Fiscal Tips

I have a hopefully simple question, what are some good strategies to make some money in M2TW? I've tried to play fair but it seems I always go broke. I often have to resort to the...hold your breath and cover your ears if you must...add_money cheat! EEEK! I was wondering if anyone could provide their tips to a thriving stable economy. It seems that despite builing financial buildings; ports, markets and the like, I still go broke. To maintain garrisons, expansionist desires and military defense forces for the inevitable multiple attacks by my AI adversaries the funds needed either are unavailable and/or dwindle to nothing. My proud glories and desires for world domination get buried within the mass graves of my brave but unlucky perhaps foolish (for fighting for such a fiscally irresponsible monarch) soldiers and strategem pieces. Any tips?

Be patient, probably you are spending so much to create an army instead of expand your economy. You cannot improve all at same time. In the begining recruit some units (stay away from unkeep costs of an large army) to protect your settlements. The priority is to build ports, roads, markets, earn money of missions, take rebel settlements, etc... Make alliances, trade rights and wait the gold come. When your economy is stable is time to start the world conquest... Basically it's my strategy.

Man, its my first post in 'english', I hope this was useful, and that you understood ;)

Thanks for the reply. What is your opinion on merchants? Welcome to the forum by the way! Can you trade with other factions without a merchant?

Yes, you can trade with other factions without a merchant. Merchants are used to explore resources from other territories, like gold, ambar, silk... Just select your merchant and move it next an resource that it will give x gold per turn. To initiate 'trade rights' with another faction you might initiate diplomatic relations using the diplomat.

That's good to know that you can trade with other factions without a merchant. It seems though that when I put a merchant on a trade good in a forign land he only seems to make 20-30 florins per turn. WIth the exception of Timbukto where they tend to make 200-300 florins. To me this seems to make them quite useless. Considering the effort made to produce them and move them onto the good you want to trade, especially if it is quite some distance from thier conception. I usually only use merchants (forign ones) as assasination targets, in order to increase the aptitude of my assassins. Perhaps an experiment is in order! Dumb old merchants who couldn't make a dime selling food to a starving man!

lol in terms they are really useless in small numbers! And spending gold with them if your faction is Venice or The Byzantines is not a good option by the disputed position on the map, you will need more protection than normal. Russia and England are good options to play using merchants. I prefer to play with more isolated factions to focus more in economy and technology in the early period.

Good advice, I'll keep that in mind when I play again! Thanks!

My cousin wants his puter back so I'll make this quickish. Apologies if I miss something.

Also don't forget to send your diplomats to the far reaches of the map and arrange trading rights with everyone you are not at war with. Won't add much however it will help a little.

With merchants I use the old Pack hunting technique. Whereby I will couple 2 or 3 rookie Merchants with a more experienced merchant plus an assassin and a spy or two, send them to a medium to dense area with plenty of tradable goods icons (around Danish lands comes to mind and also around constantinople/byzantium - though that place is hectic) and have the lesser experienced merchants sit on the more safer tiles while the spies keep look out for oncoming enemy merchants. Meanwhile the assassin and the experienced Merchant are knocking these enemy merchants off (Using the merchant over the assassin is better because you get florins for acquisitions, but if he cant do it safely the assassin usually can). The longer a Merchant sits in one place trading goods, he becomes more experienced (20+++ turns) so it is important to make sure their stay in one area is going to be safe. Once that merchant has plenty of experience, move him on to higher paying tradable goods and expand your Merchant empire. Getting a monopoly on the area in south Egypt is essential.

Lastly keep in mind which troops you have in your army especially the ones you choose to have garrison your cities/castles. There is nothing wrong with having a few militias defending some walls with maybe only one decent sword unit or spear unit in it (the ai generally cant mount a great attack anyway), in the earlystages you really need to keep your upkeep low. Another thing that can catch you out is if you go on crusade and recruit all of these uber crusader type units and when the crusade finishes the upkeep of those soldiers goes through the roof as you are suddenly paying for them. Either make use of them or disband them - Personally I would make use of them and take down a city or two so their upkeep can be covered.

