I started with three cities located towards the south of Europe, but then saw the opportunity to build additional cities in the cold north. I'll give you my own empire as an example. That's when more complex economic and trade strategies come into effect. But, by the time that your empire has grown to five or six towns in size, it's no longer possible for any trader to move between them all in an efficient manner in order to keep them all well supplied, while still generating healthy incomes for your fledgling nation. You'll have a couple of cities, and you'll set each to produce different kinds of things, so that a trader between the to cities can keep them both supplied with all the necessities, while another trader will take products to the cities run by allies, generating cash for your empire by fulfilling their needs. Yes, it's a game of 'buy low, sell high,' but it is remarkable how compelling such a simple economic concept can be.Īt first, it's all very straightforward. By taking the excess materials (bought cheaply because they are in excess) and taking them to a city that lacks those materials, it's possible for a trader to sell them at a large profit, which feeds back into your coffers.

Once a city is producing a material, it will slowly stockpile that material beyond what its people need.

Tools, for example, need coal and metals.

Some of these resources are raw materials, while others need the aforementioned raw materials to be turned into refined goods. The key here is that each city can only produce five different kinds of resources, be those foodstuffs, clothing, or metalworking. The primary way to do this is to establish trade routes, and use the income from them to build more cities and turn one or two trade routes into a complex web of economic activity. Players start out with one city to their name, and, through careful management of finances, need to build that into an empire that spans across Europe.

Manual grand ages rome