A Basic introduction to running a stable economy, Combat, and now basically everything

for those having trouble maintaining profits at 2+ cities! Now featuring slightly more advanced topics! constructive comments welcome!

Foreword

this guide is ever-changing as this was written only 2 days in (initially it was anyways), and i will make an effort to keep up with everyone's inputs as well as gameplay changes and keep this updated. that said, this guide should give you a stable economy if you follow it well.

feel free to add to the conversation, if its noteworthy i'll be sure to add it into the guide too.

EDIT NOTE: in Section 1, there will be a strike-out of "unnecessary costs". the correct edit is "unnecessary importation of tools", however due to steam being half-retarded and not letting me insert anything, i can't add that it down there. just keep that in mind up here.

EDIT NOTE: This guide is becoming exponentially more long, detailed, and complex. use the navigation bar on the right to skip the giant walls of texts. if you are inclined towards TL;DR, just read the bold points; they should be straight forward enough to get you on the right track.

A step by step method of reaching your third city

when you first start, you will have a main city with wood, bricks, then a combination of 3 basic resources (usually fruits, grain and wool). whatever you start with will do fine in trading with the town in which you already have a trade agreement with, usually because that town has a business that depends on one of your resources.

DO NOT USE YOUR DEVELOPMENT POINTS UNTIL YOU HAVE HAD A GOOD LOOK AROUND YOU. the last thing you want is to waste them.

Build a trader immediately and start trading (balance) with that town. adding a few carts (i always add 2) will help him out, and you'll have a bunch of spare carts anyways so there's no harm.

once you have seen what that village is producing, upgrade corresponding businesses in your city to level 2-3 to meet their demands (and in the process, start making profit). generally fruits and bricks will be the last thing you upgrade in your town.

but if you wanna feel safe, just upgrade all your businesses to level 3.

now that you have a stable economy from the local trading point, you can start taking advantage of the extra settlers that you started with (depending on your start settings. this is written corresponding to 300,000, City 1+1). as traders need roads to go anywhere, i recommend taking a good look around you for good resources (especially coal), as well as the way the roads have been set up. of course, you can build roads with the building squad, but personally i am very stingy and would rather not pay 4000 bucks and wait. more reasons below.

here's where the development points come in handy. generally speaking, the various upgrades that allow you to specialise and military upgrades are useless, because they do not provide any direct benefits to you at the start of the game. the useful upgrade comes in the form of infrastructure, specifically the settler upgrades.



spend 2 development points on the first 2 settler upgrades. this will allow you to hastily set up new cities without the large resource investment that comes with it (because the settler now carries those resources).

here's where things get a bit tricky. you need to find decent resources, and you need roads. once you have found a location along the roads that have any decent resources you can build on , send your settler there and build a city there.



When determining what resources are worth settling down for, here are the ones i would make a settlement for:

- Wine (by itself) (~200 per unit)
- Coal (~80 per unit)
- Salt (80-100 or something per unit)
- Honey (with grain) (~100 per unit)
- Iron (~100 per unit)

(the values will be off, i can't remember them off the top of my head)

when determining which resources you should use, don't always pick the ones with green dots on them; think about what sort of upgraded business you intend on running there. this is where that third, unspent Development point comes in. based on which resource above that you had located, spend your third point for a developable resource:

- Wine: N/A (don't spend a dev point in this case)
- Coal: Pottery (200+ per unit)
- Salt: Meat (600 per unit)
- Honey: Bread (200+ per unit)
- Iron: Tools (~400 per unit)

these will be the goods that will net you large profits when trading, and hence are the resource you should focus on in your new city.

choose your businesses and upgrade the important goods to level 2 businesses right away. your development into infrastructure will give you 5 buildings for free, so make sure if there is a workshop that requires Tools to build, build those first. that way you can dodge unnecessary costs.

once you have allocated the last point, choose the resource you had found, along with its developable product. if you cannot build certain products (not enough cultivation for tools, or not enough cultivation for meat/grain), don't fret; the goods you have will still net you a good profit with the other towns. do not choose wood or bricks, even if you have salt. this is because you will be setting up supply and demand, and you can make a profit off of this 'lack of supply'. furthermore, you don't need to fully stock out 5 resources; it would be more beneficial to focus on the city's 'specialty' goods than an all-rounded city. as a matter of fact, if your main city started with grain, you can dodge grain altogether and upgrade it in your main city instead.



this is also a good time to explore and find out what the remaining towns are producing (there will be 2-3 Neutral Towns per region).

remember that trader that we set up earlier? go find him again. add your new city to the trade route. by adding more and more cities to a trade route, he will be able to net more profit as he walks along the trade route with goods that may not have been sold at the first city but will be sold at the second. When your trader takes wood and bricks to your second town, he will sell them (and most likely make a profit from them). this is a supply and demand that you have now set up between your towns, which will net you profits.