I didn't know you could stack merchants. Somewhat tedious moving merchants and diplomats about though. Often in a campaign I forget about them for a few turns, they get older and die before I get them anywhere. Start over and do it again. Guess I just have a swiss cheese brain or something. Garrison thing is tough though. While I have a small garrison in all my settlements to maintain order, the AI will send a full stack, early in the game to take a settlement, I can't defend, especially when several factions are picking on me. Don't know if they are contending with one another in a similar fashion. Doesn't seem like it. But I complain. I don't go on a crusades. I don't like war with those far distant provinces that aren't near my provinces to take an underdevelop city, with poor troop producing capabilities, and surrounded by factions that no longer like me due to the crusade in the first place. Nothing worse than taking Jerusalem when egypt and its large armies are looming everywere ready to take back the city from my perhaps depleted army. Though this is all in speculation because I never do crusades...perhaps I should. I stray from topic and I am loosing the me sense of direction, I apologize...will keep your ideas in thought, thanks, and will ask more questions should the need desire.

Something that is often overlookerd (but obvious to all of us): War is very expensive. It is best to stop building and conserve your cash the moment that war breaks out. Even better if you are going to initiate the conflict to build up cash reserves before unleashing the dogs. End the war quickly and then reorganize and demobalize to reduce the outflow of the gold. The diplomats then need to go out and reestablish trade where possible and get the money flowing again.

How long until you start your 'Roman expansion' if you will? Is there a point in the game where the economy is quite stable and one can repel multiple attacks at the same time expanding the empire?

If you were to play the short campaign, my guess is about the time you were to win that campaign you would be at that magic point where you will be taking on active multiple front campaigns for expansion. This assumes that you are not a blitzer and that you have a certain amount of roleplay to your game style as well.

You can also just forget economy-building and go for a conquering spree instead. When you capture a settlement, sack it to gain tens of thousands of florins, use these to build more troops, expand in every direction at once, and just keep on conquering. That way, your invading armies will outrun your money problems by a turn or two. This is the blitz strategy, which (to me) is fun only once, but should be tried anyway.

But for a more conservative answer:
In the beginning, I usually like to improve my economy as others have noted. Roads are number one, followed by ports, merchant wharfs, mines and agriculture. All these bring in money, and overseas trade from ports is probably the big one here.

Concerning merchants: merchants are nice but non-essential. You can add around 5,000 fl a turn with a few of them, however. Train them up for a few turns, and they'll gain finance points. Each resource nets you a certain amount of money, which is multiplied by the merchant's finance rating. Meaning high-finance merchants are going to rake in the dough just nicely. Send them to a resource whose closest instance is as far from your capital as possible. This, along with the resource's base price (gold, ivory, silks: high; fish, coal, timber: low) determines your earnings. For example, if you're the Danes, all that amber in your provinces isn't going to pay well, but the silks around Constantinople, the gold at Timbuktu, the ivory in southern Egypt, and the sugar and spices at Antioch are going to make you rich. A finance-10 merchant can make over one grand each turn from these. If you're the Turks, though, you might want to send your merchants north to Sweden and get at that amber and furs.
Keep a lookout for foreign merchants. Take them over with your own higher finance ones for an instant cash boost, or assassinate them, or simply avoid them. Foreign merchants will only try to take over your merchants if you have them sitting on a resource. The more removed regions of the map (Timbuktu, Dongola) are mostly safe from foreign merchants. The silks at Constantinople are the most hard-fought economic region, on the other hand.
I like merchants. They're quickly trained, only cost 550 fl each with no upkeep, and can earn you from ten to thirty grand over the course of their lives, if you play it well. Training them in one city will also give you a merchant's guild there, improving overall cash gained through trades, as well as producing better merchants from the start.

Great tips everyone!

Another great opportunity to increase your wealth is through diplomacy...

