Rome 2: Managing Your Provinces

Overview

(Some contents may be out-dated) A simple guide for those who are new to Rome 2 and the province system in the game.

Introduction

In this guide I will be explaining everything you need to know about managing your provinces in Rome 2. It will include information for beginners and advanced players. Please rate the guide so that more people can see it and if you can, leave me some feedback as that helps me to make the guide, and guides in the future better.

Thanks.

Layout of Provinces

In Rome 2, Provinces are areas on the map that contain between 2-4 settlements. One of these settlements is the provincinal capital and it is bigger in size, has walls for defence, can have more buildings built within them, and can include some building options that the minor settlements cannot have.

No matter which settlement you select in a province, the same interface will show.

This is because all of the settlements’ building options are shown in that interface and the settlements also share public order, growth and income. They also share the buildings too, so their location doesn’t matter to contribute to the province.

Try to think of it being the PROVINCE growth and PROVINCE public order etc. not SETTLEMENT growth and SETTLEMENT public order as the values are not unique to SETTLEMENTS, but they are unique to the PROVINCES.

If other factions share a province with you, their settlements will have different public order, growth and income values than yours.

If you control all of the setlements within a province, you may pass an edict which gives bonuses to that province, such as increased tax rate, or food.

Public Order

In Rome 2, public order is very important as if it is too low, the public may revolt. This means that you will lose settlements to angry mobs of plebs.

Public order ranges from -100 to +100 and each province will gain or lose public order per turn due to certain factors. Some of these can include:

-Buildings
-Taxes
-Recent Events
-Slaves
-Cultural Differences
-Characters
-Military Presence
-Raiding

All of the factors add up and come to a single number which decides how much public order will increase or decrease.

The best way to increase public order short term is to put an army into one of the settlements within a province as military presence has a big influence on the public order, however it is not something you will want to do for the long term.

To increase public order long term, you will want to build buildings that affect the public order as oncew buildings have been built, there will be no need to get rid of them. You can also put Dignitaries into settlements within provinces to increase public order too but you can’t really do that long term.

You can also look at what is affecting the public order and act to get rid of the problems as it may be because you have just conquered a settlement and you only need to wait it out until the populance calm down a bit.

Culture affects public order in your provinces too and can become quite serious if left unattended as your culture can be dropping without you even noticing. To fight cultural differences, you need to increase the cultural influence in your province by building shrines or temples (take care as different shrines do different things, choose what benefits you the most) that will convert the populance or put characters or armies into the settlements within the province to start changing it too. The conversion is a long process and the speed depends on how much influence your culture has, obviously if your culture influence is high, then it will be quicker. Once the province is more into your culture, public order won’t be such a problem anymore.

Having a lot of slaves can also decrease public order. You can get slaves by fighting battles and attacking settlements by clicking the appropriate post battle option. Slaves directly increase your income that you make but also directly reduce public order. So ensure you keep them in check. Also if you don’t want any problems with slaves, don’t take them, you don’t need to as rthe bonus income is not something you are missing out on if you want to control public order easier and not worry about slave rebellions.

If enemies are carrying out raids (through the raid stance) in your province, public order drops dramatically so it is a very good idea to keep armies/navies within reach of all of your provinces so you can crush them in time before they ruin the hard work you put in to get the public order up in the first place.

You should also take care as some buildings decrerase public order due to squalour so it is a good idea to avoid building such buildings until you can accomidate for the loss.

Growth

Growth in Rome 2 is also very important because higher growth means more people, which means more money from tax, and it also means you can expand your settlements to build more buildings, which is a good thing.

Similarly to public order, growth is affected by several factors. Some of these can include:

-Buildings
-Technologies
-Food Surplus

And as you can see, buildings are mutual to growth and public order which shows how vital it is to manage them properly. Buildings will be explained in more detail later on.

Food is important for growth and it can be obtained by building farms. The food surplus is for the whole faction, not for just the province. This means you can have provinces that have no farms but you will have to provide for that province elsewhere.

