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Sacking.
Putting skills and technologies into both of these activities.
The slave decline is really negligible. If you play aggressive you should have no problem keeping a high slave count.
Diplomacy can give a lot of money.
Raiding is useless, it isn't worth the time spent unless you really have no other options.
Sack then occupy if you have enough movement, otherwise just loot and occupy. I normally occupy my main provinces then i just sack and occupy everything else.
You need 101 slave to get income from them. So you don't need to worry to much about reaching the cap since it doesn't really give a lot of income to have more than 101.
600 slaves give you 1000 from edikt. So if for example you win a fight that gives you 500 slave or 1200 gold, you should then take the gold unless you need the slaves for other purpose ( Rituals )
Expand and keep sacking, even if you can't defend everything. Just make sure your initial province doesn't get sacked or attacked since you want to reach tier 5 as fast as possible.
Tier 5 normally unlock special buildings that comes with good bonus for your income.
You want to be building those everyone (except maybe for red/uninhabitable regions) and using the extra income to build more armies which conquer more land which allows you to build more money making buildings and so on.
It's incredibly aggressive and you have to always keep moving and fighting.
I won a Domination Campaign Victory as Malekith (on Legendary) on turn 118 and had about 50k slaves banked but was losing 10k a turn.
If you want a less frustrating experience I'd check my slave overhaul mod out, which doesn't increase your power but does make the system a lot more enjoyable:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2906963276
Since it sounds like you're newer to Dark Elves it'll probably make things easier for you -- which was part of the design goal, to be less punishing to new players while not being more powerful for veterans.
Millions?
Even my WH2 turn 182 full map control of Mortal Empires as Malekith was "only" making 1.3 million gold a turn.
Meanwhile I was making about 400k on turn 118 in WH3 as Malekith and the supply lines are 4% each instead of 15% each which was a huge difference -- if I have 30 armies that's the difference between paying 244 gold per turn for Dreadspears vs 604 gold per turn for Dreadspears.
(Of course a huge difference is the WH2 income won't ever go down while the WH3 income will crash and burn after five turns of not fighting)
Perhaps link it? If you go out of your way to excessively Assassin stack Tor Yvresse that province can get like 800k, sure, but then your other provinces are generally only getting 20-30k each.
In theory if you deliberately didn't keep conquering the map you could ramp your economy up higher from raiding/sacking and try to fill literally every province with slaves...but that's intentionally trying to get your economy as high as possible rather than, y'know, trying to win.
And again that's all being done with 15% supply lines instead of 4%.
Have your offensive fleets leave for far-away shores with no intention of conquest, just sacking for money and slaves. Conquest usually means that you need a landbased army to take the province, which is vastly more expensive.
Having a lot of navies patroling enemy coast lines also means that you can constantly engage with sea treasure nodes when they pop up, which is usually a nice buff or cash injection.
Keep most money making buildings at tier 1. They earn(at least) 300 gold per turn for minimal slave upkeep. You have to pace yourself with how many slaves you earn/have capacity for, and how many you "drain" per turn.
Staying above 100 is enough to have all your extra benefit buildings working at full efficiency, but you can get additional boons for your faction, if you stay above certain thresholds(I believe it is something like 2k+ and 5k+). These will increase various benefits, like %-bonus to all economy buildings, faster building construction etc., but also have a higher penalty on your Control of all your regions. So while getting a higher current slave population can be nice, your infrastructure needs to be able to handle it.
Also, your Dictats and Rites, as well as several province effects all cost slaves as well. How you decide to spend this resource(because that is what slaves are to them), is the only "challenge" to their economy.
Because their armies are very powerful. Both Dreadspears and Bleakswords punch above their tier for their cost due to Murderous Prowess and various upgrades you can get. Darkshards and Shades are easy accessible AP damage units. They have powerful shock-damage units(along with underappreciated cavalry) and various monsters. And they have access to some of the best lores of magic, which when combined with Black Ark bombardments will quickly decimate and dominate frontline battles. Basically, having Black Ark support is like having 1-2 extra casters free of charge(no WoM cost) during battles.
Battles in and of themselves can yield a lot of value, since Dark Elves can get a lot of "post battle loot" upgrades. Same deal for sacking, and to a lesser extend, raiding.
While trading is not a major focus for them(compared to their High Elf counterparts), finding a few decent trading partners can yield some extra income(an extra couple of thousand per turn eventually). Getting good relations with a trading partner shouldnt be too hard, if you raid and/or sack their enemies.
The current "easiest" Dark Elf faction to play is probably Lokhir Fellheart or Malekith. Lokhir gets really easy access to Black Arks. Malekith gives factionwide upkeep reduction on several units(including Blackguards) and can give various economic boons with his skills.
Other Dark Elf factions have their own spin on things(additional mechanics), but I would recommend that you understand how Dark Elf economy works before trying them out.
