Please help on medieval total war!!!!!!

I am a newbie so bear with me.How in the world can i keep from running out of money.I have played on easy numerous of times.First i was building my seamen such as ports and all that and i was able to have a little coming in.But that was only without building a sufficient army.Please help how can i keep alot of money coming in so i can continue to play.When i am negative at the end of years and it gets more and more i just start a new game.Very frustrating.10,000 florins goes really fast and i still build my strong lands that are rich in resources.Oh and i was playing as england if that helps

It takes a while to build up wealth from trade, so in the early years you need to do the following:

Build mines and farm improvements in at least some of your provinces at the beginning. In your first turn as the English, build a copper mine in Northumbria and a farmland improvement in Mercia.

Don't build lots of expensive units. Cavalry units in particular cost a lot of money to maintain.

Consider bribing the Welsh at the very start. It works out cheaper than building an army to conquer them, and those longbowmen will help you beat the Scottish.

Assign regional governorships to 4 acumen generals.

Oh, and welcome to the Org ~:wave: ~:cheers:

well thanks for the advice i have a lot to learn still about the art of war

Building of income is one of thoughs things that you just have to buckle down and do it. I hate "wasting" time and teching up my farms and mines and trade, but you can't do anything with out them.

Welcome to the .Org!


~:snowman:

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Originally Posted by stryper292002

I am a newbie so bear with me.How in the world can i keep from running out of money.I have played on easy numerous of times.First i was building my seamen such as ports and all that and i was able to have a little coming in.But that was only without building a sufficient army.Please help how can i keep alot of money coming in so i can continue to play.When i am negative at the end of years and it gets more and more i just start a new game.Very frustrating.10,000 florins goes really fast and i still build my strong lands that are rich in resources.Oh and i was playing as england if that helps

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Ok, first things first.

The english are a fun faction, but their lands are not especially rich in farmland or resources early on, so what you NEED to spend most of your 10,000 on at the start is building farms up to 20% at least everywhere you can, and 40% and higher anywhere they make a good amount of money. Any mines you can build should be built immediately and up to complexes as soon as you can after this as this is a guarenteed income that will not change at all.

Also, taxes, if you are new I suggest you use the auto tax feature (open the control panel next to the mini map in the campaign screen and check the auto tax box) because this will enable you to get as much money out of your lands without spending hours checking every province, do remember to press and hold shift once a year and look over all provinces, any that are yellow or red need more troops to prevent rebellions, but auto tax will adjust tax rates to prevent this happening as best it can.

Next, trade. Trade is a great, but VERY unreliable source of income. To effectively trade the province you want to trade FROM needs some tradable goods (seen at the top of the province info scroll found by fight clicking on the province). Then you need a trading post, which itself frequires a fort. THen, you will be earning a very small amount of money from local trade. You next need a port in every province you want to trade form (aswell as the trading post this is) and ships.

All of this is expensive, ships cost quite a bit to build, and money every turn for upkeep (more money the further away from one of your ports they are). When you have a good number of ships you need to strech them out so that you have one (or more) in most, if not all sea zones, and the line of ships must not have any gaps, no empty zones, between the last ship and your provinces you want to trade from.

You will then automatically trade with any nuetral or allied factions province that has a port, and does not already have the goods you are trading. This brings in big money every year, but the moment your ship line is broken, a war breaks out with a large faction, or a storm sinks a crucial ship, the entire trade income may vanish for a good long while.

The other way of making money is slightly simpler. WAR!

War makes money, it always has. When you conquer a province some buildings will be destroyed, and you get half their value back. When you capture enemy soldiers the enemy can pay you money to ransom them back, kings or very good generals and princes earn loads of money, sometimes more than 10,000 for just the king.

So, with your first 10,000 set up mines and farms to ensure you have an income, you are not loosing money. Then develop your farms some more in the better provinces to ensure you are making enough money that you can spend it. Then either start training an army and go to war, or start building a navy and trade. Armies and navy's both cost money every yer in upkeep, so make sure you have a solid econamy before going to war, or you have enough troops to conquer a few good provinces to earn you enough money to build farms.

As the english, there are rich lands not far away, most of france and the edges of the germans are all rich lands. If you build a good enough army early on and wipe the french out (do it quickly to avoid them becoming a thorn in your side, but be aware the pope miht excommnicate you for warring on a smaller faction) then you have rich farmalnd waiting to be built on, and money to build on it from conquering.

Oh, and welcome to the org ~:wave: , you might want to read frogbeasteggs guide, in the guides forum, as she says all this far better than I have.

As the English strength your French lands and invest in all the improvements possible like farms and mines, build a minimal army to defend these provinces and build keeps in Aquaine, Anjou, Normandy, and Wessex.

Bribe the Welsh and the Scots

English:

First and formost, plot the destruction of the French right from the start. Your first targets should be Flanders, a cashcow and Ile De France (their starting troop training infrastructure).

I just started out a French/Early/Expert campaign (VI and patched). I found it very easy to knock the English off the mainland (in the process kill the king and his heir). Hence, it can be seen that if you play the English, the French threat must be eliminated asap.

Best bet is to rapidly destroy the French. Command all your battles personally. Be capable of commanding units of plain spears, archers, urbies and hobilars with your king/princes in command. If you have VI, use Frydmen.

After the destruction of the french, proceed to tech up and aim for either of 3 targets:
1. Scandinavia
2. HRE
3. Iberian Peninsular

You would face the problem of excom. Build some cats to assault the forts immediately. You have to coordinate your battles.

Minor point:

Scotland is just not economically worthwhile. It has a poor income and no trade goods. It is also a more than average rebellious province and so needs a garrison. You are unlikely to make a profit out of the Scots. So I would advise you to leave them alone.

Now Flanders on the other hand is one of the best economic provinces in the game. Taking Flanders is a major priority for building an English trade empire.

I don't reccommend using Auto Taxing if you want to maximise your income.

Auto Taxing will make taxes as high as possible without making the risk of rebellion any higher than 0%. England is a fairly secure territory, especially once the French get tied up in war with the Germans. It's a risk, but if you can raise taxes to the next level in a province and only have a 5% chance of rebellion, you might want to consider it, depending on how much you earn from taking such a small risk.

Another thing with auto taxing is that you lose track of what your tax rates are. Having to check with the shift key every turn keeps you on top of things; you might consider putting the tax to maximum in a rich province and maintain loyalty with bigger garrissons. For example if raising the tax two levels earns you 100 florins more, but you have to add another 200 peasants to the garrisson, then it's worth it (maintenance of the extra peasants is less than the 100 florins extra profit).

Paying such detailed attention to finance is boring, and the extra earning may be small but to me auto-taxing is like auto-resolving battles. All it takes is patience. Of course once your trade routes open up...

Whenever someone mentions the peasant garrison, I just feel compelled to mention spies. Spies have zero maintenance cost and have a huge effect on province loyalty. Create a police state, you know it makes sense. https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/newre...te=1&p=560284#

it's not huge, but it's usually good enough.
people seem to agree that the effect of spies in VI on your own province's loyalty is 40% + spy_valour (i.e., number of stars).
Therefore, a vanilla spy would give you +40% loyalty. That's not huge. May not even be enough if you just got the province and it's not even your religion...

I don't like to build spies in the early game. On borders fighting units are a deterrent against invasion as well as loyalty-lifters, and all you need is a fort. It might be the way I prioritise my building building, but I start building spies around the same time my trade routes open up, and I can drop my taxes. An Orwellian state usually comes into it when I'm bringing the Holy Land into Christendom.

One sure way to rinse out your cash early on in the game, which is also hard to resist, is to use mercenary units too much, because they aren't too expensive to recruit, don't take time to build and can be very advanced in the early ages, but their upkeep costs really are a drain.

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Originally Posted by munrock

I don't like to build spies in the early game. On borders fighting units are a deterrent against invasion as well as loyalty-lifters, and all you need is a fort. It might be the way I prioritise my building building, but I start building spies around the same time my trade routes open up, and I can drop my taxes. An Orwellian state usually comes into it when I'm bringing the Holy Land into Christendom.

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sure, that's pretty early. But it really depends what faction you're playing; you can afford to ignore loyalty related stuff for a long time if you have a lot of coastal provinces, but no inland ones; but if you own lands in Central Europe, well, distance from your king _will_ be a problem, and so will loyalty.

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Originally Posted by Blodrast

sure, that's pretty early. But it really depends what faction you're playing; you can afford to ignore loyalty related stuff for a long time if you have a lot of coastal provinces, but no inland ones; but if you own lands in Central Europe, well, distance from your king _will_ be a problem, and so will loyalty.

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I once built a Danish Naval Empire out of all the Coastal+Trading provinces on the map, leaving the other coastal provinces for other factions to trade with me. It lead to a lot of borders, but I had more than enough money to deal with threats.

I totally understand what you are saying about running out of money at first and I posted for the first time on here and the info I got was very helpful.
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=34872
That's where all the help for my issues which was trading is posted. I found out I needed a patch to help with some of my issues and that might or might not be the case with you. At any rate hope this can help and good luck gaming. ~:cheers:

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Welcome to the ORG!

:medievalcheers:
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Conquer people- it's an easy way to raise your income. You can leave your armies in your outlying provinces, and use the new income to build up your central ones.
Also, put your taxes to very high in every province. Use peasants to enforce loyalty. It's brutal, but I think the little bits of computer data that represent your vassals will survive, if they're lucky.

Ports only make money when you have one in a province with tradable goods, A merchant and enough ships to link your port to a province with a port that you niether control or are at war with. Mines and farming are your first means of raising cash. You can get more out of your provinces by giving provincial titles to men with high acumen. Another tip I use early in the game as the English is to bribe the welsh in the socond year . This gives you access to three (if I remember correctly) units of longbowmen years before you could ever train any.I then use these as part of my army to take flanders wich is an absolute must in order to link your lands up. Flanders also has the nice advantage of beeing extremly rich so if your going to start trading anywhere it should be flanders

Look in the "guides" forum. "Economics 101" and "Beginners Guide for Total War" have great information.

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Originally Posted by fester

Ports only make money when you have one in a province with tradable goods, A merchant and enough ships to link your port to a province with a port that you niether control or are at war with.

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Slight correction: a port also makes money if it imports goods from a province held by another country. The amount of money is I believe 20% of what the exporter earns. In regular MTW this seldom happens because the AI doesn't build enough ships but in MedMod this occurs quite frequently.

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Originally Posted by fester

Ports only make money when you have one in a province with tradable goods, A merchant and enough ships to link your port to a province with a port that you niether control or are at war with. Mines and farming are your first means of raising cash. You can get more out of your provinces by giving provincial titles to men with high acumen. Another tip I use early in the game as the English is to bribe the welsh in the socond year . This gives you access to three (if I remember correctly) units of longbowmen years before you could ever train any.I then use these as part of my army to take flanders wich is an absolute must in order to link your lands up. Flanders also has the nice advantage of beeing extremly rich so if your going to start trading anywhere it should be flanders

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Ports only make money when there are imports (from your trading partners). Else, the money from exporting you make appears not at the ports but at the trading posts (IIRC). Check the economics scroll to check your income.

Wales at early is occupied by 3 longbows and 1 unit of spears. And invade Flanders right at the first turn with your entire stack at Wessex. The french would retreat without a fight.