Trade & Slaves

[unmerged(239788)]

I am only about 4 years into the game as Rome. I have some questions that I have not found answered in the guides:

Trade: I read that you can generate more from trade then from tax, but I am nowhere near that.

External trade routes pay me about 0.15 or so and internal pay about 0.04. Am I not doing something correctly? Is there a way to improve the $$ made? Or do I just need to wait until I can build forums and other buildings which will expand how many trade routes I can do? Can some explain the best way to do trading?

Slaves:

Everywhere it says to attack barbarians to capture slaves. I defeat a barbarian army and get like 0.60 slaves. Is there a better way or a way to increase the # of slaves I capture? It does not sound like a lot to me when I get 0.60 or even 0.20 for defeating an army.

Can I move citizens (or slaves or freeman) between territories?

 

[gwalc]

I am very noob (just bought the game last friday), in my first game as Carthage, but perhaps I can help
The trade routes revenues are as you say. 0.02-0.08 internals (depends on distance and trade good) and 0.08-0.40 for international trades. I don't know how you can get more from trade than from tax. Perhaps if you get little tax (low slaves) or when you have techs that allows you to have 4 trade routes from every coastal province (1 base, +1 forum, +1 harbour, +1 trade oportunities (IIRC)

The barbarians ----> Slaves question...
As Rome you have all of central europe to milk barbarians out. I have a cavalry corps (5 cavs + 4 Horse Archers) with a general with martial 8 going from province to province and fleeing combat when a barbarian horde rise. I have a traditional army in Paleoveneti (I am Carthage, but Rome is no more) waiting for the incoming barbarians. If I have some luck I can get around 2-4 hordes per year. That is 1-3 slaves per year.
Also I have another cavalry corps (4 cavs + 3 HA) going around all my colonized provinces that haven't get the event of Successfull Colony. It gets 0-2 hordes of 1-3k per year. It amounts to 0-0.4 slaves per year. It's not much, but this are barbarians you may 'lose' if you get the Successfull Colony event. And if the power of barbarians is >2, if you get the Barbarian Absortion event you don't get the Successfull Colony event (in my experiencie)

 

[Cheexsta]

I am only about 4 years into the game as Rome. I have some questions that I have not found answered in the guides:

Trade: I read that you can generate more from trade then from tax, but I am nowhere near that.

External trade routes pay me about 0.15 or so and internal pay about 0.04. Am I not doing something correctly? Is there a way to improve the $$ made? Or do I just need to wait until I can build forums and other buildings which will expand how many trade routes I can do? Can some explain the best way to do trading?

I've done it as Rome fairly recently. You have to be extremely persistent in asking for the resources that you want (having a Mercantile consul helps, as does an envoy with good diplomatic traits), and the resources that you get might not be ideal. In that campaign, I controlled all of Italy, Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily and little else; I focused the rest of my attentions on gaining trade routes and ended up with a trade income that matched or exceeded my tax income. This was fairly early in the game as well, so I only had two trade routes per province.

Slaves:

Everywhere it says to attack barbarians to capture slaves. I defeat a barbarian army and get like 0.60 slaves. Is there a better way or a way to increase the # of slaves I capture? It does not sound like a lot to me when I get 0.60 or even 0.20 for defeating an army.

Can I move citizens (or slaves or freeman) between territories?

The slaves you get from barbarians might not seem like much (you get 0.1 per cohort of barbarians in the original army, i.e. not including the cohorts that the army picks up as it walks through barbarian land), but it adds up. A third of those slaves goes straight to your capital and the rest are divided amongst your provinces, IIRC, but over time doing this consistently will increase your slaves significantly. For a country like Rome, it won't matter so much since you have such a huge population anyway, but for smaller countries it becomes almost necessary to maintain a decent income.

And no, it's not possible to move population around (though some mods like Epigoni have events that simulate people migrating to your capital).

 

[unmerged(239788)]

Thank you for the responses to both posts. I appreciate the help and experience offered by long term players of the game!

 

[UniversalWolf]

I once played an entire game as one-province Rhodes and slave farming was an integral part of my strategy. By the end Rhodes was the most populous province in the game and could support a huge navy and an outrageously massive army for a little island. My biggest problem was trying to keep the ratio of slaves to freemen to citizens in a sweet spot to keep my government the way I wanted it.

 

[Cheexsta]

I once played an entire game as one-province Rhodes and slave farming was an integral part of my strategy. By the end Rhodes was the most populous province in the game and could support a huge navy and an outrageously massive army for a little island. My biggest problem was trying to keep the ratio of slaves to freemen to citizens in a sweet spot to keep my government the way I wanted it.

That's exactly the situation I was thinking of, and your story of that campaign has inspired me to do similar things (though nowhere near that extent!). It's an extremely effective strategy for players who don't want to build territorial empires.

 

[Camara]

I once played an entire game as one-province Rhodes and slave farming was an integral part of my strategy. By the end Rhodes was the most populous province in the game and could support a huge navy and an outrageously massive army for a little island. My biggest problem was trying to keep the ratio of slaves to freemen to citizens in a sweet spot to keep my government the way I wanted it.

That looks like... a very interesting game. I also need to try that gameplay!

 

[UniversalWolf]

That looks like... a very interesting game. I also need to try that gameplay!

Honestly, it was the most fun I've had playing Rome so far. Rhodes is a republic; if you never conquer anything, your character pool remains fairly small throughout the entire game, so you never get bogged down trying to manage hundreds and hundreds of people. There are only a few who get elected over and over again, and you get to know them all. It's an action-packed game as well since you're constantly fighting barbarians. The hardest part is getting access to horses as early as possible, then transporting your cavalry corps to the mainland so it can start farming. You have to avoid getting gobbled up too, but being an island helps with that. Once you get the ball rolling you can increase relations with your most dangerous neighbors using trade. After a certain point no one will bother you because everyone likes you, and even if they do you'll have so much money you can hire loads of mercenaries in an emergency. Tech goes fast fast fast too since you're only one province.

 

[knul]

Tech goes fast fast fast too since you're only one province.

I thought tech costs were dependend on population size, not provinces, as I've read that it's important to have a high citizen ratio to keep up tech?

 

[UniversalWolf]

I thought tech costs were dependend on population size, not provinces, as I've read that it's important to have a high citizen ratio to keep up tech?

Citizens do provide research, but your research is divided by the number of provinces you own. If you have a bunch of undeveloped colonies your research is going to slow to a crawl. This usually happens to AI Rome when it mindlessly conquers and colonizes all the barbarian provinces in Gaul.

Having one highly developed province with lots of citizens ends up being roughly the same as having ten highly developed provinces with lots of citizens. In the latter case you might produce ten times as many points, but that gets divided by ten.

 

[Melichai]

I thought it was that research requirements is down to your total population, and your share of citizens is the raw research power relative to that requirement - but the civillisation value of the province where those citizens are located acts a multiplier of your citizens raw research power. So for any given relative value of citizens (say 33%) then where they are concentrated in higher civillisation provinces you will get a better RP return than if they are dispersed across middling civillisation provinces - colonisation will lead to higher populations overall (given the Pop boost in provinces with less than 10 pop), but in lower civillisation provinces so your research rate slows down as your targets expand with your pop but your research rate drops with your average civillisation.

 

[UniversalWolf]

I think civilization value of the province plays a role (among several factors), but total research points are divided by your total number of provinces. That's how it works in EU3 as well.

In any case, one-province Rhodes has a very high civilization value. I was at or near the top of all tech ratings throughout the whole game.