So what about the third city i promised?



here's where things slow down. in order to train a second settler, you will need a large sum of wood (250) and bricks (500), grain (57), and 100 free workers. chances are, your third town will not be located on roads, so once he's done you'll need a building squad too (if you haven't already got one). as such, you will most likely need to wait a while before this will happen. while you're waiting, you should learn to use the "all towns tab".

The All Towns Tab appears when you click into a city. it will be the last tab in the set of tabs you have, and will be arguably the most important tab in the game. whilst it will be hard to tell what is actually abundant or scarce, the function itself is very basic. if something is colored orange, build more production until it becomes slightly abundant. if something is colored green, stop building more production or it will crash your economy.

remember, the all towns tab only refers to your towns and their consumption rates, which means it does not reflect the true state of trading, because you are also trading with AI Towns (hence why it is not fully beneficial for starting out). as a general rule, just don't build more than level 4 for anything that isn't orange in the tab.

once your population starts building up, and you have approximately 20-30 free workers at any given time, it may be a good time to invest into your new settler. find a resource that is different from what you found before. variety is good yo!

it is around this point in which you should level up. choose your new development points based on what this third town is. with your 2 spare points, start investing towards pomp or clothing. these will be your real drivers of your economy.

pomp and clothing will give you 1000 and 800 per unit (respectively), and will help you saturate profits as they don't conflict with your other industries' abundancies. this is basically the icing on the cake.

your 4th, 5th and 6th cities should be focussed on whatever resources you still don't have, and refining them before trading with both foreign and domestic towns. the trading down between your own towns also gives you great income. from this point, you can manage your economy based on the all-towns tab, and easily start netting in large sums of money.

Raising an army

raising an army is something you should try last. units in your army have immense upkeeps and will severely cripple your economy if things go side-ways or you overextend. however, there are many situations that will leave you needing a military.

When to start training soldiers

Short Answer: When you see a red dot on your minimap.

Long Answer: your Empire Balance tab is the tab you should consult for this. rather, your sum balance.



Military units have upkeep ranging from 300 to 1300 per week. your Balance page by default covers 10 weeks of transactions, which means your military upkeep will negatively impact your sum balance by 3000-13000 per unit. and we're not even talking about knights yet.

in general, you should not recruit military units unless something happens, but if you do, the starting point is when your sum is greater than 20K (so you have some leeway). naturally, as you recruit the military units, your sum will drop considerably.



you may also consider massing a large deposit of money prior to training an army. this way, you can train an emergency army bigger than what you could technically support, at the cost of draining money slowly away. if your money hits 0, your units will lose morale and disappear, but your economy will continue running (into deficit, Bankrupting doesn't lose you the game automatically). in this sense, your 'emergency army' will simply disappear and your economy will recover again.



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Bandit waylaying

Bandits are your biggest nuisance and could make the difference between your winning, and you losing.



bandit camps, although rare, will nevertheless spawn, and sometimes spawn in the worst places imaginable. they become progressively stronger over time, and spawn out soldiers that will rob your caravans of all their goods as they pass by.

this could severely cripple your economy and lead you into debt extremely fast, so it is imperative that you:

a) destroy any bandit camps as soon as you can, even if it is an extremely large investment

or

b) deploy soldiers onto the roads to pre-occupy waylaying bandits, so they can't intercept your otherwise crucial caravans.

if you want to simply prevent waylaying, there is always the option of building towers. however, these cost development points to unlock so you won't be able to get them right away.



regardless, it is extremely important that any bandit threat is to be immediately neutralised. the longer you wait, the bigger the problem becomes.

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Competitors

first off, lets just say i shat myself the first time i fought this. and just like you'd expect, i didn't win.

the AI in this game is relentless. they won't just go to war with you for nothing, BUT they will continually get bigger. if you fall behind, you're in a terrible spot. especially given the game mechanics, you cannot play this like any other RTS where you can harass the enemy and whittle away his military. your military simply cannot do that given their range limit and their passive-aggressiveness.

keep a tab on how your opponents are doing in the competitors tab. if they are in front in terms of economy, naturally their army will be bigger too.



the enemy will fight with a very balanced composition of archers, swordsmen, mercenaries, spearmen, and cavalry. in other words, a bit of everything. how do you counter everything? with a bit of everything yourself. fighting the AI is a mass-fest. you will simply need to out-mass him if you want to win head-on.

you probably won't win against them your first few times. don't worry, just restart and try again.

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Neutral Towns

that's right. screw diplomacy. we're doing it the American way.

Neutral towns will have very little garrisons, but the longer you let them grow, the stronger they become as well. if you want to have a hostile takeover, do it in the early-game, where you can support 2-3 units. disbanding your scouts may also be a worthy investment if you want a fast military.

it is recommended you get 1 unit of swords and 1 unit of archers when attempting to take the enemy town. this is because the Neutral towns will generally be garrisoned with swordsmen and mecenaries. they will spawn archers later on, but that's not for a while yet.

your best chance it to take the town before they develop a fortified office. that way, they can't shoot back when you run to their doorsteps. if you're faced with taking a neutral town later, either buy your way in, or bring a moderate stack. also, be aware that some of your competitors may be allied with them, so force them to drop their alliance before attacking to avoid provoking some stupid S*** that you didn't want to get involved in.

Staying Ahead

If you're wondering why the enemy, especially the AI (since they are more solidified than our current variety of different skilled players), could potentially expand at a much faster rate than you, and how 5 minutes ago you were in front, but now you're last place?

Simple. You're not investing enough.

whilst it may be hard to get a grasp at how much you can expand, it is also imperative to realise just how far can you stretch yourself without becoming too thin; maintaining a big bank is in my honest opinion worse than going negative, because if you have that much spare money, all of it could have been spent on expanding your empire further.

which is exactly what the AI probably does.



here's how you can make it work. every time you check your Balance in your empire tab, check your construction and recruitment costs. if the combined negative value is greater than your Overall balance change, you're doing fine. this is because it keeps the data from transactions up to 10 weeks long (by default), and your construction costs are a 'one-time' thing. in reality, you are still making money.



try to keep your money as low as possible, even if you make 10+K a week. you need to optimize your expansion rate, much like any other competitive RTS (especially a game like starcraft. remember FFE'ing?), and stay on top of your macro. otherwise you'll start slipping behind.

Trade Routes, Trade Management, and 'Hub Cities'

this should be plain obvious, but trader management will make or break your game within minutes of starting a game. unfortunately, given the messy way we generally locate and place cities, trade routes will inherently also get unbelievably messy.



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Linear trade routes

if you recall earlier, i had recommended you to find a good spot on a pre-made road for your first city. truth is, the starting cities are located at the ends of each road; this means that every city you place on this road is within a linear path to the main 'hubs' (what i call them, explanation further on) of the region. having your cities in a linear path (and on upgraded road no less) means that your trade routes will pretty much be determined in a very linear fashion; your trader will stop at each city as he moves back and forth, distributing goods in a very balanced fashion. this has a number of pros and cons:

Pros:
- Your trade routes will appear neat and tidy, being easier to visualise
- Your trade route will be faster for the early game and pretty much into the mid-late game, as investing a development point in infrastructure-roads could limit your economical expansion
- Your trader will stop at every city without a confusing pattern that may involve a constant mess of hits and misses

Cons:
- This setup can be very hard to set up, especially if you are in a large non-linear region (ie france or germany)
- Your Trade Route may not contain all the resources you need to maximize profit
- Your Trade Route could also lack development potential, especially if the area is very mono-resourceful (Massive amounts of honey and fur but no coal at all).

These things are a constant nuisance, but can be slightly mitigated with what i call 'hubs' (that big wall of text down below).

Linear or not, you should also take great advantage of 'priority towns'. you can find this under the trader-type management menu thing (i'm not a wiki, i don't remember names too well). you can set priority towns in the list of towns you visit, which, as the function basically shouts at you, prioritizes towns. use it if you find that certain resources aren't getting down the chain far enough, as will surely happen in a supply-and-demand system where only one is producing and 2+ are demanding.

