"An army marches on its stomach"You get this quote from time to time on the loading screen of E:TW, and it pretty much sums the philosophy of E:TW. The Total War series has always been about battles and building up empires. However, to recruit armies and maintain your empire you need money.Title after title, the sophistication of the economical system kept evolving and each installment required more micromanagement and offered more options for the player to customize one's empire.Income sources in E:TW are comprised of Taxes, Trade, King's Purse, Protectorate tribute, from treaties with other nations and raiding. This income will be spent to develop your empire, recruit new armies and fleets, maintaining your troops and keeping your population under control.You can download a PDF printer friendly copy of this guide here I) Region IncomeII) TaxationIII) Wealth and Wealth GenerationIV) Other IncomeV) Trade, Trade Partners and Trade LanesVI) Importing ResourcesVII) Securing TradeVIII) Trade Resources, Plantations and Trade NodesIX) Town and Port GrowthX) Town and Port WealthXI) IndustrializationXII) Mines and Wood CampsXIII) FarmingXIV) RoadsXV) ResearchXVI) Ministers and GovernmentXVII) Army and Navy UpkeepXVIII) Town WatchXIX) BankruptcyXX) StrategiesXXI) AcknowledgmentsIn Empire: Total War we saw the introduction of regions with towns outside the city for the first time in a Total War game. Each region has a capital, and whatever nation controls the capital will control the region and benefit from its income. Outside the capital you have towns, farms, mines, plantations, ports and road infrastructure. The level of each of these structures will affect how much money it will contribute."But in this world nothing is sure but death and taxes"I'll deal with the later part of Mr. Franklin wise quote, and leave the first part to your battle prowess. Taxes is one of your two major sources of income, the other being trade. The following graph that was posted by Thamis of the Creative Assembly explains in a nutshell how taxation and wealth interact with each otherEach region has a certain income as explained earlier, but in the game you don't get the whole income generated by your regions. In reality, what you get is a percentage of this income in the form of taxes.Taxes in E:TW are controlled through Theater Policies that you manage in your policies tab. That means you can have three separate tax policies, one for each of the theaters: Europe, Americas and India.For finer micromanagement, you even get separate tax policies for each class in your empire. For the scope of this guide, I will refer to the classes as either higher classes or lower classes.You can even exempt regions from paying taxes at all, as this will encourage wealth and population growth, while removing any unhappiness that results from taxation.While you are setting your tax policy, you will notice that you have two bars of five slots for the two taxable classes. Each slot in these bars represents a different taxation level. The first slot will give you 5% increase to the tax rate in the region from the selected class, and each extra slot will give you an extra 5%, for a max of 25% for the fifth slot.For example, if you set the taxes for the higher classes at the first slot, and the third slot for the lower classes, you will be getting 5% and 15% tax rate from each class respectively.Each region has a capital, and every capital has a government building. You will notice in the description of the government building that each tier or level will give you a certain modifier for taxation. This value is a multiple of three: 3%, 6%, 9%, 12% and 15%. In most regions you can have a government building that offers you up to 9%, and only nations' capitals will be able to construct the last two tiers that offer 12% and 15%. Military government buildings can offer a maximum of 3% tax rate modifier.Ministers can affect your tax rate either positively or negatively, so you'll have to check their effects, traits and followers continuously. The key minister is the treasury minister, as one of his effects is the global tax modifier. You also have some minister traits or followers that effects tax rate. Usually the head of state is the one who gets this trait or follower, but sometimes a minister will have too. So don't forget to check your ministers continuously to make sure none of them is decreasing you tax rate.As your empire expand, so will the expenses for maintaining and managing your empire will increase. When your empire is under four regions including your capital region, your administration costs will be zero. Once you expand beyond this number, your tax rate will decrease with each newly conquered region to reflect the extra costs that will go into hiring bureaucrats to gather your taxes.