Food surplus also affects how quickly units replenish so it is a good idea to be producing as much food as possible. But be careful because some buildings take food such as settlement upgrades.

Military Recruitment Buildings

There are several types of military buildings which you may decide to use when playing Rome 2.

For unit training buildings, you will have a basic training building which can expand following several other training buildings which vary from one another. This basic trining building will provide you little unit selection but it is the gateway to building more military buildings. Factions have a choice of 2-3 routes to take from the basic building.

The primary barracks will be where most of your faction specific units will be trained. All factions will have a primary barracks but you will have to figure out which is the primary one on your own, however it is usually the one that costs more.
The secondary barracks is different as some factions have different types. most of the time, a seconday barracks will build most of your factions’ missile units and will also give several bonuses. However other factions such as Rome have a barracks where the recruitment depends on where the barracks is located as they train auxilliary units.

See how recruitment is different in these two provinces.
Some factions have a third building, usually dedicated for cavalry. This means they have a barracks for each type of unit, infantry, missile and cavalry.

Military Training Buildings

All factions have military training buildings which similarly start with a basic building and then split off into different buildings which specialise in different effects. It is recommended to have your recruitment buildings and training buildings in the same province for elite units right from the barracks. These training buildings provide several bonuses to your units
The build chain for most factions splits off into 4 where they focus on different unit types. You can read the tool tips for each faction’s buildings in game to save me writing them all down as different factions vary.

Military Factory Buildings

Factory buildings work in the same way as the other military buildings in that the chain has a basic building that splits off. There are three different types.
Blacksmith buildings improve the weapons of units recruited in that province.

Armourer buildings improve the armour and shield strength of units recruited in that province

Siege engineer buildings allow you to recruit siege weapons and also some other units depending on what faction you are playing as (chariots)

Income From Buildings

All of your income comes from the buildings in your provinces, populance and through trade.

Some buildings give wealth from several different things, these mainly include:

-Agriculture
-Commerce
-Industry

These buildings are colour coded for what they do, for example, the blue build chain will improve maritime commerce and the green build chain will improve agriculture.

For the most income it is a good idea to focus on one type of income per province, This is because although you can’t focus all of your buildings to be involved in only one type of income, you can build several buildings such as shrines which give percentage bonuses to one of the types and as we all know, percentage increases are bigger when the main amount is bigger, for example:

+5% of 100 is 105 which is 5 more.
+5% of 200 is 210 which is 10 more.

So it is a good idea to stack up the bonuses, for example this can be done in port heavy provinces when you can put as many bonuses as possible onto commerce to increase income, or for land heavy provinces, you can do the same but for agriculture or industry.

Some buildings give weath of on type of income but give a bonus to another, these can be used to stack up with other bonuses.

Note: When a building provides weath, it is adding an exact number such as 100 , when a building provides a bonus, it is adding a percentage such as +5%.

Income from Taxes

Taxing your populance is a way of getting income. It directly affects public order and you have to tax all provinces the same amount unless you exempt the province from tax.

Exempting a province from tax means that the settlements in that province need not pay any tax at all. This is a good way to manage public order especially if there is no other way but to decrease taxes to all of your other provinces instead.

When tax is increased above normal, growth will start to decrease (there is no affect of growth until then) so it is not reccomended to have tax higher than normal for long as it is negatively affecting you in the long term.

Taxes will also be reduced because of corruption. Corruption increases as your empire gets larger and it is a factor which is difficult to control. It doesn’t really make too much of a difference but some characters and tedhnologies can help to reduce corruption so you can get more money.

Thank-You for Reading

I hope I have covered everything you need to know about managing your provinces in Rome 2. If there is anything you feel I need to add or if there are any further questions about anything in Rome 2, feel free to ask me via messaging or by commenting and I will definitely get back to you.

I hope I helped 🙂

Please rate the guide!

All of the images are from an early part of my current Rome campaign.