I'm having economic problems, any advice?

Being an inexperienced Medieval 2 Total War player, I am enountering economic problems :wall: proving to be a hindrance in my current Spanish campaign. Currently I am trying to destroy the Portuguese, having taken Zaragosa, and besieging Lisbon with a small and battered army, and just spotted a mammoth Portuguese stack :sweatdrop: 2 turns away. I would send reinforcements, but my economy currently stands at -875 florins and losing about 300 per turn. All my cities say they are making money but I appear to have a lot of maintenance costs. I currently have Toledo as a Fortress, Leon as a Large Town (I think) and then Zaragosa is a castle, Valencia (or whatever that eastern Spanish city is) is a town. Could someone come to my rescue with advice? Please??? Pretty please with a squirt of whipped cream and a dash of cranberry sauce, and maybe a christmas cracker? :beam:

Disband mercenaries if you have some :)

Some whisky and smoked reindeer would be prefered over the "stuff" that you mentioned, for my service.

1. You only need one castle right now. Convert the rest to cities.
2. Destroy buildings you don't want.
3. Reduce military to absolute minimum.
4. Disband mercs.
5. Build all farms, markets, mines, ports, series.
6. Train merchants and go for gold in Timbuktu.
7. Sack the next city (Lisbon) you conquer, and be quick about it.

You will have to count on tactical battlefield victories rather than fielding a large force in the current situation. I would assault Lisbon with victory being the only option. What are your chances ?

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Originally Posted by Sinan

Some whisky and smoked reindeer would be prefered over the "stuff" that you mentioned.

1. You only need one castle right now. Convert the rest to cities.
2. Reduce military to absoluteminimum.
3. Disband mercs.
4. Build all farms, markets, mines, ports, series.
5. Train merchants and go for gold in Timbuktu.
6. Destroy buildings you don't want.
7. Sack the next city you conquer, and be quick about it.

You will have to count on tactical battlefield victories rather than fielding a large force in the current situation.

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What he said....:2thumbsup:

In the short term, I usually get big in battles rather than disband troops...get them killed off.

Point taken. That way they serve a purpose.

.... and max taxation (which you must be doing obviously).

I usually build lower tier farms first, to boost growth and taxes, followed by dirt roads and then whichever building of the port/market/bank lines can be built the quickest. I keep building up the port/market/bank lines like that, since they start getting diminishing returns higher up. Whenever public order doesn't let me tax high/very high, I build the town hall lines to improve public order (the higher tier town halls help public order a lot) and later taverns. Make sure your religion is predominant (90%+) in your lands.

Also, make sure your port outposts are cities and not castles, since sea trade is very lucrative. Sack settlements for the cash, garrison cities with upkeep-free militia, don't use too large garrisons in castles/cities not on the front lines, build quality armies (instead of quantity) and try to win with few casualties by choosing your battles/battlefields carefully.

Others have given good advice for the current campaign so here is something to consider for the future. Diplomacy in the early game is worth wods of cash. Selling alliances to AI can net 1k+ Florins. I sometimes get 2k florins from trading alliance and trade rights with some factions but that's rarer. If you trade map info, offer your info in exchange for theirs and a few hundred florins. I usually get 400 per map trade even if it says maps for maps is balanced. More if it says map trade generous. I stopped trading map info with French tho in English campaigns as it seems to make 'em more aggressive (probably not a good idea to trade maps with your immediate neighbours unless they are puny).

I even got Timbuktu from the Moors once just for an alliance in an English campaign. I was so happy! Was expecting to fork over 10k after asking what they wanted (can get an early 10k easily as the English by sacking Edinburgh). Built a grain exchanged and popped out enough merchants for the gold and ivory in Timbuktu and Anguin which gave serious amounts of much needed cash.

The generosity of a deal and the finances of the faction will determine how much cash you can get out of the AI.

In the short term, make Zarazoga into a city. Toledo can supply all the castle troops you need on the Iberian Peninsula. Zaragoza has better trade opportunities. It certainly sounds like your military expenses are overpowering your income, so expenses need to come down and income needs to come up. Raise taxes in every city to very high. Any cities that aren't under imminent threat of attack, if public order is greater than 80-90% at very high you can stand to reduce the garrison. Move troops out of the city one unit at a time, starting with mercenaries, then crappy troops, until you hit that target range of public order. Disband everything you moved out. Any mercenaries you have, plan on replacing. The only mercenary unit worth anything as a long term service type for Spain is mercenary spearmen. Replace merc crossbowmen with pavise crossbowmen from Toledo; they're cheaper to maintain. Cut back on knights; use jinetes instead. Make use of your generals as heavy cavalry.

In the cities, low level farms first. Make sure every coastal settlement has a port. Build the structures that increase trade revenue as you can afford it. Definitely sack the next city you take; that will give you a large influx of cash. And if worse comes to worse, you're early enough in the campaign that you can just restart it and play a little differently.

I agree with most of the posters, except the one about building farms. Do not build farms in cities. They are good at first, but once your cities grow, they will start to grow out of control and squalor will run rampant. You don't need them later, and if you build them early, you can't destroy them. Only build them in castles, where you need a single unit to garrison.

Build trade. Build lots of trade. Ports are your best friend. Make sure you have a fleet to protect your income. Roads, markets, and law giving structures also really help. Disband all expensive and unnecessary troops. Get trade agreements with other factions and charge them cash for them. Sack every decent town you take for a cash injection. Oh yes. Set taxes to very high. Not only does it reduce growth and allow you build some structures without the population going crazy, it also gives you a nice bonus to your income.

I hoped this helped!!

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Originally Posted by mrmarquez

Disband mercenaries if you have some :)

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I have none.

Then start disbanding your armies.

With factions that begin with a large military (for example: HRE campaigns), priority no.1 should be the disbanding of armies that aren't likely to face a threat in the near future. That means any inland city garrisons should be chopped to a bare minimum and your building priorities should be the Barracks buildings in order to get the free upkeep units. It makes a huge difference at the start of the game. Once you've done that, concentrate on farms, roads and trade. Its unlikely you'll need an army bigger than 5 units for the 1st 10 turns.

I recomend you use only high taxation if you have govenors in those cities, with high your govenors wil get the best virtues. If youre losing money it means you have to large armies so use what you have to fight your enemies and be more careful of what you build, try not to have to many castles and only militias to defend cities and the good troops to fight wars. You should not need to have bigger armies to beat the AI though if youre using auto calc when fighting battles its understable but try to fight them your self usualy works best early on.

I recomend you use only high taxation if you have govenors in those cities, with high your govenors wil get the best virtues. If youre losing money it means you have to large armies so use what you have to fight your enemies and be more careful of what you build, try not to have to many castles and only militias to defend cities and the good troops to fight wars. You should not need to have bigger armies to beat the AI though if youre using auto calc when fighting battles its understable but try to fight them your self usualy works best early on.

Edit:tripple post, forum was acting up :(

Thanks everybody and MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

In my game I seem to be out of financial trouble. I have started breaking even and I just sacked Lisbon (destryoing those dastardly portuguese!) which gave me in excess of 8000 florins - yay! The first thing i did was to change Pamplona and Zaragosa into Towns (from castles). I will most likely spend the money on financial buildings in all my Towns.

Great. Good luck.

Oh dear... Bordouex just rebelled and now belongs to the Rebels again, and so did a North African town I took. Was this because I sacked instead of exterminate?

Also, how do I join crusades? I have got an Army of decent size and quality heading in my only navy straight towards Antioch, the site. I have another 8 turns to join, and I obviously am not going to make it to the city in time. How exactly am I confirmed as having joined it?

It's not directly related, but could be indirectly related. A revolt happens when the settlement spends 2+ turns at a very low public order rating. The face turns red at 70% public order, riots start at 65% public order, and after 2 turns of rioting the city can revolt. Normal causes of revolt are too small a garrison, too large a population (this is where sack/exterminate makes a difference, but normally the population has to be at least 24K+ before it matters), lack of public order buildings or tax rate too high.

