I earned the economic victory playing as Rome on normal difficulty. You can win as any faction though, and the difficulty level can be increased as long as you win your battles along the way. This guide will help in any difficulty or with any faction. My latest victory with this achievement was in Emperor Edition on 4/11/15, so it should still be good after the updates from CA that are starting to be less frequent.

The first thing to do is to build up the right kind of economy by erecting the right types of buildings. Guan Yu has written an excellent guide called "Easy Public Order and Money Income Guide" and it is worth reading. However, right now I'm only suggesting that you focus on his section about what types of buildings to use for different factions.

I suggest making a small change as the Romans. In Roma build the amphor building (the industry with the picture of the vases) instead of the Jupiter shrine (you should build that shrine in Arminium). Otherwise, if you follow his directions you will have two of the same shrine.

I also suggest only building the barracks and not the auxillery buildings to get lesser, cheaper units. You will end up with nothing but elite units and be able to easily afford them. This frees up building spaces for other things like more farms.

Use edicts for higher taxes (no happiness penalty happens) in your riches provinces. Use dignataries to build wealth in the best territories, not imbedded with armies. No need for spies, and use champions to make your armies stronger.

Also, you don't want to get another type of victory by mistake, so don't build the buildings needed for the cultural victory.

So far, so good. Use your talent to go out and start conquering the world. Don't focus on the places you need for your victory, just expand your territory as you know how to.

Early in the game try to cut taxes. Your revenues (income) may drop, but many wonderful things happen. First, the people are happy paying less taxes. This makes capturing new places easier to control and keeps your original places happy as well. Second, wealth builds.

Wealth is crucial to an economy in the game just as it is in real life. Some people take the simplistic view that more taxes means more revenue. If we set aside politics and focus on what actually happens in economies we discover that over time government income rises faster with low taxes than with high taxes (There is a saying that economics departments are one of the few safe havens for conservatives in a university setting). Why is this? If you own a business and it is taxed heavily you can't afford to hire more people, and you can't pay people more. Why would you want to pay people more? In order to get them to work for you and not your competitors! Now, with low taxes more people are working and making more money. This gives the government more taxpayers and more people in a higher tax bracket.

In sum, the way to making more income for a government isn't to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. The way to increase revenue is to create more taxpayers, increase the wealth of all of those taxpayers (a rising tide rises all ships), and let them build the economy.

I watch a lot of players (in several TW games) trying to keep taxes as high as they can without causing rebellions. With patience and low taxes the income will steadily increase.

With low taxes you can end up supporting 12 full stack legions made up of a general, 2 praetorian cav, 2 ranged units, and the rest praetorian guards.

You have the right buildings, the right armies, happy people, an income between 10,000 and 20,000, and around 1,000,000 in the bank. You have also captured much of the world. Now the secret to winning the economic victory comes...

With your skill at playing Rome 2 and with the right buildings and economy you have taken over much of the world and could easily win a military or cultural victory. If this was real life you could just sit back and enjoy the utopia of your own empire where everyone is happy, enemies are few, and your country is strong. But we don't want to do the smart thing; we want to win the economic vioctory in the game.

So how do we get that 90,000 income to win the game? The other issues needed to win the economic victory may be easy enough, but the 90,000 revenue is a killer.

Not anymore.

Make sure you have peace with most of the world, and as many alliances as possible. I try to keep a "steadfast" rating in my diplomacy window by always dealing honestly with allies and being as friendly as possible with neutrals. I conquer enemies or make them client states. I trade with as many countries as I can and make that a priority. Late in the game, even with a high imperium rating, most of the world will have full alliances with you and not go to war with each other because of your strength.

Make sure your buildings are built up to the max (except for the buildings that might trigger a cultural victory). You do this by making sure that you have researched all of the civil research and all of the military reasearch except the research dealing with navies and seige. I've never needed a navy and never needed to use seige weapons.

Also make sure you now have the territories needed to win the economic victory condition.

Here's the two tricks to take you to the finish line...

First, convert all of your level 4 libraries into delis (the picure of a ham) and disband all of your armies, and build 6 new, full stack armies (re-instate army legacies if you want to). These should be made of only the weakest, cheapest unit available. We want 120 units for the victory condition, not units that can actually win a battle.

Second, look at your tax slider and income. Slide the taxes up to max and see how close you are to 90,000 income. With the loss of high maint. armies you should be close or better. If not, keep the high taxes for 1 turn. On the next turn use the huge income (around 80,000) and your massive savings from your great economy to build up any buildings still needing to be improved. Leave the taxes on lowest for a couple of turns an order to build the wealth back up and keep the people happy then try again. Keep repeating this cycle. You should win on the first try or within 2 or 3 tries.

First, I want to thank Guan Yu for an excellent guide. His guide allows me to introduce an idea without having to explain everything about buildings. If you are a new player read his entire guide. If you are experienced you may still get some excellent tips. If you want to get an economic victory read his buildings section and then read my guide.

Second, a large part of my guide suggest low taxes to win this victory. I try to use some real life examples to help explain the in-game idea of wealth and how low taxes are an effective way to build an economy and consumer happiness. I realize that some people may disagree for political reasons, and I respect this. However, the technique works in the game and that is what is important. Please don't use the examples I provided (in order to illustrate the in-game idea) as an excuse to argue, rage, or otherwise spam the comments section. I'm here to help players, not to argue politics. Whether you agree or disagree with the underlying arguments that are used to explain how low taxes help in the game, please give the ideas a try or suggest other ways to win (I'm sure there are plenty). The low taxes approach has worked for me not only in winning the economic victory in R2, but also helps me to win outright victories in Empire, Napoleon, and Shogun 2. (I have Med. 2, but never play it). If a player is having a tough time with the economic victory (and I think it is the trickiest victory if you look at global achievement stas), my way is one suggestion on how to win.

Last, if there is anything I can do to assist a player struggling with this victory condition (or who has a correction for my guide) please let me know.

Thanks to all for reading, and good luck to you!

STEVONIAN