losing money

[eeL ylleK]

Why am I losing money all of a sudden? One year I was making around 2000 Florins profit, then the Black Plague came and now I'm losing about 1000 Florins a year. I cuurrently have a deficit of about 3000.

I'm in the years around 1350, I'm English, I've conquered the Western europe Costline and Spain. Will this end? Is it a blockade? How do you know if your being blockaded?

[rasoforos]

you get blockaded in the sea areas where a faction you are at war with has ships . to see which areas are clear and which are not press 'v' while you are watching the map. unblockaded areas with your ships on them show as green , blickaded areas show as red.


....about the money. i cannot verify it but it might be a flunctuation because of an event since the decrease seems small. income reductions due to blockades are ussually large ,for example from 45.000 to 12.000 ( a good reason to have spare cash and a good naval power)

[LadyAnn]

Economic downturn http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

Blackplague reduces income by half or more in affected provinces.

Annie

[ToranagaSama]

I'd check to see if any of my Govenors have died in the Plague. Have they? Did you appoint new Govenors? Compare the Acumen of the old and new Govenors. If the new have lower Acumen then you'll suffer a loss of income. In any event, try see that your Govenors have at least 4 acumen.

Regarding the blockade, did you have a Trade Network and were you receiving income from Trade? Just a single enemy ship can ruin your Trade Network.

Also, has the number of troops increased substantially?? JFYI, 2000 Florins is pretty borderline in terms of income and can easily turn into deficit in a single turn.

Lastly, don't forget to peruse the TOC.

Good Luck http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif Have Fun

[LadyAnn]

I ran into this scenario often:

1. Having about 2000 in the bank
2. Check the ecenomic newspapers and found that I have a surplus of more than 700 bucks.
3. Went out shopping (not a lot, perhaps 1000).
4. Postman came (without ringing twice) and brought a letter informed me I had a bounce check.
5. Have more florins in the bank now.

Scratching my head: what gives?

I found out that:
1. The economic section of the newspapers is not always correct. It only take into account the costs of paying salary and the potential income, and not counting new buildings.

2. The bank pays salary first, then pay the buildings and train troops (not sure which is first, or go province to province).

3. Then tax is added back to the total.

So, it turns out that I have salary of 1300, left me 700. I was trying to build a keep (1000 bucks), so I couldn't build it. I still have 700 bucks, but the check bounced all the same. And my income is added into it and I have more than the original 2000.

Long story short: build up the economy first to get off the 4000 level before trying to buy expensive stuffs.

Annie

[RunAway!!]

I had that plague happen to me...economy turned ugly for a few years; went from making around 5k to barely breaking even. Using trade routes would probably be a good idea; I'm not positive, but I'd bet they wouldn't be effected by the plague; not to mention they can triple or even quadruple a province's normal earnings.

[Gregoshi]

Welcome to the Org eeL ylleK. I'm ihsogerG http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif one of the official greeters here in the Entrance Hall.

A number of people have jumped in to help you already. I'll just explain something ToranagaSama mentioned. TOC stands for Table of Contents (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=7;t=2273), a thread at the top of the Main Hall that indexes all the informative posts in these forums and sorts them by categories (rebellions, trade routes, etc). If you have a question about how something works or how to deal with a problem, the TOC is the first place to look.

[eeL ylleK]

Well I'm still going broke I don't think I'm being blockaded, I tried pressing 'v' but it didn't show me anything. I'm not at war, the only people around me are the Germans (allies), Egypt (nuetral) and a Rebel province (enemy, but no ships). I just took Ireland and it cut my losses to about -500 a year.

I think I'll try destroying some of my buildings that I don't use anymore. This sucks

[Naagi]

The v button only works in version 1.1 patch. I too havent patched and had serious cash problems my first game. Though not due to plague, Im really high army oriented. Instead of destroying buildings, stop all production of troops (unless necessary), and buildings (ditto), except for your main income provinces. By this I mean, where Im playing Byz and Constantinople is my high income province, so I'd continue to build there. Build mines, farmlands (good post somewhere about how high to build farmlands in each province), and every trading center you can. Maybe this will dig you out some. Hope this helps.