Try to fiddle with tax rates and garrison sizes to keep your public order in the 80-90% range. Cordoba is the only city I can think of where population is that big an issue in the early part of a Spanish campaign.

Ok thanks. And what about the crusades?

You need 3 things to join the crusade: they must be led by a general and not a captain, there must be at least 8 units in the army counting all the general's bodyguard units, and they must be on land - you can't join a crusade while at sea. Put them on land, select the army, and then open the mercenary hiring screen. Down near the bottom left there will be a little button to join the crusade, next to the button that shows the details on the bodyguard unit stats.

Also if you don't have a spy in your town/castle get one there. When you see a dramatic drop in your public order, chances are the enemy or enemies have a spy in there working your population over. All my border towns I keep at least one spy. Also anywhere I have my king, I keep a spy with him.

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Originally Posted by Ice

Do not build farms in cities. They are good at first, but once your cities grow, they will start to grow out of control and squalor will run rampant. You don't need them later, and if you build them early, you can't destroy them. Only build them in castles, where you need a single unit to garrison.

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I disagree. Squalor has been toned down a lot from RTW, and in the early game it's not at all problematic. The farms themselves generate profit, and the population increase nets you more tax income. As you build more farms, the city's population increases exponentially (more people = more growth), and consequently so does your income :beam: (not to mention you can tech up to better units faster). An early game boost is much more valuable than avoiding some minor late game squalor problems, so I'd say go for the farms as soon as possible.

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Originally Posted by Halaster

Also if you don't have a spy in your town/castle get one there. When you see a dramatic drop in your public order, chances are the enemy or enemies have a spy in there working your population over. All my border towns I keep at least one spy. Also anywhere I have my king, I keep a spy with him.

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Thanks very much. I never thought of that.

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Originally Posted by Quillan

You need 3 things to join the crusade: they must be led by a general and not a captain, there must be at least 8 units in the army counting all the general's bodyguard units, and they must be on land - you can't join a crusade while at sea. Put them on land, select the army, and then open the mercenary hiring screen. Down near the bottom left there will be a little button to join the crusade, next to the button that shows the details on the bodyguard unit stats.

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Thanks.

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Originally Posted by Spark

I disagree. Squalor has been toned down a lot from RTW, and in the early game it's not at all problematic. The farms themselves generate profit, and the population increase nets you more tax income. As you build more farms, the city's population increases exponentially (more people = more growth), and consequently so does your income :beam: (not to mention you can tech up to better units faster). An early game boost is much more valuable than avoiding some minor late game squalor problems, so I'd say go for the farms as soon as possible.

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I totally have to agree with that. To be honest, squalor can be annoying later in the game, but you need the money from farming and the population boost. I would say you don't go for Crop rotation, but the first to farmlevels are necesarry.

Land clearance and communal farming upgrades both pay for themselves nicely.

If you are worried about squalor later, let the city rebel and then reconquer it, exterminating the population. More cash, less squalor. Big wins for everyone!

Rome Total War players are wary about squalor, but in Medieval II squalor has
been toned way down. Both squalor and distance from the capital have been
capped as far as public order is concerned. If you build the law buildings and
keep other religions down, you can control cities just with the upkeep free
garison in most of your empire.

When you conquer a Muslim city, build churches, and have at least 3-4 priests
converting the populace. Having them start before the takeover does not
hurt, either. If the city has a racing track, have daily races until you get
unorder under control.

Above all things, build roads first. That'll put some coin in your pocket and aren't that costly nor take very long to build. But the most important reason is that it'll increase your armies mobility, allowing you to do more with less. This way you can get by with just a single army covering the entire Iberian Peninsula. This, obviously, saves on army costs but has a nice fringe benefit too. All your battles will be fought by the same guys and their XP will rocket upwards as a result.

I always assumed high taxation wasn't worth it, as my generals always seemed to go insane and become greedy fat lazy embezzling idots and other such things; which usually resulted in -30%+'s to taxation/trade....so I stopped putting my taxes at the maximum. I don't change them from normal now.

