The economy part of Rome 2 is fairly complex but very easy to understand as it is easy to see where all of your money is coming from.

Money comes in via:

-Buildings
-Taxes
-Slaves
-Trade

Money goes out via:

-Upkeep
-Corruption

Please rate the guide and if you have any further questions, you can ask in the comments, or they may be answered in my other guide: Rome 2: Managing Your Provinces

Thanks!

P.S. If you have any ideas for a guide you would like to see on Rome 2, feel free to let me know!

Managing buildings is complex as there are many to build with various effects and sources of income.

Sources of Income?

Sources of income from buildings means where the income is from. There are many different sources:

-Subsistence
-Maritime Commerce
-Local Commerce
-Agriculture
-Livestock
-Culture
-Industry

Each of these sources contribute to the overall wealth of your settlements, which also contribute to the overall wealth of your provinces.

It is a good idea to focus on a single source in each province as effects given to a province from buildings are only effective in the settlements within those provinces.

When a building provides wealth to a settlement, they will be providing wealth from a specific source. Buildings can also offer bonuses to a particular source within the province it is in by adding a percentage bonus to that kind of source.
On this image, the blue circle indicates an example of the Grain Market providing wealth from local commerce.
The red circle indicates examples of the grain market providing bonuses to the overall wealth from industry and agriculture. This means a raise in wealth form all industy and agriculture wealth providers in that province.

Also remember, the wealth of your settlement IS NOT your income, taxes and corruption come into play to dercide that, which will be explained in 'Taxes'.


Buildings are classified by colours, which will be explained next.

Orange

Each settlement requires 1 of these as it represents the entire settlement. They give various effects some of which depend on what they produce (if anything) for example a settlement producing iron will provide wealthj from industry and a grain producing settlement will provide wealth form agriculture, a bonus to agriculture and more food for your faciton to enjoy!

If a settlement does not produce a particular resource (such as grain and iron) will instead provide wealth from subsistence.

Orange buildings vary from faction to faction but some (if not all) provincinal capitals also provide a bonus to all sources.

Green

Green buildings provide wealth from agriculture or livestock.

(I would personally recommend building agricultural buildings rather than livestock because you tend to get more in the way of bonuses in agriculture than livestock)


Brown

Brown buildings provide wealth and bonuses to industry. There are normally two paths to take when building, one will provide you with more wealth but a smaller bonus and the other will provide you with a larger bonus but less wealth. It is best to use the 'more wealth, smaller bonus' in provinces that are not focussed on industry and the 'less wealth, larger bonus' in provinces which are focussed on industry as the percentages stack and give very large increases.

Blue

Blue building chains can only be built in settlements near the water. These provide wealth and bonuses to local commerce and maritime commerce, depending on which chain you wish to follow.



Yellow

Yellow buildings can vary and are recommended to be carefully placed as all of them are useful, for different situations. If you are focussing on agriculture, there will be one that will benefit you with agriculture, don't build the wrong yellow buildings as they are very useful but only when put to good use!

Purple

Purple buildings indicate religious buildings and similarly to yellow buildings, the one you want to build depends on what you are focussing your settlement on. Purple buildings are very useful because they provide wealth or a bonus to the source you are focussing on but also providing better public order and cultural conversion.


Red

Red buildings are for military purposes only and don't provide wealth or bonuses to wealth. This means it is a very good idea to designate some of your provinces as military provinces and cut out the income in return for powerful recruits in those provinces.

In this image you can see that I have designated this province to agriculture as two of my towns produce grain, giving me wealth and bonus to agriculture, I have a a yellow building that gives me a bonus to agriculture and I also have a purple building that gives me yet another bonus to agriculture. The 3 farms provide me with the most of the base wealth.

In total, this province is providing me with a 106% bonus to agriculture which means that any wealth from agriculture in this province is just over double!


Note that this province does not provide me with any military support so it needs to be either well defended or out of reach of enemies.

Taxes provide a percentage increade based on your province wealth (from all of the building stuff I was on about before) NOT your actual populance. This means your province wealth + %increase = income, Turning it into a multiplier is easy, for example if i had a province wealth of 300 with a 15% tax rate, it would be 300 + 15% = 345, easy to do on a calculator. It is not that simple, however because slaves and corruption also comes into account.

As this image shows, my tax level is at 16%. This means that, theoretically, my income would be:

1150
206
312
367+
--------
2035 + 16% = 2340



My income is not this value because corruption sweeps my lands and somehow steals my taxes. Corruption directly affects your tax so really, my tax rate is not 16%, but instead it is 16 - 11.5 = 4.5% which obviously decreases my tax income, so 2035 +4.5% = 2126, as shown in-game.

Tax rates will vary from province to province but can be affected by dignitaries, public order (happier people pay more tax) and slaves. (as they take up some of the population)

This province doesn't have slaves but if it did, it would be a percentage. This means that it would be tax + slaves - corruption to get the percentage.

If you are a maths geek, the formula is: Income = province wealth + (income% + slaves% - corruption%)

You may be wondering why the tax has such little effect on my income, yet if you change it using the taxing slider it changes so dramatically. This is because the tax level changes so dramatically too. For example the province I have used as an example went from 16% to -4% by only moving it by one place. This means that I am essentially bribing my populace giving me a total of -15.5% instead of 4.5.

If my tax level was on -4% my income for that province would be: 2035 -15.5% = 1719. So the difference between 1719 and 2126 is 407, proving why the change is so dramatic as that is only in the one province.

Trade is another way of earning money. There isn't much you can do to change how you trade apart from selecting who you trade with and what you have to offer them. You can offer different resources based on what you produce. You will get more money from variety but you can only get variety by owning settlements that produce a variety of goods. The more you produce, the more you can sell.

On the image:

-The green circle represents how you are trading with your partner.
-The red circle represents the goods you are recieving from your partner.
-The blue circle represents 2 things, the top being income you make from tariffs and the bottom being a bonus income for being a long term partner, the longer you trade, the more you make.
-The yellow circle represents the goods you are selling to your partner.

You can mouse over the icons in the blue and yellow circles to see how much you are making, however it is added up for you at the bottom.

In diplomacy, you can offer or demand gifts of money in return for what you, or another faction, may want, such as an alliance. You can normally convince factions to part with their gold in return for trade rights and non-aggression pacts etc. if they are friendly towards you.

Money being changed hands will only be for the one moment and will not affect your income.

The main factor for losing income is upkeep. It comes in two forms, army and navy. Both being rather self explanitory, the more units you have, the more you have to pay them each turn. Better quality units demand more money.

Ways to reduce upkeep costs:

-Disband units youi no longer need.
-Put Dignitaries into your armies.
-Use the raiding stance in enemy territory.

Thanks for reading my guide and I hope I have helped you understand how money works in Rome 2 If you have any questions, feel free to ask, and check out my other guide: Rome 2: Managing Your Provinces

Please leave a rating, Thanks!