10 Tips for a better Economy


 * Consider giving your starting general economic buffs like +30% tax output. This depends on your starting position and if you will have to fight out of a difficult situation right from start. But in the long run, economic stats can be very useful.


 * Which resource buildings should you build? Either resource production that increase output but also reduces repair time, or living quarters, that increase capacity but also increases repair time. This depends on the type of economy you intend to run: if you use workers, taht use recruits and cost cold, then it's better to increase their productivity. If you use slaves that neither cost gold nor use recruits, then it's better to increase working capacity.


 * If you're running out of storage capacity in your cities because you had a very good harvest in autumn, then you can also use camps and bridges. Just connect them to your suply network and all food and other resources that cannot be stored anywhere else will be brougth there automatically.


 * If you conquer cities, that do not belong to your faction, you need to keep city faction morale up and rebellion down, so that you can get tax and recruits out of that city. A good way to do this, is to build hostages and move these to one of your native cities. hostages cost food, but otherwise you would have to control rebellion risk with combat units, that cost gold.


 * In case you need some gold urgently, you can levy taxes from your cities. Go to the city trade tab and you will find a button called "levy taxes". This gives you gold at the cost of city growth and pushing up the city's rebellion level.


 * Specialize your native cities by building specialized city upgrades that complement each other. You could for example have a city with barracks and training ground to bolster your army, and another city with a market and a library to bolster your economy and your research. Non-native faction cities have different needs, though, like e.g. assimilation and revolt control.


 * To grow your native cities faster you can increase the food supply in the city trade tab. this will also increase city morale and give more taxes and recruits. Having cities grow faster will increase output and give the city additional building slots.


 * Consider upgrading your logging camps first. This will give you the wood that allows you to upgrade all the other buildings.


 * It can be benificial to have a look at your diplomacy tab from time to time. There are only two diplomatic states, either you are at peace or you are at war. Sometimes other factions are willing to pay gold for the privilege to be at peace.


 * Slaves are the liveblood of your expansionist empire, because you can't waste recruits on workers. How do you get slaves? (1) You can capture defeated enemies. (2) Capture enemy resource buildings and part of the workers in those buildings will be converted into slaves. (3) Buy slaves from a slave market, which you have to research first via the skill tree (economy section) and then build the corresponding city upgrade in one of your cities.

Based on the Tutorial video by Horath Drak: