Completed my first game thanks to OG Gleeps advice.

I have just completed my first game of MTW2, having previously written it off as Totally Unplayable.

I have been a Totalwar fan since the beginning and own and play all of the other titles but could never complete a game of MTW2 simply because I could never raise enough money. Inevitably, I went into negative funding around mid-game and that prevented me raising any more troops, advancing my build tree or even replacing my agents and so unless I engaged on a rampage of death and destruction to pillage local cities I was doomed to eventual defeat.

I figured that this was just a feature of the game and that perhaps there was some clever way to use merchants that I just wasn't getting. Anyway, I had given up on the game and it was gathering dust on my shelf until one day I got so bored I decided to try and work out if there was a trick to using merchants and found OG Gleeps thread on the TotalRealism forum.

http://forums.totalrealism.net/showthread.php?t=2798

This thread posted by Drakan not only explains the tactical use of merchants, which eneabled me to earn anything up to 2,500 florins per turn from mine during the game. But, far more importantly, it told me about the trade recalculation bug which cripples trade income after a game reload and the 'Capital Switching Solution' which is necessary to force the game to recalcuate the income properly after each reload.

I think even without using my merchants far more effectively the Capital Switching Solution would have meant I could at last complete a game of MTW2 instead of being starved out of the game by lack of money. Now that OG Gleep has highlighted the problem I can see it clearly and its amazing the difference it makes. Trade resources that upon inital reload are only delivering 38 florins per turn suddenly leap to over 220 florins just as a result of switching your capital from one city to another and back again.

And I won my first campaign as Russia.

If you had installed the patch you would not have had this issue.

Wasn't ware there was one, but now that you have mentioned it shall check it out.
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Ok! downloaded it, hopefully I won't have to do the Capital Switch thing anymore now.

Thanks