Money

[Palandiell]

Hey,
I have noticed when i play with any nation after a while my money goes into negative or stays at a very low ammount. So i try to disband a few weak troops, yet i am not very successful at being able to reach a higher positive income. Especially as England this is very frustrating. What would you guys do?

[Zim]

That's odd, usually it's the beginning when money is hard to come by, while later you have too much.

Do you upgrade ports and roads first? And keep free upkeep militia in cities?

You can also change unneeded castles to cities so they'll make more money. I don't do it often because the AI never does, so it seems unfair.

If you're playing in Britain London and Edinburgh are the best cities for making money by far. Some others (*cough* Inverness *cough*) aren't worth spending much money on. The smaller settlements benefit from low taxes and farms, so they can grow fast enough to build ports (I also find farms the best moneymaking building in a small town or village). A short hop from London, Antwerp and Bruges are great for making money as well. If Denmark hasn't taken it, Oslo in Norway is woth taking so it can trade with Edinburg etc. Even if you keep it as a castle it makes decent money.

[trickydicky]

Just following on from Zims informative post.

I disagree about Inverness. When converted to a city (after a while mind) it does pay off. I also had york pulling in well over 4k per turn once teched up a little. In fact the whole of the UK is a cash cow if run properly. My advice as England would be to consolidate the British Isles and that's it. Pull out of Caen if necessary. This way you will only need one army to defend your entire territory.

After taking over Britain, keep Nottingham a castle and convert Wales and Inverness to cities. Keep 4-5 units of decent troops in Nottingham and only have free upkeep troops in your cities, this will keep your spend on armies to a minimum. This coupled with a 10 stack of decent troops in a field army will ensure you can crush any invader.

When developing your cities, always build ports, roads, markets, and farms first, and after upgrading a city, always build the upgrades to those buildings first. Procure trade rights with everyone, and I mean everyone, this will keep the gold flowing.

One other thing to remember, and not everyone will agree. Always build farms and their upgrades as well. More people equals more taxes. Keep your taxes to low if you can, as this will encourage more growth. Once you have the money in the bank you can steamroll till your hearts content. Just remember to stop every now and again and build those roads, ports, markets and farms in your new provinces.

Enjoy!

[Pater Familias]

That used to happen to me all the time. Here's what worked for me:
Be disciplined in your building. Even if you start with the money-making buildings, it's easy to lose track later on as you chase the big military structures. It's more fun, frankly, to build baron's stables all over the place than fairgrounds, but not as efficient.
I find I do OK as long as I specialize (one top-level artillery producer, one cavalry, one spies/assassins, one infantry, one missile troops, one religious center), then maximize money in the rest.
You need fairgrounds/ports/paved roads/markets in as many places as you can get them; you don't need an armourer except in your infantry and cavalry producing settlements.
The one exception is that I find cannon so useful that I tend to build a lot of basic gunpowder structures.
And I build at least two specialist finance cities: Merchants docks, great markets, anything that boosts trade, and the bigger the better, and create all my merchants in them to get a merchants' guild ASAP. One can also double as your primary dockyard, as there's a lot of overlap between ports and money.

[Palandiell]

ok, London is my castle
I will convert any other on the british/irish isles to a town/city.
I noticed that each town with a port trades with a port nearby.
How much does this help? and what about markets?
i have two cities with markets yet they dont have little guys going back and forth. Is their only purpose to recruit merchants?

Oh and i have all of west and north france excluding paris. So what should i do to those cities? convert all but one to towns and leave one of em as a castle right?

Also, at the beginning i got pissed cause i just couldnt build a archers guild. What are the exact requirements for that building?

[Ramses II CP]

The thing is, why do you want a castle on the Isles? You might get a hackneyed AI invasion once in a blue moon, but they're highly predictable; Portugal at Caernarvon, Danes at York. Consolidate your militia garrisons and send 'em packing, or just keep a few ships around. Voila, a highly profitable and secure all cities England to sustain your mainland adventures.

Use Caen as your training facility, or take one of the inland provinces so you aren't wasting a sea port as a castle. There is no reason to make yourself shuffle troops aboard ships from the island to the mainland the whole bloody game. That's just torturing yourself.

[trickydicky]

I would keep Angers as a castle, but the coastal provinces should really all be cities, with ports, markets, roads, etc.

If you secure trade rights with other factions, your markets an ports will come in to play more, and you will start to see lines connecting your ports more and more. Also I think the amount of men going to the port from the city is dependent on the amount of trade done in that region. The more the better.

