The Military Province

This is a prime example of the changing face of a province. A late Italia building make up might look like this (you can see how late from the glorious swathe of red on the mini-map, leaving just a little token “cradle of (Greek) civilisation” in the middle):

A Military Italia
A Military Italia

There is no income generation, no food generation and all the towns are set at the lowest tier! How does this work? The key is that the tax box is unchecked, not as an emergency measure to relieve public order or a faction-wide critical food deficit, but as a deliberate strategy so that there are now only two resource requirements: elite unit recruitment capacity and public order (to compensate for the public order penalties of all those level IV military buildings despite having no taxation).

Any paltry wealth income of this profile is wasted by the tax exemption and food is set to 1 (0 plus 1 bonus food for being Roman faction) so there is no negative impact on global food surplus from the major food consumption of these buildings.

There are a few things to note:

  • Training camp line buildings can only be built in the capital, making these slots valuable. Unlike equipment upgrade buildings, training camps only work in the province in which the army is recruited.
  • The army and navy recruitment buildings can just as easily be constructed in minor settlements, so use these less valuable slots for such a purpose.
  • Temple line buildings can be constructed anywhere, but level IV temples can only be built in the capital. The best temple for order is the Nymph Grove line. On the other hand, the gladiator line city centre building gives a much better order bonus at level IV (24 vs 16) and can only be built in the capital. So a circus is in the capital and level III temples are built in the minor settlements.
  • The Temple of Mars is used in the capital at maximum level not for its minor order bonus but for unit bonuses. It provides +2 experience bonus, and a 10% morale bonus. Couple this with the +3 experience bonus for the Armidoctor level IV training camp and the +1 experience for Roman infantry and you get 6 chevron starting units!
  • Couple the Bread and Games Edict with the Temple of Mars and you get 2 extra unit training slots per turn. With the technology researched that provides another extra training slot, this means six “uber” upgraded Praetorian Guards can be created each year (see screenshot below, check their stats, and weep ye Barbarians!). Most of the time, you could use this Edict for something else, like Tax Harvesting in an income boosting province or Bread and Games to make a newly conquered province less unhappy, and switch it when needed to warp in some super-soldier Praetorians. Note as mentioned above in the Imperium section describing Edicts that there is a one turn delay for the switch.
    Italia Unit Recruitment
    Italia Unit Recruitment
  • The equipment upgrades don’t have to be in the same province. You could create your experienced units in one province, and then move them to another province where you have level III (maximum rank) equipment buildings; they can then be upgraded in this province. However, those slots could be put to use in another province generating income or food. The second province would be badly compromised by either being Tax Exempt as well, or needing food buildings and order buildings to compensate for these equipment building penalties.
  • Demolish all your main town buildings, and rebuild them to level I only. If you built them up before you made the province tax exempt, they might have provided a nice income boost, and also growth, and cultural influence if there was an original owner of different culture. Now they just drain public order (but see note below on Velathri).

The “brave new Italia” in the screenshots above has all these training camps, equipment buildings, and a temple dedicated to military boosting rather than order, and still maintains public order of +1 on Hard difficulty without needing a Bread and Games Edict.

One might think to go for a Circus Maximus (level V), which has a better +30 public order bonus than the Circus (level IV) and thereby squeeze in an auxiliary camp (no public order penalty) instead of a level III Nymph temple. The Maximus also has a 5% cavalry morale bonus. However, the main advantage over the level IV circus is wasted, namely the lack of -10 food penalty, because the Tax Exemption means food is fixed at 1. If Bread and Games is on, there is also a major cultural wealth bonus that is wasted by the province being Tax Exempt.

Better to use your one Circus Maxima per faction for a province with major income production so that you need fewer temples in your minor settlements in this province and have more room for wealth buildings instead. Better still, allow this province to have a scriptorium level IV to maximise the effect of the cultural wealth bonus. Even better, choose this super income province for a Tax Harvesting Edict.

Note that on harder difficulties, Bread and Games might have to be on much of the time in this version of Italia to keep the public order stable. However, as mentioned above, this will be used anyway for faster unit production. Note that the food income bonus from Bread and Games is in fact still applied even though the province is Tax Exempt, so there would be +5 food production for this province.

A perhaps unforeseen disadvantage of down-grading all the main city buildings to level 1 is that the garrison will be of poorer quality. However, the chance of an invasion next to your main military base should be low, and after all where are you making your elite forces?? Nevertheless, while a level I province capital gets no siege engines instead of 8, and gets no legionary cohorts, vigiles or velites, it still gets 4 Roarii and decent garrison units are also provided by the training buildings, circus, equipment buildings (apart from siegeworks), docks, temple of Mars and army recruitment buildings; an income generating province would not produce these.

But I could have gone further with optimising Italia. Did you spot it? Valathri is a Wine town not a market town, and wine towns uniquely give public order bonuses not penalties. Upgrading Velathri to level IV would give a +8 bonus to public order. Why bother when you have no income anyway? Well a level IV minor settlement (not the capital) gives an extra unit recruitment slot! So I could just about balance the public order bonus of a level IV Velathri with a level IV  Neapolis or Arminium (the food bonus of Neapolis is sadly wasted) if I had an agent or Bread and Games, and get eight recruitment slots!!