Not gonna lie I had to literally go in-game and check to see that Black Arks do actually increase slave cap because I had never noticed that. On my turn 118 save I have a slave cap of 60kish and Black Arks are only providing about 3k of that, or 5%ish.
Black Arks *are* incredibly important for Dark Elves since they lack global recruitment but most of your armies should be land based. Like I have 5 Black Arks and 34 land based armies.
Don't do this, you're going to shoot yourself in the foot. Absolute worst case scenario you'll alternate between having no slaves and some slaves each turn, which for the level three slave building is (700 + 400)/2 = 550 gold per turn average, or much better than 300 gold from the level 1 building.
And as you get better you'll learn how to be more aggressive and get more slaves and avoid zeroing out. Plus building slots have opportunity cost when you could have a farm, slave building, Death Hag/Assassin capacity/etc instead.
Please don't leave your industry buildings at level 1. And if someone can demonstrate better results by doing that I am completely willing to learn and change my stance...but at a minimum you'll have to beat a Legendary turn 118 Domination Victory.
Also I strongly suggest you get the "Dreaded Slaver" skill ASAP, due to how the math works it's a much bigger boost than 25% more slaves.
Regardless, this is supposed to be tips and tricks for a player being new to the Dark Elves. Not a guide to win a Domination victory on Legendary difficulty(very few actually bother with that).
To reach Long Victory goals(much more common), you do not need a lot of armies, since most of Ulthuan(your goal) is coastal based, so just a few armies supported by Black Arks is enough to conquer it.
In terms of upkeep, you can have 4-5 Black Arks for every 1 army(same army composition), and they do not count towards supply lines. You definately want as many as possible and Lokhir can recruit 1 for every major settlement with a port(he does not need a rite), which makes it very easy for him to effectively have 5 armies before turn 20, where most other factions are stuck with only 2.
In terms of Capacity, a tier 5 settlement building adds 300 to your max slave cap. A tier 5 Black Ark adds 600. It is also far cheaper and faster to upgrade.
Again, it is not uncommon for Lokhir to reach slave cap of above 5k before turn 30.
Lower slave expenditure means it is easier to stay above thresholds, easier to use Dictates, Rites(especially getting those Black Arks) and Province buff when needed, and less likely to fall below 100 for several turns in case you, for some reason, are not able to get a few decent battles for some time(or worse, your expenditure is so high that even getting several thousand slaves from battles will ultimately not increase your slave population above 100 in the following turn).
Having two tier 1 money makers is better than having a single tier 2, but cost the same amount of slaves. Which is why there is no need to rush upgrading them, but rather have as many tier 1s as you deem decently sustainable.
Anything that grants "+% to income from slaves" falls away when you dip below 100, as will various growth and control bonuses. If you completely ignore this and constantly bounce back and forth between less and more than 100, one wrong move(like losing a key settlement) could make your infrastructure negatively spiral out of control, which is definately not a good beginner move to do, and probably why a new player might struggle with the Dark Elf economy.
The benefits of staying above, say, 5k slaves should not be underestimated either. 3 turn reduction on all building constructions(to a minimum of 1 turn) for all buildings(very fast developement), as well as reduced construction cost(-15%, if I remember right) and global increased income(+10% I think) will save you a lot of time and money. Cant remember what the bonus is when you get above 10k threshold.
You should obviously upgrade your tier 1 money makers as you become more and more able to keep the slave population high and constant. But early on you should not rush it, unlike most factions. You earn most of your money from combat anyway(Dark Elves have a battle economy), and the money spent on upgrading money buildings might be better spent on other things early on.
The OP already marked your comment as his preferred solution so I'm not sure he's even reading further, so I'll keep these comments brief.
Domination Victory for Dark Elves is usually won before Long Victory due to Teclis and Imrik who are on the other side of the map. If you luck out and both are eliminated, great, but so far I've never had that happen.
You do want as many Black Arks as possible, no argument there, and yes Lokhir is amazing with them.
Two tier 1s give 600g total, one tier 2 gives 500g total plus an open building slot for roads, resource buildings, growth, walls, hero capacity, control, anticorruption, or recruitment. One building slot is worth more than 100g and it's the same slaves consumed.
Yes, the 5k (and 800/2k/10k) threshold is powerful, but what you don't want to do is what I saw in someone's save file where it was turn 130 on hard, they had just conquered Ulthuan, and they had 36k slaves banked while only losing 300 slaves per turn (due to not building economy buildings and building tons of slave buildings). That's a trap to fall into when you're afraid of losing slaves -- sure, they could go 80+ turns before falling under the 10k threshold, but they had literally one fifth of my income and one third of my territory despite being 12 turns later in the game.
In the current system, slaves are meant to be lost and gained. If you do well, you should be able to keep up with slave loss. If you're starting out, you'll bounce back and forth between 0 and 2-5k or whatever you can get per turn in the mid-game.