For your building requirements you can see your building browser and requirements in your city information window along with the information for trade, religion, and happiness. It's one of the three along the bottom of the window.

Welcome to the org btw

[Palandiell]

thanks guys! i will try my best with it!
you guys are great!

[PBI]

Palandiell,

By archer's guild, do you mean the woodsmen's guild? If so, you can't ever build it as such, you have to wait for the guild to offer to build it in one of your castles. The best way to get this to happen is to churn out as many archers as possible in the castle where you want the guild to appear. I think the castle may also need to be at least a Fortress but I'm not sure about that.

Markets do increase trade but not by much, I think it's about 5% per market upgrade so it takes a while before you see any effect. Sea trade is generally much more lucrative than land trade which there aren't any people on your roads. Trade is also dependent on the size of the city doing the trading and its trading partners, so in the early game you won't see very many carts on the roads because all the settlements are small.

[Privateerkev]

I love turning England into a giant trading mecca...

Consolidate the isles in about 7 turns. (this is easy but is pretty much a seperate conversation.) Disband what army is left that isn't free militia. Or send it on crusade. (send the diplomat on turn 1 torwards the Pope so you can bribe your way to a Crusade by turn 10 at the latest.) Go big on ports and farms. Protect Caen by allying with the French on turn 2. Get the French Princess (with 5 charm) to marry Rufus. Caen will be safe for a loooong time till the Dutch finally come.

Keep building merchants in London to get the guild. Send the merchants to trade wine to pick up traits. Then send them hunting for other merchants all over France.

You don't need an army on the Isles. Militia and Family members will be more than enough to kill rebels and the PEF (Portuguese Expeditionary Force) that inevitably comes to your island.

Turn Inverness and Caernorvon to cities. I personally leave Nottingham as a Castle because I want the Woodman Guild. I use the Castle on Caen to get the Swordsmith Guild. It might seem counter-intuitive but I leave taxes low so my cities grow faster. I might lose a little tax money but I'll get the wall upgrades faster which allows me to buy the better trade buildings faster. Send your Princess around to get trade rights to all your neighbors which has the nice bonus of upping her Charm.

With the money rolling in, you can easily finance 2 full stacks of high quality troops and then just pick your target. Go on Crusades. Pick off islands in the Med. Take North Africa to get at Timbuktu. The world will be your oyster.

[Ramses II CP]

Don't mislead the man PK, you can get a Woodsmen's Guild at any castle/fortress/citdael, not just Nottingham. Keep training archers and longbowmen at Caen (Or Anger if you cap it) and it'll pop up soon enough.

edit: Mmm, to clarify, that comment was meant to be sort of a joke, as originally some people did assume that you could only get the Woodsmen's Guild at Nottingham, due to the legendary connection and the relative absurdity of the unit. I know PK doesn't think that, I was just trying to be funny, but I forgot the joke smiley. Added here for effect:

[Privateerkev]

Don't mislead the man PK, you can get a Woodsmen's Guild at any castle/fortress/citdael, not just Nottingham. Keep training archers and longbowmen at Caen (Or Anger if you cap it) and it'll pop up soon enough.

Your absolutly right, but if you read the rest of my post, you'll see that I put the Swordsmith Guild at Caen. It's just a personal preference. I train my archers at Nottingham to get the Guild bonus. Then I retrain them in Caen to get the attack bonus.

*edit*

I think I see where the confusion is. In my first post, it seems that I want Nottingham to be a castle because I think it is the only place for a WG. That is not what I meant. You can get a WG in any castle but Nottingham is just where I like to put them.

Oops...

[Pater Familias]

... or you can just switch and play Milan. I'm 25 turns into my first game w/ them and I'm starting to see why their colors are green and gold ... I had no idea that you could make so much money so early. How will I ever spend it all?

[Rhyfelwyr]

I usually build in this order, with some variations depending on mine income etc:

1. Dirt Farming - +60 income, plus you'll benefit from the growth while you tech the rest up
2. Communal Farming - same as above, but Crop Rotation too expensive early on
3. Roads - boosts trade and helps my armies conquer more efficiently early on
4. Grain Exchange - little bonus to trade
5. Port - little bonus to trade

That's often as much as I can do early on as you need to get bigger settlements to do more. Important notes are to always build Paved Roads and especially the Merchants' Wharfs line of buildings as soon as you can.

[Duke Bart]

also if you still have scotland to deal with then you should go for a more carefully selected army instead of getting the most you possibly can. Spending less will save you cash while your specialized army will be great for taking out the enemy since the AI is easy to predict and beat with a similar sized force. It isnt like scotland will be pumping anything great out at you early on

[PrestigeX]

Most of the comments here are pretty good so far
try not to build military type buildings (include armor upgrades) until you are getting a decent cash flow.

