Most profitable / sustainable building plan for large provinces?

[Sokratesz]

I'd like to get some input on what others are using for building plans in large stable provinces such as Italica and Africa. How do you maximise profits while keeping an eye on food levels, and what kind of happiness is enough to safeguard occasional setbacks?

I'm about halfway a game now, and at first built nymph shrine thingies in most of my conquered lands to maximise happiness, but later on (after getting circuses everywhere) replaced them with the kind that gives a little less happiness and a little more wealth from all buildings (the foot shrine), and the kind that improves unit recruitment in certain provinces. However, now that I can build latifundia I am running into some happiness problems and cannot upgrade them everywhere.

I'm also not quite sure about the kind of 'cancelling out' that certain buildings do. For example fishmongers yields a lot of food, but also unhappiness, which can be countered with a hymph shrine which consumes food, but then what's the gain at the end?

[zynkin]

I build profit centers, war centers, and then farming colonies.

In the profit centers I select an area that has at least three ports and make them all trade ports, I build the trade & econ temples and then I build the industry and trade buildings in the capital of the region. I also use the tax edict in these regions. Those regions are taking in over 5k by the time they are level 3. Takes some careful crafting to balance happiness to get them up to lvl 4.

[Virtual0Slayer]

My every province is:
Capital- military(barracks,support building=workshop etc.) + yellow, brown or pink
and if its a port city also a millitary dock
Towns- usually green(food and money), but also can if need brown,pink...

Basically capitals are war centers and guards of the region, being able to muster an army behing the safety of walls.
And the towns are the food and money providers.

[Sokratesz]

Originally posted by Virtual0Slayer:

My every province is:
Capital- military(barracks,support building=workshop etc.) + yellow, brown or pink
and if its a port city also a millitary dock
Towns- usually green(food and money), but also can if need brown,pink...

Basically capitals are war centers and guards of the region, being able to muster an army behing the safety of walls.
And the towns are the food and money providers.

Over many TW games I've gotten into the habit of specialising a few or sometimes even just one province as my training grounds, while maximising profits and such in the others. So far it has worked for me in Rome-II, but do you reckon it will break down at some point?

[Virtual0Slayer]

Originally posted by Sokratesz:

Over many TW games I've gotten into the habit of specialising a few or sometimes even just one province as my training grounds, while maximising profits and such in the others. So far it has worked for me in Rome-II, but do you reckon it will break down at some point?

Well there is a couple of major gaping flaws.

As your empire grows larger it becomes harder and harder to backtrack to retrain your army.And it can be a real ♥♥♥♥♥ to lose a high tech lvl unit and not being able to replace it.

Also should your recruitment center say get conquered you are left only with slingers(good think slingers rock, ha get it :D)

Atleast make a couple recruitment camps around the world: 1 in europe, 1 in africa, 1 in asia minor etc. just to be sure and not have to go half the world to replenish your armies.

But luckily the ai be dumb as hell so you can prolly get around with anything.

[Cultus]

As Macedon I've only got a couple of provinces with military buildings in all of my empire, which encompasses everything to the east and south of greece. Thankfully your units will get replenished regardless of the buildings in any particular province, and they're rarely wiped out completely (at least mine aren't). So just put a solid army together in the first place, and it should last pretty much forever.

All other provinces have a solid mix of buildings aimed for maximum profit (by my reckoning), with farms+temples in towns for food and public order, and industry+city centers in the province capitals for wealth.

[wizzam]

Another possible flaw with only a couple of recruitment centres is Civil War. That screws up the best laid plans...

[Sokratesz]

I just ran into the civil war thing around 70BC, but it happened to a province that wasn't of any value, and I've not played on or decided what to do with it.

[Cultus]

I played right throught the civil war with those few recruitment centres. Raised a new army in one of the centres, and another army with a handful of mercenaries in a town that I predicted they would attack. As soon as my other armies arrived on the scene, which was 1-2 turns of forced marching later, I was able to wipe out the enemy without breaking a sweat. All in all, it was merely a small bump in the road, albeit an entertaining one.