Medieval Economic\'s for Beginners

[Didz]

Medieval Economics for Beginners

Having taken the time this weekend to read right through the MTW manual and strategy guide I can confirm that nowhere in either document is a clear and concise explanation provided of how to manage your economy.

This is actually an amazing omission and very damaging to the popularity of the game for new players trying to learn the mechanics. STW had a much simpler economic system and yet had a clear guide on how to get the most Koku out of your economy and so one would have expected it to get even more page space in MTW.

Anyway, this thread is an attempt to fill in some of the missing information and I would encourage any budding accountants and economists out there to add their own insights for the general benefit of all.

Here’s my first contribution.

Maximising your Tax Revenue

A little bit of paperwork right at the start of a new campaign will pay enormous dividends in ensuring that you get the maximum Tax Revenue from your fledgling empire and stand you in good stead for the future.

My advice is as follows:

Appointing Governors

1. Check each province (or look at the list) and make a quick list in descending order of Normal Tax Revenue so that your richest provinces appear at the top of the list.

2. Next split up every army into its constituent units and find the general with the highest Acumen level.

3. Make that General the governor of your richest province. (Note: Each quill increases your Tax Revenue by 10% so a 4 Quill General will increase the Tax Revenue of the province he governs by 40%). Note: The General does not need to be in the province in order to be given the Title you can drop Titles on any General anywhere on the map. It just gets a bit fiddly to drag it across the map when they are a long way away.

4. Next find your Treasury Title counter (In England it is Lord Chancellor) and give that to the same General thus boosting his Acumen even more. (By this method you should be able to boost the Tax Revenue of your richest province by 60%)

5. Now work down the list giving governorships of the next richest province to the general with the next highest Acumen until you have allocated all your Titles or run out of useful Generals. Note: As far as I am concerned no General with an Acumen of less than 3 Quills is worthy of high office so if you get a bad hand you may have to wait until better candidates appear unless you are happy to strip governors of titles later.

Increasing Taxes

1. Next increase the Tax Rate of each province to the maximum possible without risking a revolt. But bear in mind that if you move any of your troops out of a province you increase the risk so be careful not to get too greedy until your final troop deployment is stable.

2. Recheck your Tax Rate every turn to make sure you are getting the highest level of Tax possible.

Economic Development

Mines

As far as I can see all mines produce a 10.4% return on investment regardless of type. This is different from STW where ROI varied according to the type of mine.
So it doesn’t matter which mine you invest in you will not see any return on your investment for ten years. Think about whether you can afford to tie up your money for that long before buying the mine. In the early years you might find a more immediate need for cash. Tying up all your money in mine and farm improvements might make you the richest faction on the board but if you can’t survive for 10 years because you have no money for troops it’s a bad investment.

Farming

Decide right from the start what ROI you expect from your farms and use this a guide for investment. For example if you decide on a minimum 10% ROI then a 20% Farm Improvement should only be purchased in provinces with an effective tax revenue of 300f or higher. Any province with a Tax Revenue of less than 300f should not be improved. Obviously farm improvements should be made in your richest provinces first.

As a general policy once I’ve started improving farms I tend to keep going so the existence of any farm improvement flags a province as an agricultural region.

Trade

I did not get a chance to analyse the trade mechanism which is probably going to take some time but will try to add something next weekend if I get time.

In the meantime if anyone wants to comment or correct the information above please feel free.

Didz

[DaCount]

Nice, so i'd better add some http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif

Trade:

Only a few provinces can trade. It depends on their resources. Now for a province WITHOUT any borders to water it hardly pays (early on) to upgrade for trade. For a province bordering water, it can pay of very much to do trading.
For trading you need:
1) Trade post
2) Port
3) Line of ships to other trading parties
4) Peace/Neutral with your trade partners


1) Just build it, btw you only need this building for provinces who are inland, it will then start to trade with it's neighbors (but at a low yield)

2) Port, just build it, also since you need ships you also might want to upgrade it to build ships.

3) Say you have the province Friesland, with a port and trade centre. Now to trade with say Wessex, you need to have a ship IN EVERY SEA BETWEEN friesland AND wessex. Then (if wessex needs the goods) trade will automaticly start. So build long strings of ships to reach as much ports as you can. ANd mind you the province you want to trade with also needs a port.
ALSO very important is, your line of ships MUST NOT be interuppted by an enemy ship. If it does it will block your trade. Easy way to check is keep the cursor on a sea and wait for the help popup, it will tell if a sea is blocked or not.

4) Obvious you can NOT trade with enemies.

Now while trade can yield some very nice income (you can just as wel say that it is almost necessary to trade to win) there are a few things you need to keep in mind.
If you have peace you can have nice income, but as soon as war starts, it is very likely your trade routes will be blocked from the day war starts, thus your income will go down the drain, so make sure you have a big bag of gold when you goto war, otherwise the shortage of income might break you.


Other ways of income:

-Several other building like a cathedral, master sword smith also bring some income, though it is very low.

-Capturing enemie armies/Conquering provinces
This can also be very profitable for the warmongers amongst us. First if you conquer a province it gives you a nice heap of cash from the one you conquered the province from. 2000 Florins are a normal price. Also if you happened to capture a big part of that army, you might sell it back to the enemy (obvious you will need to fight them again later on but......). e.g. if you capture about 500 man including a good general/heir/king you can also get over 2000 florins.

[Arkatreides]

Nice! One piece of advice though: check your governors often. They do tend to get some bad vices (like -20% income) or their acumen drops.

Another quickie: I found that Farmland actually gives slightly less bonus than it advertises. So instead of 20% it is more like 19%.

[Soapyfrog]

NOte that the very best governers have a combination of high acumen and dread.

A high dread governor goes a LONG way towards keeping a province loyal, whereas a no-dread general will sometimes make things worse...

[Rob]

Building farmland can give a governor (and your king) the 'Steward' virtue, which increases all farming revenue in the lands they control. This can make building farm improvements even more profitable than it first appears.

The same does technically apply to trade buildings (trading post, merchant etc.) via the 'Trader' virtue but I have yet to see any of my governors get this, and only saw a king get it once. I suspect there may be a slight bug here, though I guess going all the way on trade tech does require also upgrading your castles which takes a long time.

[insolent1]

another thing is you can't trade wool to a wool producing place ie friesland & wessex send your boats somewhere that they don't have wool ie sweden, norway brittany or saxony. If there is a port in another factions province you can trade with it all the other faction need is a port & all you need is a line of ships to that port uninterruppted by enemy ships

[Ckrisz]

The problem with doing the "High" or "Very High" tax rate means your governor will get the 'greedy' or 'avarice' vice, which is a BIG drop in happiness.

Moreover, as you begin taking over large parts of the map, your older provinces get VERY restful. You will almost certainly have major rebellion problems in the later game with consistently high tax rates. And I mean MAJOR rebellions!

[TexRoadkill]

I'm half way through my first game and I have put a port and trading post in every town with Tradeable Goods. Average income per trade territory seems to be anywhere from 300 to 2000 per year. Keep building boats and sending them out there. Italy is a good trading partner. One ship can reach about 5 ports there.