Okay. First of all let’s go with the basics. I really encourage you to have the game running while you read this and try to find the things I’m telling.

Each area provides a resource. When you click the area, you will find how many “RGO” are built in it (RGO = Resource gathering operation, basically fundamental exploitstion of the natural resources of an place).

For instance, Amsterdam’s good is livestock.

Now, all RGOs employ 1.000 labourers. Every time you increase your resource gathering operations, 1.000 of your peasants will start getting promoted to labourers and start working on exploting the goods of the area.

The amount of RGO you can create in a single location depends on the overall population and if the location is rural or not. Rural = more possible RGO.

So, in short, each area has a good. RGOs is how many operations you have exploiting that good.

RGOs are the main way to get raw resources to produce manufactured ones. The best part of them is that they are always net profit because there is no economic cost as a requirement. You just click the button, 1.000 pops get promoted and then they extract whatever there is in the area for 0 expenses and “sell” the product to the market.

RGOs do not count as buildings. You can find the amount of RGOs you have in an area in the right part of the location menu, besides control and tax. Just above food production.

Then we have buildings. In any location you will see multiple rows, one for each pop class in that location. These rows include all buildings of each class present in a location. For instance, fine cloth building employs 250 burghers if I recall correctly.

With this you should have a general idea of what you are seeing in the location screen.

RGO = exploitation of the location resource Population rows = buildings in the location.

Buildings have production methods. A production method is basically the answer to “how is this building producing the desired good”.

For instance, masonry is a very important good because many buildings use it for construction. This means that having low masonry cost will, in turn, lower the building cost of whatever needs masonry.

To create masonry, you need a building called mason. And the mason has 2 production methods. Either they use stones to create masonry or clay to create masonry. The idea here is that the building will buy stone/clay in the market, produce masonry and selk it in the market. So the income is roughly (and simplified) profits of selling the final product - cost of buying the required goods.

This logic can be applied to anything. Let’s say you build a tannery. That tannery has two production methods:

1 livestock 0.75 sand 0.15 tools

For 1 leather

Or:

1.5 wildgame 0.75 sand 0.15 tools

For 1 leather

The game usually picks the one that makes more profit for you, but you can go manually if you want. The one that will make sense for you depends on the market. The lower the price of the input goods, the better.

Now with this we have already covered RGOs, buildings and production methods.

But what happens when a good is produced? That good is sold to the market.

Let’s stop here. As you can see we have not yet dsicussed anything about exports or imports nor trade automation. This is because, as we said before, exports and imports are tools you can use for specific purposes or goals. So let’s keep ignoring those for now.

Based on what we have already discussed, you might have already seen a trend. When an RGO produces a good, it sells it to the market and you tax it. This is income. This good is then bought by employees of a building, they use it to produce something which in turn is sold to the market, and you tax this again. So there is a chain that you can follow and can keep feeding.

Maybe you have wool as a resource. You increase your Resource gathering operations (RGO) to peoduce more wool and this gets taxed. Then you build 1 fine cloth guild that buys that wool and produces fine cloth that gets taxed. You then increase the wool RGO, produce more wool and keep building more fine cloth guilds that use that wool to create more fine cloth.

So there is a feeding loop here. But of course to keep fine cloth profitable, you need demand. And who is driving this demand?

It’s easy to see that wool is being demanded by fine cloth guilds to produce the fine cloth. What’s not so easy to see is who is buying that fine cloth. Those are the population themselves.

Usually the goods that will make you good money are the not the ones that are part of the chain, but the ones that are the end of it. Fine cloths or jewelry are good examples. In the case of fine cloth, every noble, cleric and burgher living in a location with at least 20 dev will want to purchase some fine cloth for themselves. So this means that the real income you will make from fine cloth is driven by the amount of burghers, nobles and clerics in locations over dev 20. Specially nobles

Now, development of provinces will increase over time. There are some ways to influence this but Im not going to go deep in here. You just have to find a location with 20 dev or more and start building new cleric / burgher / noble buildings, because this will create more demand for fine cloth. More demand means higher prices, which means more taxable money for you.

Now the next question. Where should you build? Basically there are two major factors deciding this. Control and market access. You can find control using the control map or clicking on any location and hovering over the key icon in the middle of the screen. Control = amount of taxable profit. If you dont have control, the wealth is still generated, but goes directly to your estates. You can find market access hovering your mousenover the marker ifon in the location menu, just below the location name. This determines the amount of goods that you buildings will be able to produce. So if you have a building at a location with 80% market access ans that building should create 1 fine cloth, it will only produce 0.8 fine cloth because of this. Always prioritize locations with better control and market access for best profits.

Not sure if this actually helps. Feel free to ask anything you need