Think like a big shark. How to play (early-mid game) economy and politics like a violin.

First of all, this guide won´t give any further knowledge for seasoned players but I hope it might help newer players who are still struggling when it comes to play with factions which have a difficult start such as Getae. This is my little contribution to this amazing and helpful community.

This is gonna be an straightforward guide, given that the mechanics are not that complex and I intend to make it the more newbie-friendly as possible. I hope you find it helpful and understable, and if you can have a nice time reading it even better.

This gamestyle aims to play somewhat tall at the beginning of the campaign, to steamroll later.

Death & Taxes or don´t giving a F about public order

First thing when you start a campaign, set the taxes at its highest level. They will keep that way for a long time bar some specific moments that I shall explain later. But, doesn´t that cause rebellions, slowers down growth and other collateral issues? Indeed, but I am going explain why that is actually good.

- First of all, it is impossible to thrive otherwise as a minor faction, you must take advantage of the non-sensical game mechanics to survive and expand eventually.

- The more rebellions the better: the best way to make your armies better is fighting, and it is much better to crush little rebellions against 4 units rather than just waiting for great battles against other factions, which will cause important casualties and you would lose that experience in your units. But most importantly, you make your generals more veteran. Besides, you can enslave these fallen rebels, which boosts your economy and makes public order worse.

- In addition to the previous point, rather than the units experience, the most important point for fighting as much as possible is to provide skill points to your generals. For fighting better? LOL no, who cares about peasants lives? For stealing money in order to recruit more peasants to steal more money from other factions, make everybody around you miserable and thrive from these ashes. Money is what fuels the war machine, not a slight melee attack bonus.

- Growth: I agree that slowing down population growth due to rampant taxation is not good, but that is a collateral damage for the sake of our greatness. Nevertheless, there are some technologies that provide nice bonuses to it, and as long as you don´t fall into food shortage it will grow steadily.

Units are your best asset

It is nice thinking that a new building that is going to provide some extra money is a good investment, but no, that is actually an awful mindset. Recruiting more units must be your priority once you have built the proper farms or food port to don´t starve and barracks for recruiting. More units mean more options such as looting a nearby enemy settlement, or enslave a defeated army, whatever. As soon as you have money to spend, spend it in power, which is simply bigger and better armies.

Just to explain it better: imagine that you are playing trying to keep always a surplus, but balancing it with public order and barely manage to recruit an army made up of militia units. Do you realise how nuts does that sound? That makes you look weak and unwise, no, even worse, you look like a democracy trying to please everybody. You have the supreme rule over a nation and don´t execute it at its fullest.

You can (and must) recruit up to 3 armies being merely a 1 settlement faction through constant sacking, looting, enslavement and embezzlement. Besides, if you play your cards properly many of these units might be quality mercenaries or tier 2 units.

Be financially irresponsible, nobody cares about deficit

One of the most broken mechanic of this game is that the nation doesn´t get into debt. For instance, let´s say that you have a treasury of 300 denarii and a deficit of -400. At the start of the next turn you should have a treasury of -100, but no, it is simply 0. This means that you can basically have unit upkeep for free, thus you can have a much bigger army or better quality units than you could if you tried to maintain an steady surplus. The key for this is basically hiding your money. Peasants don´t deserve to get paid.

How to do this? Let´s say that you have a treasury of 4000 denarii AFTER having set more units to recruit for the next turn, but a deficit of 2500 denarii. Why would you let those juicy 2,5K get lost? Just carry out the construction of more buildings or units (2 turns or more), actions that you can cancel the next turn and take the money back for recruiting more units or perform political actions.

The more corrupt the better. Quintillionaire grindset

Another mechanic that does not fall behind when it comes to being broken is Embezzlement. This is probably the most important point of the guide, because through this action you can always have fresh, immediate money in the current turn to perform actions. Here is where making a general gain as many skill points as possible gets importance.

In order to carry out this, you must choose your own family members as generals. Invest the skill points in Cunning, and within that section just take care to choose the skills that provide constant Cunning, not only as an admiral or general. Once the character has 6 Cunning the party begins. Replace him/her for other general in order to have that character available as politician the next turn. Then, carry out the Embezzlement in the politics tab. If he won´t have 40 gravitas the next turn, replace him again as a general, otherwise keep him.

Early game it might be troublesome having enough characters to carry out the Embezzlement constantly, so perhaps you will have to use other party generals and make them get those 6 Cunning points. Just be sure that you don´t use the party leader, because you can´t Entice him.

You must give as many promotions as possible to the characters that you are using for the Embezzlement in order to gain gravitas faster. Aim for at least 4 characters with 6 Cunning in your family to have a constant Embezzlment source whilst the others are gaining gravitas. I suggest perform Embezzlment once per turn, but sometimes you can save it (too much money or too low loyalty) and others you need it 2 or more.

Hellenic (and probably Roman and Punic too) women get Cunning when they arrive levels 3 and 4 of promotion. So, if a woman has an innate level of 4 Cunning, invest in her, because she will be eventually able to give you money. Sometimes ancillary items and retinue that provide extra Cunning spawn, so be vigilant. There is also an scheme to make a character gain Cunning (leisure time), but usually it is not until much later in the game that you can carry it out.