I usually build the following within the first few turns

Dirt Roads
Land Clearance

Port,
Fair ground

Some tips i'd found out are
1- Don't bother building more farms past Land Clearance
2- Don't bother building mines until you have already got enough money not to worry about it
3- Check your population growth, because most of your income comes from Taxation...I'm pretty sure things like churches can increase that

Once you have established a good economy, you can build mines and more advanced farms.

Get rid of unneeded troops if that is a problem, and also unneeded boats

[Rhyfelwyr]

I usually build Communal Farming after the Land Clearance, it only costs 1200F, but Crop Rotation is too expensive to get early on at 2400F. I usually get it mid-game, but never really get Irrigation.

Also I disagree about the mines, places like Vienna get around +1100 from a Mining Complex, if it costs 3500F to build then you're making that back in 7 turns (considering you already had around +550). Then you'll be getting big profits...

[Pater Familias]

Right-click on the mine tile before you build and it tells you your expected income. Some come in around 10% return each turn, so the payback is in 10 turns. I always build those. Some are closer to 20 turns, and I build those when I have a surplus.
Plus, you can put a merchant on a developed mine and often get very good income from them, which can cut the payback time by almost half.
I have a 2,000 florin silver mine in Northern Italy ... it's generating 200 florins/turn and an additional 159/turn from a third-level merchant, so 2,550 (including the merchant) divided by 359/turn income is six turns before I'm running clear profit every turn.
One more point ... it's worth micromanaging if need be to keep architects in big cities once they show up in your retinue ... a 10% discount on building costs adds up over 20-30 turns if you're using them to build 4,000 florin improvements instead of 600 florin roads or crop rotation.

[Rhyfelwyr]

And Generals with the 'Mercenary Captain' retinue cut all troop costs by 10%, if you train a full stack army where the average unit cost is say 400 then thats 800 profit right there. If you train an elite all cavalry army, you might save as much as 2,000 with cavalry such as Gendarmes and Qapukulu.

I don't quite understand how the income thing in the building browser works though. Sometimes you will see transparent icons of say trade carts, for example. Often if a Merchants Wharf is available, these might give a total of 2,500 trade income, whereas the carts that are fully visibile might only say 2,000. But as soon as you add the Wharf to the building queue then the fully visible trade carts will say 2,500 Florins. Also sometimes there are ones greyed out when you aren't actually building anything...

[PBI]

Solid trade carts show how much trade income the settlement is currently making.

Greyed-out trade carts show how much the trade income will be increased by the building currently being produced; this is a very good way of assessing which income buildings are most important to build.

Flashing greyed-out carts show how much of the current income will be lost next turn, usually because e.g. you've cancelled a trade agreement.

Does building mines on a resource affect how much merchants make from the resource? I hadn't realised this.

[Pater Familias]

Does building mines on a resource affect how much merchants make from the resource? I hadn't realised this.

I haven't researched the correlation, but I would say definitely yes. I can often get between 120 and 200 florins from a merchant on an improved mine when every other resource in the same province is making about 1/3 that. It could just be that I'm missing the undeveloped resource because it's hard to spot on the map without a mining derrick, but I doubt it. I'll try a before-and-after test over the weekend if nobody has the info before then ...

[PBI]

Just tried it. Started an England campaign on Britannia and used the starting merchants to check how much the silver near York was worth. It started at 68 florins with no improvements and stayed the same after building mines, so it seems it doesn't have an effect. I suspect the high value of the mined resources is just because they tend to be valuable anyway, i.e. gold or silver. I know parking a merchant on an iron mine is almost always worthless (except in my Turkish campaign, where for some reason iron was worth more than gold!)

I agree it seems silly though, I don't see how the merchants could be trading the resource when there's no available means of digging it up.

[Gaiseric]

To save some dough, you should use your generals/governors wisely, and try to develop good traits. There is a good guide to governors in the guides section of this forum. Developing good traits for your governors can be a game in itself, but the economic rewards can be great when you develop some good ones. Also, I can usually skimp on unit upkeep in my cities that are far from my front using the free upkeep slots as much as possible. If there is a fairly valuable trade good in your lands, send a unit to either stand on it or build a fort on it. You can then send all your merchants there and not have to worry about competition. The commodity doesn't have to be as valuable as the gold or ivory of timbukto, so long as your merchants are safe and earning you a decent return for their investment. Hope this helps and Good Luck!!!