalate with long term trading partners and allies turning their back on you which your finances will take a huge hit not to mention maintenance for armies and fleets will be diminished. As you can see this has a knock on effect so i would suggest never to drift into the income you gain from trade and use this as pure profit, use taxes and local economic power to finance your armies and fleets

Trade agreements become far more common and easier with good relations with empires and the first step to achieve that is non aggression pacts. Once you have one trade agreement and improve relations with other factions you will see them flooding in and swelling your coffers in the process. Some factions may require you to pay a lump some of money in exchange for a trade agreement if you play your diplomatic cards right and improve relations you can bypass this and a trade agreement should be enough without any financial requirement involved.

Public order is what i consider the most important aspect of maintaining a productive and happy empire. However how do we maintain public order but balance out the development of cities. Well you need to take many factors into consideration, public order have both negative and positive modifies which need to be analyised before any action is taken. Do we construct that lovely religious building which provides a huge bonus to public order but requires food in the process.

Well you can go down the route of specalizied or generalzed cities. Specalized cities are those which you chose to produce a certain type of lets say a religious city rather than financial. The main benefit of this is you can focus on one specific type of development but you must protect it at all costs or there may be some series implications to your empire.There is however a limit to specalist cities and that is squalor is produced or negative public order modifiers in particular food buildings such as farms. So for every farm you build you need the equivalent or i would highly reccomend far greater public order bonus from religious or entertainment buildings.

You must be aware food is the backbone of your empire as much as income is. Without a surplus of food you can not construct certain buildings or really advance any further. Also armies will suffer attrition if you have a negative amount of food and eventually could lead to a whole army being destroyed.

You must consider what sort of buildings would benefit public order immediately because you can later convert these buildings in future to a more specific type. Please bare in mind public order affects the whole province so buildings from all cities of a provice stacks up. So you can have one city produce all food and another religious buildings. But i would suggest to always have a surplus of positive public order as there are other factors which can disrupt this such as enemy agents, random events or even enemy conflict resulting in one city of a provice being taken which results in a negative for the entire region. Develop at least on farm and one religious buildings in every city as oppose to two farms and two religious buildings in a city (specialist) as you never quiet know if a city will be captured. This minimizes the risk of a food or even public order shortage.

Growth of your cities is very important, growth can be affected by generals traits or traits from your agents as well as buildings types such as farms and what not. The faster a city grows the more buildings you can contruct. Once a city expands the player has the option to expand the city via icon in the construction panel. All cities can expand however captial cities have the most capacity and therefor is considered the most important aspect of a province.

Once you have captured all cities within a provice you have the opportunity to activate an edict which can further enhance public order and growth rate of a city. In particular the bread & games edic is one in which i always select when focusing on developing a province as fast as possible and maintaining public order. But this edict consumes alot of food whilst improving public order by a small amount. I highly reccomend only using this to quickly grow a province then switch to a more commercially viable solution such as collection more tax only when you have the infrastructure in place. This will boost your income and the suprlus food being spend by the bread and games edict is now available to allocate to other parts of the empire.

Squalor is a major problem if you do not comprehend the ramifications of your city building types. Remember some buildings in particular farms and industry buildings produce squalor whilst their main aim is either food or commerce output. You must make the decision, can you build this particular type within a provice (remember all city stats of buildings stack up for the entire province) or do you wait until you research the proper technology to either improve public order or unlock buildings which specifically improve public order but consume food in the process. Also if you encounter slums you must manually destroy these within your city or a huge negative public order can result in a rebel revolt if public order is low.

The more advanced the building type the higher the squalor will be. Therefor i suggest changing the provinces which have no farms and no financial income worth worrying about to avoid paying tax. This will stop the city from paying tax but you will see the city now doesnt consume food which it cant support itself in the first place (food wise). You can save alot of food resources and take as little as 500 income loss depending on the province in question.

Newly conquered provinces are a big hit on your food surplus and dont if not all cities within a province produce any benefit whilst collecting tax. I highly reccomend exempting a province from tax until the infrastrucure is in place. THis works in every way possible by quelling public unrest, improving growth rate and the big one avoiding this province from consuming food when it is not neccessary.

Below is an example of a newly conquered city which as you can see the city has no farms therefor it is not self sufficient food wise and the other two screenshots are when i exempt the province of tax and not. By using this method it allowed me to produce the highest building types within my other provinces to improve public order, whilst i had massive excess of income and food to improve all my other important provinces.

Consider the implimcations to your income by doing so. Only do this if you in certain you can cope with the financial loss. As you can see i have one city in that province so i could in future capture the other cities produce food buildings and then set the tax resemption off to collect the income again. If you have followed the rules about trading before then you should have no problems in taking the small financial loss but the benefits far outweight the negatives.