So, you might be thinking that constant Embezzlement and occasional Entice might make the parties´ loyalty management troublesome. Far from it if you are not hopeless in politics. As it was aforementioned, money is the fuel for the war machine, but it also sweetens the most stubborn politic rivals. Just make sure to throw money at them occasionally (sending them as diplomats, gifts, public order missions...) and they will be happy. I just imagine those politicians like this:

- Hey, the King and his wife are embezzlementing money every turn.

- Yeah, but they have sent us money to celebrate games in the province, so shut up.

Whereas if you were financially responsible you would not have enough money for keeping them loyal, thus paradoxically, your honesty would make them betray you. The more money for throwing at the other parties the better. I don´t know whether CA did it on purpose, but they actually nailed quite well how politics work in that regard.

Agents

I have recently checked out myself the massive income that dignataries with the Greedy branch skill totally developed can provide. As long as you deploy them on a really wealthy enemy region, that will provide you a nice money revenue. Especially powerful if you already have several of these agents.

I´m not sure about spies and champions, since I use them for other things, but they also have skills that should provide fresh money once deployed or after performing a successful action, so don´t dismiss them either.

- When you can´t fight against a revolt that it is about to get triggered and need an extra turn to prepare.

- Secondly: in a situation such as the one shown in the principal image of this guide. Once you have either spent or hid the money and you are still in deficit no matter how high the taxes are, you can lower the taxes if you prefer to let the public order take a breath.

A campaign played this way is chaotic but extremely funny. You will play a lot of battles, assaults, retreat from settlements, and it will take some time to expand and keep the conquest. It depends on the faction, but you might very well be into the 30 turn and still with home settlement (but with several, veteran armies and a great treasury).

Just bear in mind that you must build your food production building and the barracks in the same settlement, which is usually your capital, and you can´t let that settlement fall under any circumstance. The rest of your conquests are probably temporary. Don´t build anything too expensive or important unless you are 100% sure that you can protect that settlement from slaves and other enemies.

That´s why having several armies is key, because with a single army you can´t protect at once two settlements, since revolts are random and you don´t know where they will appear exactly. The greatest advantage of this gamestyle is that you have an amazing flexibility and can strike fast and hard, but aside from the spoils of war you can´t keep the conquest (unless it is in the same province) for long, because you will have to get back to your home province to fight against rebels.

From ruthless conqueror to benevolent ruler

Early in the game I suggest, with the remaining money you have from recruiting and political actions, to build mines, given that they provide the biggest income, and even though it is not anywhere close to the looting and embezzlement income, it still helps, and makes public order worse.

At some point you will want to expand outside your province and keep that conquest, thus your home must be happy even when your armies are abroad. The moment that usually points out that you should start this sweet transition is when you have a bunch of money, you can´t spend it in more armies (army cap limit) or buildings and need to expand.

Cultural buildings are the answer for this; for instance, Hellenic stadia does not consume food whilst provides cultural income and public order. You will can keep taxes high even without armies there. Besides, by this time it is wise start prioritizing research boost, given that the late technologies take a lot of turns.

In the recently conquered regions you will probably have to loot still in order to sustain economy, but build directly these public order-friendly buildings.

Nevertheless, you should have no problem whatsoever dealing with the other political parties. If you are under seccesion/civil war risk you are not paying them enough attention (basically money).

Wouldn´t other factions become too strong whilst I am doing this?

Most definetely, several empires will become powerful whilst you are still setting up your home province, but you have been playing really tall and that should give you the upper hand in the long term. If you play your cards properly, by the time you meet the armies of a hostile empire you can meet them with armies made up of tier 3 seasoned units and Maximus Decimus Meridius as a general.

Bear in mind that only the minor factions with defensive mindset (such Rhodes, Knossos...) keep their armies at home, making them harder to conquer than apparently much bigger nations, and that´s basically what you are. Just imagine the unwary Roman army arriving at your country and meeting 4 elite armies of yours.

If you can focus your strength in a single point, you can basically steamroll that empire and make it toast within a few turns (kinda doomstack but it works). AI is not good dealing with force concentration.

I have played this way personally as Massalia, Syracuse, Macedon, Athens, but it seemed especially designed for Galatia, being in a place where you get constant revolts due to cultural reasons, nice mercenaries around and a really decent tier 2 sword unit that can make toast the neighbouring Hellenics. I think I sacked Pessinus, Side and Iconium no less than 15 times.

I haven´t tried it out, but I am sure that the Pirates & Raiders DLC factions would be awesome with this strategy (cheap mercenary recruitment and forget about upkeep if you carry out the hiding money strategy), alongside Carthage and its great mercenary roster.

Nevertheless, bear in mind that if you´re playing in a place where settlements are quite scattered it is more difficult to carry it out (for instance, Massaesily only have Iol within their capital city´s grasp), but it´s still possible.

For taking the most advantage of the points provided in this guide you should play using these mods:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1551802634&searchtext=rebels+overpowered

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1260190305&searchtext=sell+your+slaves

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=186925601

Why? In my opinion, these mods make the game more historical accurate, and make more sense. This makes slaves an actual bussiness, you can get rid of them if you can´t manage them or prefer to take the money, and they are not blatantly overpowered as they are in vanilla (honestly, the people who set up slave revolts in this game saw Spartacus Blood & Sand too much). The third mod is because only Barbarians can sack and that does not make sense imo.

Still, you can get away with it playing this way in total vanilla, but just be extremely careful with slave revolts or simply don´t enslave anybody.