I have been really busy with Total War: Attila, particularly playing the Western Roman Empire on legendary mode.
I have tested a few strategies, and I am testing some. Something I’ve found that was interesting is the sort of “peak income” for a high corruption faction. When you start your WRE campaign, corruption is about 75%-80%, which results in you pulling in about 600 denari a turn in income, despite owning a third of the map.
Ideally you want as little corruption as possible, but that is a natural function of the size of your empire itself: As your empire gets bigger, corruption increases. Corruption can be decreased by decree, governor, or technology.
For the WRE, you must abandon/lose territories, which has the effect of increasing your income. How many to lose is the key to min/maxing your starting income, so you have to choose carefully. So far, the most ideal corruption is roughly 40%, give or take 5%.
I have found that giving up more territories to go below 40% actually decreased by income, as the trade-off between corruption income loss did not make up better returns on income from having the territory.
The 40% number is a rough guess, which I arrived at by simply creating a game, taking note of the amount of corruption I had at start, then simply desolating territories in chunks, then seeing how much income I was generating next turn.
There is probably a better corruption number, but as it stands, it is ideal because it allows me to keep the right amount of good territories to survive the early game. Basically, I keep Spain, Italy, and Africa, while dumping the rest (almost all of Gaul and all of Britain).
That’s it for now. I’m still refining my strategy, and I plan on writing a more in-depth Western Roman Empire guide in the near future.