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CitiesCastesDesertionHappinessRebellion
In this section... |
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CitiesCastesDesertionHappinessRebellion |
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Your income is produced by your settlements, which come in three sizes -- town, city, and capital. The money raised is calculated from your population and tax rate.
Right-clicking on a city will give you a menu which lists the types of units that city can produce along with their costs. It will also tell you your current treasury. To buy a unit, select it from the list. A shadowed unit of the type bought will appear on that city to signify that you've bought from there this turn. The unit will appear the next turn. You may only buy one unit per city per turn.
Capitals represent the focus of your empire. As such, each nation has only one. Towns eventually grow into cities, and cities sometimes get razed into towns, but cities never grow into capitals. A capital's population may decrease considerably due to warfare, but it will always retain its capital status.
Each unit has a caste which determines the minimum size of the settlement that can produce it. The best armies, like Roman legions and Parthian cataphracts, may only be raised in capitals. Less powerful units may be bought in cities or capitals. Towns may only produce the least effective types of armies, like peasant levies or German spearmen.
This means that your best units may only be produced at the rate of one army per turn.
If you conquer a city of another nation, you may use that city to produce armies from that nation's roster. For example, if a mob of German spearman capture a Carthaginian coastal city, they may use that city to produce quinqueremes the next turn. You may also produce units from your own roster in a conquered city if you wish.
The exception to the above is conquered capitals. These are treated as cities, which means you may never produce a capital caste unit of another nation. It also means you may not use a foreign capital to produce capital caste units of your own nation.
Rationale: The capital caste units are the most powerful and characteristic units of your civilization, like Roman legions, German berserkers, and Parthian cataphracts. A conqueror does not have the knowledge necessary to train such forces. Also, capital caste units represent the pinnacle of your military lore and as such may only be produced at your realm's focus, your original capital.
Armies, leaders, and spies have both costs and upkeep. Costs are paid when you first buy the unit. Upkeep is paid each turn that the unit is alive.
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An army's upkeep is a constant cost and deducted automatically from your treasury each turn. If you can't pay all of your wages, armies may desert and turn to banditry.
A leader's upkeep is handled a little differently. Their upkeep value is more of a recommended wage. You can actually pay them whatever you want, but their wage affects their loyalty. Underpay them, and their loyalty will begin to decrease each turn. Overpay them, and they will be loyal to you forever. Note that as a leader gets more experience and power, he begins to grow ambitious and it costs more and more to keep him happy. It's recommended that you overpay your best leaders each turn if you want to keep them happy.
Desertion may take place when you can't pay all of your armies. Armies with low discipline and low experience tend to desert first. Armies that desert must still feed themselves somehow, and they don't take up farming -- they become bandits. Note that deserting armies can be much more dangerous than regular rebels, since regular army units tend to be more skillful and equipped than the regular riff-raff of discontented citizens.
If you see your treasury running low and fear the consequences of not being able to pay your troops, you may wish to consider disbanding some of them. Retiring troops must be paid off, though, which gives disbanding a cost equal to the unit's upkeep times a multipler based on the units experience level. If you can not meet a unit's disbanding cost, you may not disband it.
For more information on disbanding, see the commands subsection in the military section of the manual.
Each turn you may set your nation's tax rate. High taxes bring more money, but lower happiness.
The tax rate is accessed by hitting the large Economics button.
Each player has a happiness score, which is primarily related to the tax rate. Happiness may also be affected through enemy espionage activity and battle results, particularly the capture or loss of cities. Current happiness is given in the advisor's report each turn.
Happiness affects the birth rate. Make the people miserable enough, and your population will actually decrease.
Low happiness has an even more critical consequence than the birth rate: rebellion. There is a chance each turn that a town, city, or capital will produce a unit of rebels. This chance increases as happiness decreases.
If a city rebels in a given turn, it will produce no armies despite its orders of the previous turn.
Rebels are less dangerous than regular army units, but they can still be very bothersome.
If rebels manage to take control of a city, it remains theirs until you take it back. In the meantime, it will produce more rebels until you may have a civil war. For this reason, it's very important to garrison your cities when your popularity is low.
Between desertion and rebellion, it is easily possible to lose control of your empire entirely if you don't manage it wisely.
Next section: Other features