Naagi http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

[Foreign Devil]

In one of my early campaigns as the Danes, I started losing money every turn. It took me nearly 30 years to get out of the red, and by then, all my neighbors were a lot more advanced than me. I restarted. My advice to you would be to keep playing until you figure out what went wrong, and then start over. This time you'll know what to do.

[king steven]

.conan is your answer.

when the plague hit england in the 16 centry (sp)it destroyed most farms or all farms in england and because england was in chaos scotland tryed 2 invade but succecced.

all hail King Steven

[King John II]

Did you get an announcement that the Black Death had descended on Europe and the stench of death pervades all lands or an announcement that plague had broken out in a particular province?

If the later the announcement tells you that income in that province drops to half that year. But that drop just affects one year.

If it was the Black Death I have only seen that once, very early in a high period campaign played as the Spanish. I tried to see if there were effects but found it difficult to see if there were or not. I suspect there were not.

Anyway I rather think the announcement may be incidental and that your problem is that you are giving marginally too high a priority to building miltary improvements and expensive units as against developing your economy.

Two thousand florins profit a year is just too narrow a margin for a well developed empire. Buying in a few expensive mercinaries, training up a few expensive-to-maintain units and needing a few more peasant units to pacify conquered lands and that profit will turn to deficit.

So you need to give a slightly higher priority to getting trade going and to developing a good agricultural/mining income.

Build mining and agricultural improvements in all your provinces (except those few where agricultural income starts at less than, say, 250 florins) and only build up your capacity to generate advanced troops in a few provinces. Have at least three provinces turning out ships.

When expanding give a priority to the rich provinces, Flanders, Sweden, Constantinople, Antioch, Egypt etc.

By the middle phase of the game you will be able to stop worrying about money.

In your present game I am sure you are right to knock down some military buildings. Look to get some shipbuilding going. And make sure you have ports and trading posts in all your provinces that produce one or more trade goods.

It will take you a while - because ships take three years to build. Which is why you need to give this a priority early. So that you can make a start at establishing a navy even while you are getting your initial expansion under way.

[G_Love]

Quote[/b] (Naagi @ Dec. 13 2002,13:54)]Build mines, farmlands (good post somewhere about how high to build farmlands in each province), and every trading center you can.
Being someone who's seemingly always hitting the limits on money in early games (I tend to play as the Polish/Hungarians/Danes/something similarly challenging), do you know where that post is about the farmlands? I'm guessing I'm wasting lots of money on upgrading farm land I shouldn't, and it'd be nice to see what others have done.

Of course, maybe I should just play as someone easier since I'm still not very good at this game, despite owning it for a year. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[King John II]

I haven't seen that thread but when you are deciding whether to build a farmland improvement try this. Right click on the icon for the existing farmland improvement (if any) and it will tell you the income being generated. Now right click on the improvement and see what that income will become after the improvement is completed.

Now you know how much each year your income goes up and you mentally compare that to the capital cost.

If farmland is wholly unimproved just look at the province's current income and compare that to the figure given when right clicking on the 20% improvement.

Early on you expect your campaign to last a century or two so there is time for almost any investment to pay for itself. But as time runs on this is less and less true.

At first you will find yourself building 20% and 40% improvements in all but a tiny handful of provinces (mostly desert ones). But then there will start to be provinces where the 60% improvement yields only an extra 40 florins and it will take most of the rest of the game for that sum to be amortised. So no more agricultural improvements there.

But the best provinces - those with a return of, say, over 350 florins before any improvement is made - yield an extra 70, 80 or even more florins per year for each improvement made. So you go on improving right up to 80% in those provinces.

Agricultural income is less important than trade during the middle part of the game but that falls off as the A1 gets jealous and wars break out. So you need to keep improving agriculture and mining throughout.

If you want one quick rule of thumb - if an agricultural improvement improves income by 50 florins a turn, build it.

[G_Love]

Thanks, King John II. Very informative post, and that should definitely help out. I swear, someday I'll be able to run an economy and a military at the same time http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[noramis]

Check your boat lanes ... and disband any mercenaries that you may have They are the cause of many a financial woes.

[king steven]

by disbanding your mercenaries, you wont be getting money back


all hail King Steven

[MonkeyMan]

Quote[/b] ]by disbanding your mercenaries, you wont be getting money back


Yes but have you seen the support cost of them? They cost about as much to support as they cost to hire in the first place. In other words if they are not dying for you they are wasting money. Get rid of them, either by killing them in battle or disbanding them.