In my most recent campaign, I managed to gain large sums through diplomacy (almost bankrupting the AI factions... which prompted me to use the add_money cheat to bolster their economy and not mine :smile:)

I also managed to keep relations at very good at the minimum and was deemed very reliable or trustworthy (could even have been very trustworthy if I hadn't taken a rep hit for attacking an AI faction in the first turns...)

How did I achieve this ? By taking rebel settlements and selling them to AI factions or exchanging them for one of their settlement and a lump of money.

But, you'd tell me, doing this is tantamount to shooting you in the foot... The territory sold will be impossible to take back without a huge rep hit, you'd tell me, making the next exchange more difficult...

Unless (and this is the main part) you sell it to a faction that cannot keep it due to public orders issues... For example, selling Dublin to Turkey or Egypt will cause it to revolt in one or two turns... Allowing you to take it back without a single hit to your reputation.

This also allows you to take from factions territory that have more value to you than those you've conquered (For example, playing as Sicily I exchanged Marseilles from the HRE for Bagdad, conquered through a Crusade, and about 3000 florins)

The Crusades are also a great way to increase your wealth as a Catholic faction (Jihad may serve the same purpose for Muslim ones, though I never played them...). The main thing is either to refrain from recrutiing too much crusaders or disband them at the end of the Crusade and before you hit end turn to cut on upkeep cost.

The secret is to have the maximum of your units join the Crusade, leaving only your free upkeep units in your settlements. Try to make the Crusade last as long as possible as each turn you're crusading gains you free upkeep for your Crusaders allowing you to divert those funds to other needs (building, recruitment of agents...). You can also save up those funds until the end of the Crusade.

If you are having trouble piling the gold up I would sugggest a couple of campaigns as relatively easy factions. One such faction that springs to mind very quickly is England so I will give a few little pointers as to becoming financially stable with this faction.

France are a threat and caen could easily be overrun, or worse, be very costly to defend turn after turn. A way around this is to gain an alliance and trade rights with the French on turn one. A safer option would be to gift or sell Caen as a part of this deal. If you are going to lose Caen make sure that you gain a florin boost by demolishing the buildings within.

Presuming that you following my strategy you should then bring your army from Caen to England. A quick look at the composition should show a peasant unit which can be disbanded immediately. This army should then look to take over the Welsh castle, quite possibly with a little help as it is quite heavily defended. York should also be a priority.

Upon the capture of these two towns you now have a border with Scotland who have an impressive field army. Usually with Scotland I find them to be very passive and around fifty percent of the time they will not even take Inverness. Trade rights will be helpful but not mandatory. Do not, however, attack Scotland just yet.

This is the time to build up your economy. I would sugest for you to keep Nottingham as a castle but convert all other settlements into cities. Roads, markets, ports, early level farms and mines should be prioritised. Also do not underestimate the amount of money that you can save by constructing militia buildings to allow garrisons to have no upkeep fees (a unit of archers as garrison looks pretty but more times than not they are not needed, save the florins!).

At any time on the campaign map hit the "F" key to bring up your finance page. What I generally aim for is taxes + Kings Purse to be qual or greater than Wages + army upkeep.

Edinburgh will be your next conquest. Hopefully your economy is by now going strong enough to sustain an army which is capable fulfilling this. If you attempt to starve them out or possibly even just take a few turns amassing siege equipment then the Pope will become unhappy at you. A nice little tip is to requit ballistas to take Edinburgh in one and then (if they were passive) eliminate scotland without the Pope having the chance to take a gripe with you.

Merchants have been touched upon but just to point out the potential; the amber resources found in Eastern Scandanavia (ignore the one outside Oslo) and Western Russia can rake in 300+ with an established merchant on each resource. Assuming that you hold all of the British Isles including Dublin I believe that you can have seven merchants, probably more, which means an extra two thousand per turn at least. Survive the dog eat dog world of the silk or ivory trade then look for over 500 florins per turn, per merchant.

A well tech'd up British Isles with sensible garrisons and lots of trade rights can see you sweating to keep under the fifty thousand corruption trigger. From here sensible attacking with no drawn out wars will enable you to keep in the black, no problem.

Great tips! I think I'll attempt an England campaign soon!