How to make more money?

[vitek69]

I’m back to I:R after an extended break, now in a Sparta -> Peloponnesian League run. I own most of Greece, Macedonia, half of Illyria, half of Magna Graecia and Sporades (in Asia) I’m obvs quite large and I don’t struggle for money per se, but I want to expand my economy to be able to face Rome (they have 7000 pops). I just don’t know how to make more money. I have some provinces with excess goods that are not getting traded, and tax offices provide an absolutely minuscule increase (if I build one in Sparta with 100 pops, I get like +0.07). So how do I actually improve my country to make more money?
On a related note, do you import goods into non-capital provinces? I guess that would provide some extra money, and I never bothered to do it. Is it worth it?

 

[IsaacCAT]

Multiple ways to improve your income:

1. Diplomatic Stance
2. National ideas
3. Economy tab
4. Inventions
5. Trade Goods
   1. Buildings
   2. Slaves

Diplomatic Stance

National Ideas

Economy tab

Free Trade to maximize your export value:

Inventions

Left tree of Civic inventions to maximize your national tax and commerce income: https://imperator.paradoxwikis.com/Civic_inventions

Trade Goods

Produce the most surplus possible of trade goods with high trade value. When you export you have x1 trade value income. When you import you only have x 0.35 trade value income. Never do domestic trade, it gives you only x 0.20 trade value.

The most valuable trade goods are the ones with 0.4 or more trade value. Switch to trade goods map and locate them in your map to expand and control the production of them:

And If possible, get a surplus of dates in your capital for the +5% National Commerce Income:

To increase your surplus of goods use the following buildings in cities and settlements with high value trade goods:

Cities:

Settlements:

To increase your goods produced, you need more slaves. Select the non allowed promotion of slaves in the territory that you want more slaves.

 

[IsaacCAT]

On the long run, if you expand a lot, you will need more markets to export your goods. The best solution is League Cities with Heirs of Alexander DLC. You should keep building them as long as they have all their import routes full of your wares:

Subject nations - Imperator Wiki

imperator.paradoxwikis.com

If you do not have the DLC, then feudatories or client states should do.

 

[olivenkranz]

No, the best solution is to have Barbarians as tribal vassals. No diplo slots, they buy.

 

[Chaostrian]

League cities is the best thing you can have for making money, they don't take up diplomatic space, they have 4 trade routes from the start, 2 because of the economic law trade permit (I don't know exactly how that's called in English) and 2 because league cities

that means they not only export 4 goods from you but because of their income they give you more money as a tribute payment the only bad thing is that you don't take them into the fight but you don't really need them now if you only sell your legions and mercenaries through the receive gold from subjects pay xD


spamming league cities is my hobby :3

 

[Terixis]

As already stated in this topic, commerce is how you make the big bucks but you need markets to sell to. Sparta is pretty centrally located though so that shouldn't be too bad. Personally I would say you should conquer Anatolia before going after Rome, it's rich and divided and has a lot of pops. A particularly spicy way to make money is to load up on slave output modifiers (the national idea one is extremely powerful once you're big) and then enslave every culture group you aren't integrating, although you will end up needing to put down some province revolts.

Rome shouldn't really be all that hard to beat though, as Sparta with its heritage and mission trees you have an insane amount of discipline and miscellaneous military buffs. You should be able to ferry all of your troops over to your land in Magna Grecia, hire some big merc stacks, and DOW Rome with the goal of a bordering province in Italy. You don't need to win a total war, just occupy the war goal and keep killing their troops and taking province capitals in Italy, they'll be willing to peace out pretty quickly and you can take 3-4 provinces and rinse and repeat until they're dead. Just make sure to take the super rich Italy provinces, not useless Illyrian or Gaul ones.

 

[vitek69]

Thanks guys, very helpful. I didn’t know how League Cities work so I’ll definitely try that out, just need to pick up the invention first.
I also haven’t been micro-ing my slaves around, but now realize that I should be doing this to concentrate them in cities/settlements with high value trade goods.
@Terixis, regarding the slave output modifiers - slaves ‘produce’ tax income right? So a slave output modifier is essentially a national tax modifier?

 

[IsaacCAT]

Thanks guys, very helpful. I didn’t know how League Cities work so I’ll definitely try that out, just need to pick up the invention first.
I also haven’t been micro-ing my slaves around, but now realize that I should be doing this to concentrate them in cities/settlements with high value trade goods.
@Terixis, regarding the slave output modifiers - slaves ‘produce’ tax income right? So a slave output modifier is essentially a national tax modifier?

You can increase slave output (aka taxes*) using the economy tab:

*Taxes do not come only from slaves:

However, because slaves output is not affected by happiness, and slaves produce double the taxes than tribesmen and triple than freemen, one can think of increasing slave's output as equivalent as increasing tax.

Population - Imperator Wiki

imperator.paradoxwikis.com

 

[IsaacCAT]

Nevertheless, I do not like the -20% research points at the start of the campaign and I prefer to boost your taxes by inventions:

Following the left civic tree inventions highlighted you can achieve +20% national Tax increase without decreasing your research points.

The harsh taxation may be in hand when you produce more research points that your research efficiency cap.

 

[vitek69]

Thanks @IsaacCAT , very helpful. There are many competing priorities on inventions so I’m not sure I will go that way, but the tip on the policy is very good. At this point in my game I think I can compensate for a malus on research by buildings, and I’m at the research efficiency cap anyway.
As you say, I prob wouldn’t do it at the start of the game, but at this point it’s a good choice.