[G_Love]

Quote[/b] (MonkeyMan @ Nov. 06 2003,06:50)]Yes but have you seen the support cost of them? They cost about as much to support as they cost to hire in the first place. In other words if they are not dying for you they are wasting money. Get rid of them, either by killing them in battle or disbanding them.
I've noticed this myself, and so I tend to avoid mercs. The costs just don't make it worth it, and since I tend to play fairly conservatively, I don't really need them for an early push. Of course, maybe that's my problem...

[Snowhobbit]

mercenaries cost twice as much in supportcost

[katar]

unless they are specialist units that you really need you should just stick with home grown units, saves you money in the long run. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[King John II]

Starting work on laying the foundations for trade from year 1 is the key.

It is no good first concentrating on defence/expansion and getting around to trade later.

Because ships take three years to build and you need 20 or thirty or forty of them. Also shipbuilding facilities take a while to develop.

So if you start with a developed province on the coast you steer it towards shipbuilding. If you don't start with such a province then your first major objective must be a developed city on the coast where you can found your shipbuilding industry once the province has been seized.

Nor is that enough. Once your expansion is under way you must be looking for two more cities which you can develop up to the point where they can turn out ships for you.

Side by side with this you give a degree of priority to building a trading post and a port in coastal provinces which have tradeable commodities. A look-out tower, mines, 20% and 40% agricultural improvements in decent agricultural provinces, border forts - all these come first early on - because you don't yet have the ship chain up. But the trading post and port come hard on the heels of those sorts of things. So that by the time the ship chain is growing the trading infrastructure is in place.

If you do this by the middle phase of the game you will be able to hire every mercenary who comes onto the market - to try a bribe or two almost every turn - to keep every province building every turn - and to run a large army while still seeing your cash pile rising year on year.

Don't ever neglect agriculture, though. Because in the later phase of the game trade falls off badly while agricultural/mining income is secure.

[king steven]

or aviod building inns al together

all hail King Steven

[king steven]

or aviod building inns al together

all hail King Steven

[MonkeyMan]

Not much good about mercs, only thing I use them for is as a pilliaging army, so assuming I have an enemy and some spare cash I buy ever merc I can afford, as well as one decent loyal general, and send them in against my enemy. They leave a nice trail of destruction, and they pay for themselves in pilliaged money and demolition income, once they have sent my enemy back to the stone age I save the by now superb general and disband whats left.

[juststeve]

I used to run out of cash quite often. Some of my problems were that I bought mercs far too often (and then didn't immedietly use+disband them), and that I used to try to build everything in each province. Once I stopped getting mercs, and began to specialize in provinces, I spent much less money. And when I stopped overbuilding the forts/castles, that helped, too.

Another factor can often be the units used to garrison a province. I used to try to put a stack in each province - financial suicide (and you never really 'grrom' your generals that way). Now I go as cheap as possible for garrisons, especially in provinces that are deep in my own territory, and don't border another faction. I tend to keep two main armies, and retrain these units when needed, instead of building yet another full stack. This gave me the added benifit of increasing the stats of my generals + army units - so now, I can take on much larger armies and beat them down (which just keeps making my own units stats improve that much more).

As far as trade goes, I usually only build trade buildings on coastal provinces early on. Trade is not that big of a factor for me, as I generally get a late jump on shipbuilding. By the time I have one ship in every ocean, some other power (usually one with a better navy) starts trouble, and the trade income is gone, anyway. SO getting most provinces teched up to 40-60% improved farming is what I tend to do.

One last thing. I also now pace my expansion. I tend to play one of the factions bordering the East (loaded with Rebels), so there is a lot of opportunity to grab territory early on. If you take over too much, too fast, the early buildings seem to suck up a lot of the yearly budget. And I tend to look at most of these provinces as cash cows, or just farmland. Some might offer a nice new unit, like Avar Nobles or Steppe Heavy Cav, but for the most part I wont even build a Boyer/Spearmaker there.

Hope these ideas help.

[Herodotus]

Just a small point, buildings and units are payed for North to South.