trade

[dlundie]

I seem to be broke all the time and i guess i dont pay enough attention to trade and the likes. I need some good tips on making lots of the gold stuff. I win the battles but seem to lose on the economy side. If i dont do something soon my troops will be on welfare.

[rasoforos]

Well...as you have noticed trade is your main money maker ( untill you take over more than 80% of the map that is ) , what i would suggest is :

1) Try to take over provinces that make a lot of trade money , you can get many of those early in the game either because they are controled by rebels ( sweden) either because they will not be well guarded.
2) Its worth to invest a bit on your naval abilities early in the game , spend some money on shipmakers and later on ships and cut some money from land buildings.
3) try to have 2-3 different shipyards since with only 1 it will take you ages to make enough ships for adequate trade. On the other hand with 3 of them you ll cover the map in no time which means a)protection b)a much larger income that the AI that will give you the leading edge
4)Create trade routes. For a traderoute to be established between two places you need to keep at least one ship in every sea area between those places. What you want to achieve is to have a couple of ships in every sea area of the map , this will help you exploit the maximum gains from trade. What i ussually do is to have a continious ship production from my shipyards, and when i have 3 ships i move two of them in a neighbouring area and i move the ships of that area a bit further and so on until i cover all the map.
5) protect your trade routes , the trade routes will always be a target from aggresive naval powers ( sicilians) , its not a good idea to have EVERY area full of ships ( ussually 2 are ok) so what i ussually do is to keep three main fleets ( north sea , east med , west med) of about 8 ships which will move and in collaboration with the existing ships ( the ones holding the trade route )will destroy the enemy fast.
6) make sure you either keep peacefull conditions with the other strong naval powers or to destroy any serious opposition in the water. You do not want to let any other faction have more than say 15 ships because , even with a great superiority from your side, it will take you at least 5-6 years to neutralise that fleet in case of a war ( which means blocked traderoutes and a decreased trade income for those years). As a consequence it pays to neutralise the enemy presence as fast as possible in a case of a war , attack him in EVERY area. I ussually keep a very strict superiority , i let no enemy keep anything more than 10 ships.
7) protect your ship making provinces , you do not want the enemy to destroy your naval ability, especially if you make sophisticated ships

Thats pretty much it , 2-3 ship making provinces , cover the map as soon as possible with 2-3 ships in every area , keep 2-3 larger war fleets , keep the traderoutes open , dont let the enemy have large fleets , and presto...50.000 income per year http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif . Hope it helps....

[hrvojej]

Just to add a few things to these great tips. The income from the trade is temporary: sooner or later you'll go to war with your trade partners, and it'll go dry. Use the time of cash influx to build up your farming income, as well as major expenses like castle upgrades, unless you think that you'll have all the armies needed for the final kick after that happens (which can happen, in fact). Also, if you have noticed, the building order is done from north to south, so usually the safest way to make sure your ships will be produced at a particular turn is to have shipyards in northern parts of your empire.
Good luck http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[some_totalwar_dude]

Ok now some tips for not spending to much money. (hey I'm Dutch http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif)

1. As soon as you have a good income from trade try to spend no more than about half of your income by keeping a small but high quality army. (challeging http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
Disband all the unesesarry(sp?) outdated units. try to have a province with a Inn and as less buildings as possible (this attracts mercenaries) so if war breaks out you can reqruit a nice force within a very short time.

2. Keep taxes at normal when not at war. If war breaks out and your trade income will drop significantly. You can compensate this by setting taxes to very high if necesarry.

3. Try to get your hands on one of the Medterranian isles to develop as a naval base. This also will drop the support costs of your fleet a little.

[Hakonarson]

You don't need 2-3 ships in every area tho - 1 in most areas, 2 -3 in "bottle necks" - such as the Straights of Gibralter, Sea of Marama, Aegean, Adriatic, Baltic and Black seas, and hte Skagerack - these are areas where losing 1 ship can cost you a lot of trade, whereas almost everywhere else there's 2-3 trade routes so if you lose a ship to a storm you don't lose lots of income - you may still lose some, but it's not as bad.

When you do lose a ship you can replace it from one of your 2 stacks in 1 turn.

Sticking to 1 ship/area makes expansion a lot faster

[dlundie]

Thanks for the info guys, i never realised how important the navy and trade could be. I tried your help out as the Byzantine Empire and in relatively short time my troops were having snow fights in Norway, Drinking Ale in Ireland, and Lazing along the banks of the Nile...good hepl that makes a game much more fun. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif