Trade question...

[Beirut]

I'm not a complete newb, but I simply cannot figure out how to trade.

I read the manual, read a few posts, but my very little brain is missing something.

I build boats, place one in each section of sea all the way to an ally and... what the hell do I do? I end up going broke almost every game because I have no trade cash.

Can someone give me the grade two English version of how to set up trade please.

Thanks. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

[Goofball]

It sounds like you are trading properly. Two possible problems though:

1) If you are starting in Early, there are very few trading partners available initially. Until the other nations start building ports and merchants, you will derive almost no trade income from them.

2) If nations whom you are at war with have ships of their own placed between you and the people you want to trade with, they effectively blockade you and shut down all of your trade income. I have seen my total income go from in excess of $15k/month to less than $1k/month with a simple declaration of war.

Also keep in mind that you can not trade with enemies or rebels.

Hope this helps...

[katank]

do you

a) have a merchant in your originating province

b) have a port in the originating province

c) find a port in the target province which is owned by a neutral or allied power?

Note: you CAN trade with rebels provided they have a port and you are not at war with them.

the originating province is the one you are trying to trade from and the target is the one you are trying to trade to.

d) also, hold down V and see if the seas between the provinces are lit green.

if a-d are all satisfied, then you are trading.

[Beirut]

Ahh, thank you both. I'm going to whoop up some Earl Grey and see what I can sell. Or buy.

Thanks. I'll let you know what happens. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cheers.gif

[Beirut]

GAH

I'm not sure if anything is working.

I used a cheat (oh my http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-dizzy2.gif ) and can build things in a year. I've got merchants and boatyards and ships from England (me) all down the coast to Spain. All the water is a lovely green when I hit V.

I've let at least twenty years go by and now that I have my boats and the water is green and I'm "connected" (I think) to at least four or five allied ports, I'm still going deeper into debt with every year.

Shouldn't I be seeing an update or something telling me what is going on? I tried dropping the ship on a dockyard, but that doesn't do anything. I must be missing something.

How many years should it take to have any trade at all?

Thanks again for any help.

[ShadesWolf]

Lord ShadeWolf at you service http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-curtain.gif

If you would like to pop along to the Shades Website I have a section on economy and the art of trade http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

The Medieval Economy (http://www.shadesmtw.com/medeconomy.htm)

Hopefully it will help

[Beirut]

And pop I shall.

Thanks be unto you my Lord and to all Lords who attended my ignorance. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/bigthumb.gif

"Pop"

[squippy]

Also, as I recently discovered on these boards, you can get explicit feedback from the game interface on trade status. Select a province you believe to be trading - i.e., that has a merchant, a port, and a trade good. Click the Economy icon... find the name of the province and click it. On the left you should now see a parchment which details what goods this province is retailing to what other provinces at what annual income.

[TonkaToys]

I've recently started trading, from England on Early and it took me a while to get anything going.

Once you have your trading route and trading partners, try bringing up the info on one of your merchants and see how much income they are producing.

Also, click the Income and Expenditure icon to see how much money each sea region is bringing you.

I don't know if it makes a difference, but do the territories that you have built merchants and docks in, have any tradable goods? From memory Wales and the Northernmost mainland English territory don't have tradable goods... therefore my guess is they aren't worth having docks and merchants in them

Correct me if I'm wrong. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-smile.gif

Once you get trade going, it makes a big difference to your income http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-toff.gif

[Beirut]

GAH I want to try all this out but I'm off to work in minutes. Have to wait until the nd of the day.

Damn this blasted responibility I bare http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-furious3.gif

[nick_maxell]

Quote[/b] (TonkaToys @ Mar. 23 2004,07:22)]I've recently started trading, from England on Early and it took me a while to get anything going.

Once you have your trading route and trading partners, try bringing up the info on one of your merchants and see how much income they are producing.

Also, click the Income and Expenditure icon to see how much money each sea region is bringing you.

I don't know if it makes a difference, but do the territories that you have built merchants and docks in, have any tradable goods? From memory Wales and the Northernmost mainland English territory don't have tradable goods... therefore my guess is they aren't worth having docks and merchants in them

Correct me if I'm wrong. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-smile.gif

Once you get trade going, it makes a big difference to your income http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-toff.gif
to add to Tonkas post:

you also can only trade different goods ie you cant sell wool from Wessex to another land having wool too (and wool doesn t generate much income too).
Tonka mentioned the icon to check all trading - you can also rightclick the mercant to see how much hes earning you - in my experience you don t get much as the English in early until you are well into the med with your ships (and grabbin Sweden and having a mechant up and running there) - try to get some farmincome (your french holding give you quite a bit - just check how much you will get before building by rightclicking in the building menue) to tide you over until then and don t build too many troops right at the start until you can afford them - ships are expensive and the maintainence bill goes up the farther they are from your ports.


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

nick

[NewJeffCT]

This may sound a bit silly, but since I kind of skimmed the rulebook my first time playing, I did not know that you actually had to place the Titles (i.e., governor of Wessex & Chancellor of the Exchequer) actually on a general to give them the title. Skimmed may be wrong - barely read is more accurate. I had thought the little scrolls were just names that indicated that the person who was the Governor or Chancellor was stationed there and kind of off the map. So, make sure you give your titles to your generals. When I finally did that in my first campaign as the English (sometime in the HIGH era), I went from negative 50,000 florins to 20,000 to 30,000 positive over a few decades. And now, I rarely have problems getting well over 100,000 florins, except when playing as the HRE and all their 0 or 1 acumen kings.

Also, if you have a large force of expensive troops that will drag down your income – feudal knights are very high in the maintenance cost department (105?), and mercenaries are typically twice the support cost of the same unit if it is not a merc unit. So, if a regular urban militia has 30 support costs per year, a mercenary one would be 60.

[Beirut]

Hmmm, I can't seem to make it work. I think nobody wants to trade with me. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif

I've got ships, I've got allies, I've got merchants and goods, I've got wine, women and song but it seems not an ounce of trade.

I check the money icon and all my sea routes show as no expenditure or profit, and my country's trade profit is really minimal. Nothing like what I've read about, multiple thousands of florins per year, I get 150 or 200. I'm just going down and down.

GAH http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-help.gif

Do I need to have emmisaries in each country I trade with? Do I need to offer my "personal services" to the King,s daughter http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-curtain.gif.

I'm missing something here.

[Crash]

Very strange - something is wrong here. Is this happening in every game you start? Did you mod' something unintentionally? If you uninstalled and reinstalled MTW/VI, and ran it with no mods does it work?

[octavian]

face it, its a conspiracy to keep you from having a good time while playing. ok, here is a few pointers, btw, not all of these have to do with trade, just income in general.
here goes even before i started using trade, i didn't really have any trouble staying out of debt, here's why,

a) use farms, 1) they dont rely on having good relations with your neighbours (trade gets blocked all too easily by enemy ships) 2) in certain provences, it pays back fast
b) being the son of a financial planner, i know good management of resources, (particularly spending) 1) when you have a really expensive building about to go under construction, go over all your other provences, any other expensive buildings about to be built have to be prioritized, try to have as many cheap buildings built during the same turn, dont be afraid to have a provence do nothing except earn you money for a turn (or even more than a turn) 2) troops, try to have as few redundant garrisons (i.e. you control all of spain, have ships surrunding the iberian penninsula, and yet have a garrison of 5,000 in castile) 2.1) disband any outdated troops, unless they are in a key position where every man counts.
c) a few other options... go through enemy territory with a fair sized army (be careful not to get bogged down, it happened to me a little while ago, the enemy gave up a provence that had fairly good "strategic value" next turn he brought everthing to bear on me, helped with support costs though, dead guys dont eat much) whenever the enemy gives up a provence, destroy everything, the only exception being a provence has sic huge income. crusades also help to get the economy, unless ur playing medmod where they are fairly expensive, u dont pay for upkeep, plus. if you crusade a high income provence you get the obvious benefits there. btw way, any factions that have been both xcommed and then had a request for a crusade against them by the pope

octavian

i'll add more if u want, when i think of anything

[Beirut]

Hmmm, good question.

I do use the All 20 mod so I can play as the Mongols sometimes, but I wonder if that would corrupt my trade. I think in the last few quickies I tried to get trade, I chose the Late game default choice of countries, not the All 20 list that includes the Mongols and Swiss and others.

I'm going to reinstall without the All 20 and try. Maybe I'll try another country. I think I tried the Byzantines as well as the English and neither gave me trade the likes of what some people talk about.

Once again, I'll let you know. Oh, I don't have VI http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif , but I am using the 1.1 patch.

Thanks again.

[katank]

call up the economy parchment and right click on the province name from whihc you are trading. It will show you the amount and the provinces with which you are trading. Not sure if it works in 1.1. The income is ablout 99 florins per trade good per target province I believe.

If you only have ships down to iberian, you might only hit 1 or 2 ports in castille or lean hence no ludicrous income.

get your ships into the med and go south at least as far as to TUnisia and north to the italian penisula where you can hit ports in provence, genoa, etc.

When your fleets reach the holy land, your trade income should be through the roof.

If you are not trading with Egypt, then pack a crusade full of every high support unit including knights and mercs into it and then train it at Antioch or something. This will lessen support greatly and will suck up catholic troops from your neighbors so you don't need as much garrison.

don't be worried about using large amounts of peasants as they can keep population happy and can even scare off AIs due to numbers.

For defence and even attacking armies in early, I use mostly spears/archers/UM and this can handle most things until you can afford it.

send whatever you don't need on suicide missions or pack em into a crusade and let em rip.

BTW, for trade, take all of scandanavia ASAP as well as bribing into souther steppes and lith/liv.

have many provinces pumping out ships I typically dedicate 5-8 provinces to ship production and thus can flood every sea zone with my ships for massive trade income.

note: for 4k+ income from single province through trade, make sure you have ships in every sea zone and no naval war with anyone and also have a rich province like antioch, tripoli, const., venice, sweden, flanders, etc.

[Beirut]

Well, still trying.

What do you make of this: Wessex (with the top level merchant building)is pumping out ships. Small ones. I have connected "green when highlighted" seas from Sweden down to Tunisia with one or two of the smaller boats in each sea. I'm at war with no one. (Once I have a boat in a sea I just leave it there right? I don't have to move it around do I ?)

And Wessex is pulling in about 1300 florins a year in trade, but I don't know if that is land trade (is there land trade?) or from the seas.

Also, when I get the economy parchment, it lists all my provinces and seas, but all the seas have no numbers listed. Also, I have yet to find where the list is showing what country I'm trading with and how much I'm making.

Sorry to be such a yutz http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-dizzy2.gif , but I do appreciate the help. Thanks.

Back to the game... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-wall.gif

*Oh ya, does it matter what kind of boats I'm using? Do larger boats bring in larger income or are they just better in fights?)

****Just found the economy parchment trade section. (yay). All my trade profits are 45 floring per country. Doesn't sound great.

[katank]

link it all the way to the holy land and preferably the black sea.

1k+ from trade is definitely sea trade. local trade gives you maybe 90 florins or so max

bigger boats don't give more income. they may not even be worth more in a fight. I find numerical superiority with the cheapest, fastest basic boat available is enough to win in many cases.
only use deep sea boats to make sure your trade lanes stay open.

1300 from wessex alone isn't bad. you should grab sweden, antioch, const., venice, flanders, khazar, lith, etc. for some monster trade income.

once you get one of those listed above connected to every sea zone and fully upgraded merchant, it pulls in 6k+ per turn alone

it's amazing.

you should seriously cut your costs though. if you can't stay afloat with a decent income which you seem to be getting now, you may be in trouble later when you are at war with the world.

use your economy summary parchement to see which provinces have most support costs and seek out that army and find a use of either throwing the troops at something or load in crusade or at least do something productive with them.

My armies rarely cost over 3-4k support even when I have a sizeable empire.

[Beirut]

By jove I think I've got it. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-toff.gif

And, by the way, getting into this trade thing has made this campaign one of the more enjoyable. Not that I'm making the real profit, but at least I think I can get some trade going. I'm able to keep about 10K to 15K in the bank while I'm building stuff, and have yet to scrap with anybody.

Thank you all for the help. Great stuff. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cheers.gif

[katank]

yeah, it's a nice change of pace from rampant conquests.

BTW< are you playing GA? if so, the wool monopoly GA is one of the most interesting IMHO

[Beirut]

Hey there,

Yep, was playing GA before and got the wool monopoly sceen come up. Ta-Dah

Guess I did something right. (Don&#39;t know what of course.)

Thanks again.

Time for http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-zzz.gif Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.................

G&#39;night.

[TonkaToys]

Quote[/b] (NewJeffCT @ Mar. 23 2004,19:26)]I did not know that you actually had to place the Titles (i.e., governor of Wessex & Chancellor of the Exchequer) actually on a general to give them the title. ... When I finally did that ... I went from negative 50,000 florins to 20,000 to 30,000 positive over a few decades.
Good point, NewJeffCT... well made.

Beirut, as NJCT points out, don&#39;t forget to assign your territorial titles to Generals with high acumen as this increases trade and income in that region.
Have you figured out what you did to make trade work?


Quote[/b] ]Once I have a boat in a sea I just leave it there right? I don&#39;t have to move it around do I ?

That is correct, in fact make sure you have an unbroken line of ships from your trading posts to the territories you are trading with. IE: if you have a ship in every territory in the med and all around the coast of Spain and France back to England, except for say the bit just off Gibraltar (can&#39;t remember which one it is), you will not get any trade from med countries.

Hmmm... has that made it clearer or less clear?
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-lost.gif
Lets try a diagram...

Your Merchant-ship-ship-ship-Trading Partner = trade
Your Merchant-ship- no ship -ship-Trading Partner = no trade

[gaijinalways]

Welcome aboard

Just a note, you can&#39;t build merchant houses in provinces with no items to trade (in otherwords, if you have nothing to export, you can&#39;t import either.

Farm versus trade depends on the provinces you have and how much you like to bribe Also, it greatly depends on which faction you start with as the starting position maybe dictates some of your strategy. Check the boards, there is lots of info on these threads.

[Servius]

and since you seem to be having general revenue problem in addition to trade problems I&#39;ll drop some more thoughts...

a) train up peasants to be your governors. They&#39;re the cheapest 100-man unit. 100-man garison helps with happiness, so you can raise you tax rates higher. I only use peasants with at least 4 marks in accumen. Disband all the ones that aren&#39;t at least 4 accumen.

b) build both towers and the first watch building in every province. Later on, put a priest and/or spy in every one of your territories. Also build religious buildings. These all help keep happiness up, so again, you can sustain a higher tax rate.

c) build up to 40% farm upgrade, a Keep, a port, shipbuilders, and ships before you even bother with merchants. Remember, merchants are useless without ports and sealinks, so don&#39;t bother spending the 800 florin per merchant building until there&#39;s actually a trade network of ships to take advantage of. Likewise, don&#39;t bother building a big navy until there are several foreign ports to trade with.

e) As soon as you can, extend your ship links to Venice and then the Black Sea. That northern med trade line is very profitable.

f) My favorite series of opening moves for England is to move my archers from Northumbria and Mercia down to Wessex and move my troops from Aquitaine and Anjou up to Normandy. On the next turn, move all of those units (so that there are none save peseants in Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex) to Flanders. You can make this move on the third turn of the game and the French will abandon the province. Also, sell all your buildings in Aquitaine save the 20% upgrade, assign high-dread units as Aquitaine and Anjou&#39;s governors, and jack their tax rates as high as you can without inciting a revolt.

The negative, you will, within the next 3-8 turns, lose Aquitaine, Anjou, and Normandy to the French.

The possitive, you gain Flanders, which is worth almost as much as all three of those other pronvinces combined. Also, you have only ONE front-line province to defend, which helps you keep your military costs WAY down, further improving your economic possition.

I leave 4-5 archers, 2-3 Hobilars, 3-5 Frydmen, 2-3 Urban Militia, and the first 4-star hero (Strongbow or Tancred, I forget which) I have in Flanders, then send my king, his heirs, some hobilars and an Urban Militia unit to take Wales. Then I train up some archers and with the knights and hobilars take Scotland.

The last thing that makes this even better is that I have modded in all the rivers on the map into the game. Thus Flanders has a river border with every neighboring province except Lorriane, which makes it very easy to defend with a few spears and a bunch of archers because nearly every battle will be a bridge battle.

Do this and you&#39;ll be an economic juggernaut in a decade or two.

[Beirut]

Hey, thanks for all the help. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

I&#39;m doing well with my battles, my English longbowmen are feared across the map http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif ) and my "strategies" are, oh I dunno, good enough I guess. I do get to whoop on Les Francais dans une maniere severe

I usually build up a decent sized army of longbows and pikemen and send them south to ravage France. Always works well. (Shades of agincourt) But by the time I hit Spain, things can get tough. Still fun though.

But this business about assigning titles is another weak point with me. I use "auto-assign titles" and who ends up being the governor or the chancellor or the local pediatrician is unknown to me. Is there a benefit to assigning titles yourself? (And how, may a shmoo ask, does one go about it? Are those the little things that look like lamp bases with handles that liter the map? You just drop one of those on somebody and then leave him there to be the local bastard and keep people in line?) There is much in the fine details I know nothing about.

But what you&#39;ve all told me is really making the game more enjoyable, and longer.

And my girlfriend asked me to tell all of you that she hates you very much. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-furious3.gif

"Are you coming to bed yet??"

"Soon dear." ...click-click-clikity-click...

[katank]

My strat is far more aggressive.

I bribe Wales for the longbows which are available for only 2025 florins which is absolutely fab.

I build watch towers and boders forts in my provinces except for anjou which goes for an inn.

I then move the longbows to wessex ASAP and then attack flanders with that force commanded by the king while the other garrisons go after toulouse.

I then hire massed mercs to attack ile de france with and champagne in the same turn in a bid to capture their king.

Usually, by autocalcing, I can capture their king and they would have to ransom him.

I don&#39;t touch brittany for just this reason due to their king is ransomed only if they have a province to ransom him to.

Also, their 5* there is kinda scary and I would rather take on them with their lousy command king leading.

During this entire time, I use any mercs as spearheads for the attack while pumping hobilars like mad from aquitaine as it is good to have cav in early.

I would also thump out troops in all provinces as much as I can.

I would then pick off navarre and aragon given the opportunity that would prevent the Spanish, Almo, etc. from getting too strong and is a better defensive chokepoint than aquitaine and toulouse. In addition, they are iron provinces.

If I get excommed, I take out the paper tiger HRE also.

If not, I start building farms, sending mercs on attack to subdue scotland or attack rebels, and pumping peasant to raise taxes.

I would also build towards ships ASAP and have at least one province for crusades.

happy conquest http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/bigthumb.gif Note: this method introduces many borders and can create early leader syndrome, making the AI gang up on you. I just used this to get powerful fast and took over the world by 1160.

If you want nice happy trading GA game instead of warlording, use servius&#39; method.

[Beirut]

Bribe?

How on earth does one bribe? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-dizzy2.gif

Update: I&#39;m building mega-boats and lots of troops and building and my income is going up. (Yay) I&#39;m up to 50K florins. And I&#39;ve had my first sea battles.

Against the French.

The French sank Ha http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/bigthumb.gif

Having lots of fun, thanks to all for opening the game up for me like this. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cheers.gif

[NewJeffCT]

Quote[/b] (Beirut @ Mar. 25 2004,07:19)]Bribe?

How on earth does one bribe? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-dizzy2.gif

Update: I&#39;m building mega-boats and lots of troops and building and my income is going up. (Yay) I&#39;m up to 50K florins. And I&#39;ve had my first sea battles.

Against the French.

The French sank Ha http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/bigthumb.gif

Having lots of fun, thanks to all for opening the game up for me like this. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cheers.gif
To bribe, drop one of your emissaries on an enemy or rebel stack of soldiers. You&#39;ll get a message that your emissary says it will take 2,568 florins (or other amount) to bribe this army, then you get the option of saying "yes" or "no".

Be warned, however. There are some potential roadblocks.
1) you cannot bribe opposing kings or heirs.
2) If there are two (or more) stacks of troops in a province, 1 emissary only bribes 1 stack of troops. And, if you only bribe 1 stack out of 2, you&#39;ll be fighting the other stack when the army turns coat.
3) rebels are MUCH cheaper to bribe than actual faction armies. The rebels in Wales are 2,000 or so florins, but if the French (for example) invaded Wales and took it over, a similar French army there may cost 10 to 20 times as much to bribe.
4) Most of the bribed stacks of troops are very low on the loyalty scale for a while - 10 to 20 years.

Sometimes, when I&#39;m overloaded with florins (playing a faction like Italy, Egypt or Spain where it is easy to get rich quick), I bribe opposing armies for fun when the game is mostly decided and I have over 60% but am going for 100%...

[Crash]

Bribing - a very useful strategy. Also, hiring mercenaries is also a good strategy when you have excess florin. Mercs are expensive, but you can hire a whole army right away, and send them on raids or suicide attacks so that your regular army can be used to take and hold the important provinces.

Only one problem with high income, you might find that the game gets too easy, once you have the highest florin income of all the factions.

[katank]

just to extend crash&#39;s point, use and abuse the mercs by sending them in with impossible odds. they are expensive due to high support but you don&#39;t have to feed them if they are dead http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

I use bribed rebels and mercs for many of my early game all out blitz strategies and also use the national army to siege/hold provinces while my mercs assault/attack all the time.

Early on, the mercs can actually kill through many times their number due to usually higher troop quality.

Note: OP mercs can be good to train up a general with.

[Beirut]

(Hee-hee. Had most of the day off, it was raining. Oh well... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif )

The problem with playing this damn game properly(), as opposed to what I was doing before, is that one bloody game can last forever. I don&#39;t have the http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-furious3.gif time.

I was up until midnight last night, had a few precious hours this aft, but this game could go on for ages.

Good fun, but where the hell do you get the time to do this? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-help.gif

* Mind you, I&#39;m just littering the seas with my ships. Lootin&#39; & pillagin&#39; like a madman. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/bigthumb.gif

[nick_maxell]

Beirut,

the "lampshade with handle&#39; is the province title right click and you can see what the title will give to the future bearer (usually only shields = loyalty) but sometimes command and acumen - give them to units with high acumen (the feathers - at least4) the ones with command to your generals. Some titles stack so you can give a provincial gov the titles you get from buildings like cathedral or Admirality but not a second prov one - not sure about that but I think each feather gives the province 5% more income.

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

nick

[Beirut]

I tell ya, I&#39;ve learned more about the fine details of this game in a day than I did in months. (Ya, but I&#39;m an idiot, so is that really a great thing? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif )

Won&#39;t play Late period next time. Not enough years.

Great fun.

...and we might get rained out tomorrow too. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-2thumbsup.gif

[motorhead]

One more trading tip - deep sea ships (like caravels) cost alot less in support than coastal ships (barques). It becomes especially noticeable when you&#39;ve got ships far away from your ports. Some coastal ships (like wargalleys) can cost 160 florin/turn when far away, while a distant caravel will cost 60 florin/turn.

Besides the cheaper support, deep sea vessels also have greater range (can move 2 sea regions/turn, a few late era vessels can move 3/turn).

[TonkaToys]

Quote[/b] (motorhead @ Mar. 26 2004,01:52)]... deep sea ships ... cost alot less ... than coastal ships ... deep sea vessels also have greater range (can move 2 sea regions/turn, a few late era vessels can move 3/turn).
Now that is a useful tip.

Thanks Motorhead, I&#39;ll try to build some of those then.

[katank]

yep, though initial investment is steep, they are cheaper in the long run.

make sure to grab islands for ship/agent production as well as lowering support. saves a bundle http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[TonkaToys]

Quote[/b] (katank @ Mar. 27 2004,00:17)]...make sure to grab islands for ship/agent production as well as lowering support. saves a bundle http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
From that I take it you mean that by getting island territories your ships are not so far from your lands, and therefore the cost for maintenance etc is lower http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/idea.gif

SMART

[katank]

yep, that&#39;s precisely it.

I would always grab ireland even if I&#39;m not catholic and thus can&#39;t get gallows but just for the sake of lower ship support.

I love islands as they are easy to hold give a strong navy which I need invariably for trade anyhow and allows for lower support without needing to dish out significant amount for garrison army support of an isloated territory.

Naturally, little pieces of easily defensible land is still good such as a little crusader kingdom when I&#39;m playing catholics.