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Carts

quite an investment in the early game, carts should become more common than your mid-tier commodity as you progress along. as your cities get bigger and bigger, so too the amount of commodities; but you should know that.



carts cost 20 wood per unit. they carry 100 barrels each. it's pretty straight forward. get more whenever you can. your traders need them.

now, this is just a prediction, but i would suggest having:

x+2 carts for each trader, with x being the highest level city in the trade route. why? because big cities pump out a lot of goods, and your smaller cities are generally specialised, meaning they will pump out a lot if not equal amounts of specialised goods, and they're not gonna do you any favors if they're just sitting around in town.

frankly, people like myself are very lazy with cart management. but don't let that get in your way; this is just as important as macroing if you want to maintain healthy trade routes.



note that the more carts you have, the more upkeep you'll place on civilian units. each cart has an upkeep of 20 gold per week (or 200 per 10 weeks), so having an excessive number will not be healthy either. as of this point, it is unclear to me whether or not carts not being used still have upkeep.
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Hubs, The Meat of this Section

"Geez J'InFi, you're an a-hole for pointing out something this straight forward." - you're probably right, but as stupid as it sounds, having a designated capital is crucial for distributing goods across multiple trade routes. this is where a warehouse comes in handy, but also where multiple traders, coupled with dodgy roadwork, can lead to inefficient and horrible trade mechanics.

The capital city (particularly my case) is usually my first city. this is because for the most part, i enjoy starting in germany (my screenshots are a massive hint), and Gutersloh is, fortunately, in the most centralized position (if not, Worms is, and i believe that is also a starting location). i never change the resource output of starting towns, because they are generally something you can work with, and i've never had a situation where i've really had to change them (yet).

if you take a look at the screenshots provided in previous sections, you'll probably realise; the roadwork is not linear at all. and it's true; they're from older playthroughs that have either eventually succumbed to the pressure of an omnipotent AI, or they're linear in a not-so-straight way.

generally, since you want to build a supply-and-demand network, your expanded cities shouldn't need to build their own brick and wood production. leave this all to the main city. same goes for fruit and grain, however you may wish to have these to prevent a famine from breaking out. naturally, the further away from the central hub, the less likely they'll get adequate supply, so if you feel like you're starting to get stretched out, it would be a good time to build a new 'hub'. trading between hubs is generally pointless as the necessary resources should be linked by new trade-routes that produce the same goods, making them sort of like states, with little interdependence between each other. it may be a good idea to have 1 trader run the route anyways, but be warned, he may be completely useless in the long run (besides taking that good 300 bucks off your income every week).

As a golden rule, if your city is not within 2 stops of a hub city, it's time to build one. no solid evidence for this yet fellas, but it's worked alright so far.

having hub cities will also allow you to centralise your free workers and imperial structures (inns, barracks, warehouses, workshops). this will help you with recruiting soldiers (an inevitable, nobody's that good of a diplomat), as well as maintaining a higher leveled city. do expect this city to hit atleast level 6. this should 'theoretically' also limit how much you need to spend maintenance on, compared to just spamming unneeded structures around every city you have (having a barracks and an inn in every second city is quite frankly insane).

another beneficial point about hubs is that you can also use this as a bit of an ambushing point to upgrade your carts. because your inns and trade routes are centralised, you can take advantage of when your traders show up and stick a cart on their ass before they leave. its not important, it's just efficient.


Hub Cities will generally skyrocket in Wood, Brick and grain businesses, as they will provide for multiple cities (in my most recent playthrough 3 Hub Cities covered 13 Specialised cities at the point of writing). this will also skyrocket the population, which will, as mentioned above, give you many free workers for you to peddle around via trekking in the inn (very useful for fast expansions, emergency workers during plagues, or any other sort of situation you could find yourself in). expect to see 20+ levels of these basic businesses before anything else even remotely gets close.

PvE Advanced Combat, Conquest

we all know that this is something that will happen sooner or later. how it plays out between singleplayer and multiplayer may be inherently different too (i have yet to experience multiplayer properly yet). as such, this is mainly aimed towards fighting AIs.

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War of Attrition



it really is. when fighting the AI, they will constantly reinforce their units with whatever their income will support; as such, you will need a very over-powering force and overrun their armies. because of this, i recommend you ally or work together with another player/AI and focus down weaker AIs together. this way, you can expand more before engaging the bigger AIs. if you try to fight a bigger AI without equal or better economies, you will no doubt enter a stalemate.

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AI Cities

they're ♥♥♥♥. quite literally. they make no sense, and they build everything, meaning you will have a growing maintenance cost as you capture more and more AI Cities. i've still yet to figure out if there is a demolish ability for special buildings, or if there is one altogether. if there isn't, it would've really helped if there was. in any case, there isn't much you can do about it, so definitely make sure your economy is on point.

once you take over a city, retrofit them into a new set of economical buildings. the AI will build many advanced resources but have minimal if any basic resources at all. this is actually very damaging for your economy, especially since:

a) you can't tell which cities were linked with which to achieve their economical balance
b) you probably can't afford to wait to capture all of their cities beforehand
c) they're not very well balanced, and could really damage your economy if you let them sit there and drain your money.

this is probably the most important aspect of a conquest. the fighting is very minimalistic; literally click and you're set. so while the battle rages on, don't sit there watching it; use this time to multi-task and set-up the economy of the newly captured cities, otherwise you won't be able to successfully continue your assault.

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Supply Chains

once again, very important. this is a critical matter when fighting an AI with a lesser city. your forces will automatically shift their supply point to the nearest city (you guessed it, the one that was literally sieged, pillaged, famine-stricken, practically empty city), and if they don't meet their commodity requirements, they'll be unhappy. because of this, it is imperative that you connect the city up with a working supply chain. if you crossed a large portion of the map and can't link it with your empire, destroy all the buildings and set up basic resources as a temporary measure (you can always switch them back later). have your forces garrison the city until supplies are ready, otherwise you will be at a massive disadvantage when attempting to push.

if you happen to be defending, this is probably your best chance to counterattack. the enemy is most likely crippled by low morale, and that will also effect their fighting ability (up to 50% effectiveness). this will negate any counter-bonuses they might have, meaning it doesn't matter what unit you use, you'll still end up either even of even favored.

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Defensive Towers



Defensive towers can be unbelievably useful for aggression too; its no surprise that people will try to flank your army when the map is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ big; having defensive towers near important trade routes, and dotted along your borders mean they have the fight a 3000+ defensive point before their units can push through. think about that. that's like 8 units for the price of 1.

you can also take advantage of them by placing them in offensive positions, and if you fight a battle close enough, it can actually bait some units into attacking it instead. in any case, play around with them, and see what you can come up with. they're very useful, but the enemy can jack these too.

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Raiding trade routes

this is quite possibly the most annoying thing for you, and the most annoying thing for your enemy. trade routes are easily hijacked if not defended properly (no kiddin, right?). never underestimate how much a single raid can do:



so if you find the opportunity where the enemy has an exposed road, set one or two units on it, and if you're lucky, a very important convoy might just run through there.

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Emperors/Empresses (SPOILER ALERT)

this is very late-game. you may not even run into this the first time you play.

when you reach the last rank, being Emperor or Empress (20,000 Territorial Claim), you unlock 2 things:

1: Capital + Palace
2: Academy Tech Tree

Capitals:

you specify a specific city to become your official Capital. when this happens, that city will receive a palace; it is 4 times stronger than the heavy Castle. however, if you lose this city, you instantaneously lose, and all your territories instantly are converted to the capturing player's possession.



as such, if you are fighting a hostile emperor/empress, you may wish to go for a blitz on their palace. you will still need a considerably sized army, but it can save you a lot of trouble, especially if they are stronger than you to begin with. it's very unlikely you can pull it off though, since they will typically have a very large force, and sieging something that has 100,000+ Defense takes quite a while.

The Spoiler:


Academy Tech Tree:



this could be the biggest game-changer. for each tier of the academy tree, you can upgrade a damage boost for individual soldiers in a massive trade-off - More damage, but More upkeep. unfortunately, the upkeep is disproportional to the damage, meaning it will cost more to maintain soldiers despite the damage upgrade. however, there is also a catch to this:

since there is a limit to the number of units engaging each other in melee (usually 1 on 1), it actually makes sense to purchase this upgrade, as it will boost your 1 on 1 damage considerably. that said, your units will cost much more, so mass-unit tactics become harder to maintain.

but given that you're an emperor/empress, i'd assume you're pretty far ahead of everyone else, which means bigger income. bigger income = more units = you can buy this upgrade so your units are ahead, even if your units are equal in number.

in short, consider it carefully before purchasing to determine whether or not it's right for you, and whether or not it's the right time to upgrade it.

I NEED MORE! Additional Information/Screenshots

These will come your way as soon as i get it updated. stay tuned fellas, and good luck!

[Adhar]

I personally like using circular trade routes. with a trader going clockwise and one going couterclockwise. With my hub cities being places where these circles intersect.

[YOUR DADDY]

You can destroy production buildings, you reduce them to 0 and change them, and you should be able to change the specialty buildings the same way idk i havent played in a while

[frinket]

thanks for your excellent work. I was certain that this was a bad purchase. At least some fun with it.

[Rin ~ お疲れ]

yeah, even for myself, it was quite amazing how simple some things actually were; many parts of this guide took multiple resets because i didn't realise it until thinking about it in hindsight. anyways thanks for taking your time to read this!

[Cookiesaurus]

A really good guide, thanks for the info. Even if some things seem logic and clear when playing, reading them makes you understand them even better