Economy basics | Nation management Total War: Attila Guide

Last update: 11 May 2016

Treasury

A resource required for most actions in the game. Without treasury you won't extend your city, create an army, send agents for a mission and won't bribe your neighbors. Lack of treasury is a source of desertion and generates trouble in country.

Wealth can be gained from few sources. Taxes are the main one. Taxes are being set for whole country. The bigger, the greater penances to growth and public order, and the lower, the less money goes to your vault. As you progress in the game, tax income will become the main part of your budget. Very often it will generate many time more income than other sources combined. At least until corruption begins to spread in your country. In case of large nations it can consume from 20% to even 80% of income and can be very hard to limit.

When setting tax level, consider the less table provinces. Great penalties to public order can greatly speed up a rebellion outbreak in them, which will force you to train additional units and replenish the losses in humans and buildings. It might happen that all the profit from high taxes will be used for repairing the loses from an rebellion.

At the beginning of the game you should keep taxes on second level. Thanks to that you will receive a fair amount of money, and improve growth and public order. Level three is good if you need more income and situation in country is very stable. Limit level five only for desperate situations, like sudden war with far stronger opponent. Tax at level one are perfect when you get nice income from other sources and want to get new terrains for buildings and/or want to calm unhappy society. In general, adjust your taxes to situation. If you can, raise, if you need, lower. Keeping them at same level through the whole game is unprofitable.

Second important source of taxes are settlements. Many building give you some money each turn in one of five disciplines - culture, agriculture, breeding, industry and trade. There is also a discipline called "self provision", available only for buildings from the settlement category. In theory income from those disciplines is always the same, in practice the division has been made because of technology and abilities, that give additional profits only for buildings of specific category.

Third source of income is trading, about which you will learn more in the further part of this guide. To trade, you need trading commodity, trade deals and land or naval roads connecting you with neighbors. Produce trading commodities, make deals and enjoy income of money.

Forth source of income is war. On war, you can get money by raiding settlements and regions or from ransom for captives. Raiding a settlement require you to first conquer it and gives you from few hundred to few thousand of coins, depending on wealthiness of settlement and given order. An settlement can be raided and left alone or raided and burned to the ground. Both those options give you different amount of money. Raiding a region require you to give your army raiding attitude and keep it on enemy province territory. Ransom for captives are a consequence of winning battle and deciding to release defeated enemies for money. The amount of ransom depends on quality and quantity of captured enemies. Elite cavalry is worth more than common infantry.

Fifth source is diplomacy. Here money can be earned by ransom and dependant countries, also called tributary states. Ransom is an effect of threatening a weaker country by stronger one. Profit from such action isn't constant, but can be quite large, if you target a wealthy enough, but weak militarily country. Tributary states offer constant profit every turn, based on their size and current situation. The more wealthy country is dependant to you, the more income will it generate for you.

Different to taxes, settlements and trading, war and diplomacy are a limited source of money. Workshops built in settlements gives a constant money each turn. But a city raided each turn will give less and less income if you won't leave it for a while. War requires you to create army, replenish the losses and in long term is more expensive than expanding settlements. Additionally, playing with raiding in mind might easily and with destruction of raided province, what will force you to expand your raiding trips or change your source of income. It is one of reasons why it is possible to buy workshops and other profit-generating building on Horde camps. Otherwise, focused on constant raids, destroying everything on its way faction would sooner or later lost its source of money.

Sixth source are family, governors, generals and technology. Family members by intrigues can gain small amount of money for you. Generals and governors abilities increase profits or reduces costs of various operations. Technology works similarly, increasing profits from building and reducing cost of recruitment and maintaining army. Formally, those are not profits, since they create money directly, but reducing army cost by one thousand coins is a thousand coins that remain in your vault. So one can consider improvements or abilities as a sort of profit. You can consider buildings increasing profit from specific disciplines or buildings like workshops as well.

Food

There are three states of province - food shortage, surplus and balance. In first state the province import food, in the second it exports it, and in third produces enough for its own needs. It works so because each province is considered as a separate food manufacturer, but the production is a part of greater pool. First, the game checks if there is enough food produced in the country and them divides it between provinces.

Province states, similarly to food production, changes with seasons of the year. In spring you might have food surplus, but during winter you can be forced to import it. It is important, since a province that imports food receives penalties to public order and tax income. Penalties disappear as soon as the province is capable to feed itself by its own. Those penalties sometimes are severe, but not as severe to rapidly increase production or demolish food consuming buildings.

If there is a surplus of food in the nation, then it receives bonus to growth and unit replenishing. Too small production in the whole country generates hunger. Because of hunger province growth drop, formations receive replenishes slower and the general morale of soldiers drop.

You can have province that produces less food than others. It is a pretty common situation, especially due to the costs generated by buildings from the settlement category. All under condition that the whole production of food is in plus. Other provinces will replenish the shortage and the possible penalties will affect only the territories that import food. If overall food production is in minus, then penalties will affect all provinces. Similarly - a great surplus of food will have positive impact on all provinces. Export of food doesn't give any financial nor economical profits for the exporting province.

The biggest problem with balanced food production are the settlement buildings. One farm can maintain the needs of one building of that category on similar level, but in each province there are three of them, and some of them better, which means more expensive to maintain. Additionally, there are many other buildings, like in civil and religious category, that consume lots of food as well, especially on higher levels. Because of that, there is a high probability that despite your efforts you won't be able to get enough food production in some provinces and will be forced to import it.

Seasons of the year

Just like in reality, seasons have great impact on the situation in Europe. During winter income from industrial production increases, during spring you can create new farm buildings cheaper, in summer growth is faster, and in autumn food production increases due to harvests. Additionally, it is important to have large supplies of food in winter and not leaving the city by your armies, otherwise their numbers will drop. Every season last one turn, so you will be able to easily predict when the change of situation will occur.

A random factor is connected to the seasons as well. A very calm winter or harsh autumn might occur that will impact the food production. You have no influence on that, so simply be prepared for a possible aggravation or amelioration of situation.

Year

One year consists of four seasons, which means four turns. It is important, since chapter objectives and victory objectives are being accounted based on year, not turn, in difference to mission in progress. Age of all characters is being counted in similar manner as well. Because of that, don't be surprised that your family without the use of adoption will grow in numbers very slowly.