How about using the term "Tycoons."  The word has several negative or nefarious connotations, and seems to fit well with the demeanor and style of the Empire.

Or RobberBaron

those are both negative terms for capitalistic entrepenuers and have no place in a fantasy empire

Coin-monger

-A particularly skilled merchant can seek to rise above his less fortunate rivals to obtain dominance over their activities and, in many cases, their lives. Coin-mongers are one of few meritocratic positions in the Empires, greatness being born rather than learned. Better to hold the whip over those that learn too slowly, in any case.

Fiscal Lord

-The highest ranking member of a low caste, the Fiscal 'Lord' is a grandiose title for those that grease the wheels of expansion and conquest with the tinkling of coin. Though money be the sinew of war, the money-makers of the Empires are regarded as an unhealthy and unwelcome facet of their great society. 

Pecuniary ex officio.

-With a deserved reputation for political intrigue, corruption, and bloody long-standing vendettas, the small and secretive ex officio class can be the Empire leader's best friend and worst enemy.

Legate of the Investiture Cabal

-The Legate is the undisputed leader of the cabal that deals with all Empire financial matters. Undisputed until a rival or usurper puts a dagger in his back, of course. Assassinations, bribary and blackmail are the facts of daily life in the cabal.

My favorites are still Profiteer and Vizier

I don't think anyone suggested quaestor.

Seneschal would be the medieval equivalent, though quaestor has an obvious Imperial flair.

Seneschal (imho) is a good suggestion.

Best suggestion yet, I think. It's a pretty obscure title, that most people probably won't associate with a ton of un-Empire-like things. Even better, I'm pretty sure it's only ever been used by dogmatic, inflexible & highly corrupt authorities. So the associations it does evoke, I think, are the right ones.

Yeah, I was thinking about suggesting quaestor or praetor even [even tho quaestor is more appropriate, since they supervised the financial affairs.] However I think that SD don't want to use these ancient roman ranks, so this is why I haven't suggested it before.

Either way, if I must choose....quaestor or vizier. Quaestor sounds better of course.

Nah, the Empires are in the east, I think Vizier would be more appropriate :3

In any case, I would think words like Seneschal and Vizier would be at least slightly more common than Quaestor. Also, I just don't get any sinister feeling from the word Quaestor xD

buggy triple post

Coin-monger is my favorite in this new crop. The European Parliament has Quaestors who are just finance bureaucrats, and the classical Roman ones weren't consistently associated with brutal exploitation. I still like Factor quite a bit.

Factor...? lol?   What's that..?  Never heard that word before.

We have to find a word that sounds evil or preferably like someone that would squeeze out every last penny from innocent, hardworking people.

The problem is that your parameter is an eye-of-the-beholder problem. Susarian suggested Factors way back on page 1 of this thread.

The Medici reference alone made that a fun idea for me, and putting it together with the roots of the modern word "fact" in the Latin "factum" just made it more fun. Imperial money authorities are a fact of life and they make you do things.

I.R.S. LOL!

Tax Collectors

back in the day, Tax Collectors were known for skimming, and were in general hated by the populace. (much more-so than today, since most of the money went into their own pocket)

I'd buy this game because it looks like it's going to be pretty cool, however I think I'm going to skip on it based off how Demigod was literally abandoned.

itsmevic, the developer of the game determines the future support/updates. compare sins of a solar empire(ironclad games) & demigod(gas powered games) and also the past support history of the developers( gas powered games  has a bit of a history of creating a game releasing some patches and maybe an expansion then silence eg supreme commander, ironclad games still give the feel that they care about their product,) and as the developer of elemental is stardock NOT a third party developer, look at stardocks ongoing support with other software they have released. my feeling is that they are likely to continue to  support for significant period.

harpo

That depends on how you define an empire.  The Empires (big E) in this game are made up of mostly artificial beings.  There is one human faction who have adopted the mindset of these beings.  A kindom could become an empire (small e).

A Kingdom could control huge tracts of land.  They could take this land by force, conquering or absorbing smaller kingdoms (nations).  In that sense they would be an empire.  Philosophically and biologically the would not be an Empire (except for those few dudes who decided to join them).

About the experience: If they breed troops of primitive humanoids or animals, they rely on instinct and lack the cognitive capabilites of gaining experience, a select few might realize that running straight into a formation of pikes is bad. And regardless of the pikes, if the leader says charge you charge. Simply because they lack individualism and the intelligence for assessing a situation and learning from it they advance much slower if at all in xp.

About the leaders:

What we want are titles, titles that hint at concepts we already know. Something like sages makes me think of old men in long beards who take time to reach evaluated decisions, not someone who goes forward in teh world grasping knowledge where it is found. I'd rather go for something like

Savant, Augur, Lord's Eye, Grasper, Wayfinder(not really this but something this way goes), Reader(or the like, they would be considered special if everyone can't read), or something else that is not necessarily involved in research but that can be applied.

Likewise goes for the economic specialist. Tycoon and Magnate fit well but seem a bit non-medieval (the meaning of magnate used now comes from 18th century and later, before magnate was a parliament member in Poland, whereas tycoon is derived from japanese and is a 19th century word). Vizier works for me, people mainly think of them as evil because they are advisors, peer reviewers(best part of the group are internal affairs right?), and the ones who handle the money and day to day affairs(tax drivers). A bit advanced for the feel of the Empire, but we have dragons what the heck. I'd once again go for words without a relevant meaning that you can see the oppression in but doesn't directly hint at earth's history, but that's just my preference again.. Something like:

Collector, Wealthkeeper, or the like works for me.

These provoked a question: Does the Empire have global money, knowledge, and magic production like the Kingdoms do? If so, what would be the point of "sending them where they are needed"? It'd be too easy to just have them globally produce from one well-defended location.

Prestige makes sense though since that is not global, but per city.

This is going to be ridiculously fantastic...love the variation between the factions.

You could always make a lore addition to the empires, of a "neutral" organisation dealing with the different empire nations, called The Guild. This organisation would deal with all financial matters. This would give you the opportunity to have all economy-based units for empire nations have some affilitation to The Guild, and as such, could influence their name in that way.

Or, you could just scrap the lore thing, and just call them Guildsmen, or somesuch. :p

Reading the initial post and Raven X's comment, i still find myself agreeing with the latter. It seems like many of the dynamics on which the game was sold have been chopped out for the empires. Adventuring? Gone. Resource development? Gone, build a pig farm instead. Are guardians, enforcers and sions designed or are they more like Supreme Commander Experimentals? IN that case, does the unit design part of the game dissappear?

I appreciate the desire to creat a LoTR style battle of good and evil, but it seems very limiting to draw such massive distinctions. Is it totally unreasonable that a player might want to play a greedy, yet capitalistic and open evil faction, like the Korx in GalCiv? And what happens when half the kingdoms have fallen? If it's impossible for the empires to end up at war with each other then the end game is going to be a pretty much forgone conclusion after the game reaches a certain point. I usually quit when this point arrives as the game is no longer a challenge for me, regardless of whether i'm winning or not.