As long as you tech your economy up first (building roads, wharves &c.). Money should follow. Merchants doing their thing in Timbuktu is icing. Militia units are handy to garrison with, they cost nothing. If you're careful in your directions of expansion, you can leave lightly defended money-pit cities in your interior, with only one army per front to catch any interlopers. So, in Iberia, that means two armies once you've secured the peninsula. (Of course, with the whole peninsula under control, you should be able to support 3 or 4 full cav armies quite easily). Oh, and tax the peasants as much as they'll take, so long as they don't revolt, all is good.

If you need to sack cities for the money, there's something wrong with your economy already. Personal vendettas, suppression of (usually religious) unrest - they're good reasons to go and kill lots of people.

One more thing, try not to have governors later on in the game. It's inevitable that they pick up bad traits that drop your income anywhere from 30-70%. Tis horrible.

A 4:1 or higher city to castle ratio and use of militia units to garrison the cities combined with as high taxes as possible and a focus on trade/happiness buildings means you don't really need to worry about the economy.

BTW, invest in a navy. In patch 1.1, the AI constantly does naval invasions. Being able to sink them before they can land can save you from having to get another stack or two to do coastal patrol.

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Originally Posted by katank

Land clearance and communal farming upgrades both pay for themselves nicely.

If you are worried about squalor later, let the city rebel and then reconquer it, exterminating the population. More cash, less squalor. Big wins for everyone!

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If you sack a city you kill less people but get more gold than exterminating (in RTW it was the other way around) so here's what you can do if you have the time and troops. Sack the city. Pull out and let it rebel or rebel again depending on how it started. Attack and sack it again. Yeah, there's less people but more than if you had exterminated the first time. Plus, sacking equals more gold. Attack and sack it a third time if its a really big city or maybe four times if you are really pissed off at them. Your troops and generals earn experience as well. :yes:

Build an army (with at least one general), take over Timbuku and build forts on the Gold resource, and stuff it with merchants.

Once a city reaches Huge status, defend with 5 units. You only need to station them to man the towers. Whenever someone sieges, sally immediately and wait for the FREE cannon towers to send them running.

Governors' traits can go up as well as down in cities but you have to micro-manage them. Personally, any new family member I get with the budding bureaucrat trait becomes a governor, the others field generals. The governors go to where trade is good, or I'll be doing a lot of building, & they tend to pick up positive traits which either save or make me ££. I think the key to avoiding negative is making sure that tax/public order ratio is optimal, religious unrest is under control, & essentially a good job is being done. I find it almosr as interesting to try & build these governors as my generals.

@ Skott, I do realize that sacking gets you more gold. However, at that point in the game, gold is no longer such a big deal (who cares if I have 3 million or 4 million? might as well be infinite). The priority is more on getting the cities down to a reasonable population so they are easy to control. Extermination is better in this sense.

Put all the diplomats, crappy spies and assassins and lousy generals on a boat and sail it into the enemy fleet. The fewer sailors on the boat the better.
They'll go down to the bottom and you won't be paying them support anymore. (If I could just do that with my ex-wife!)

Timbuktu may not be as lucrative since you are so close to it, but if you choose that route then build a fort in the spot where you put a merchant and then fill the fort up with merchants. You can get 20 merchants in there all making tons of money and they are invulnerable to enemy merchant attack. I usually march a single general down there and recruit mercs when I lay seige. Once I take it I exterminate the city and disband the mercs. That way I'm not saddled with support, but the city doesn't need a large garison. The city is pagan, heretic, and Muslim so I never notice a hit to my reputation.

If you don't have trade rights and alliances with everyone then get them. Don't sack or exterminate cities unless they are completely Muslim because it will damage your reputation and make it harder to make alliances.

Remember to garison your cities with militia type troops and only those troops that each city can actually produce so that you are not paying support for them. They help reduce disorder and increase growth and or taxes.

Sacking a city is a way to make money but it also allows you to expand military beyond your capacity to support it. Think less military but better quality military. Disband troops you don't need. Also sacking and exterminating destroys buildings and it reduces your tax base. So basically you trade a short term cash influx for a long term cash flow.