Couple question: Economy, religion...war

[thecoffeeguy]

So, I have been playing this for about a week now and have to say, very rich (instead of complex) and lots going on.

I feel like there is quite a bit to learn and absorb on this game and it only gets richer and richer as the game goes on.

But I was hoping I could ask a few questions here to help me get started.

Economy:

I have read a few strategy sections on how to get the economy going. Makes sense really, but I seem to be struggling getting the hang of it.

I am trying ME2, just the normal campaign and started as the French.
I have conquered a few surround towns and occupied them.

The biggest thing I think I get stuck on is, what to build in a village? What to build in a castle? The use of Merchants.

I have tried using a couple of merchants but the AI always seems to 'overtake' my Merchants.

I seem to be doing ok on battles, but I have a question on whether a tactic I am using is 'cheap' or not.

I attacked a Spanish General.
The balance looked pretty good.
When the battle started, they were in the woods, I was in the open and had to advance on them.

The battle did not start out well for me and m spear men took some serious damage (i had 2 archers, 2 spearmen, 1 calvary and the bodyguard...early game battle).

Anyway, when I saw that my spear men were getting their butts handed to them, I hit the withdraw button on both of them to pull them back.

In the meantime, I still had my archers fire at the crossbow men.
While this was going on, I brought my cavalry up (both of them) and flank the Spanish bodyguard and the crossbow men.

When the SPanish spear men saw this, they raced to their General, which allowed me to bring my spear men back in and attack from the side.

I thought i was loosing the battle, but when i did this (using withdraw), I was able to swing the tide of the battle in my favor. I was able to kill the General (which was why I attacked the Spanish bodyguard).

This a cheap tactic? or just sneaky?

Anyway, love the game, but the economy and religion thing has me stumped a bit.

Any help is great.
Thanks,

TCG

[Polemists]

The biggest thing I think I get stuck on is, what to build in a village? What to build in a castle? The use of Merchants.

Only going to take econmic side here one step at a time.



Castle v Village


Depending on who you talk to there are a plethroa of strategies on this, two of the most common are the Frontier strategy and the scattered.

Frontier
Frontier is where you build castles all along your borders with enemies and let your "safe" zones turn into cities. This lets you get troops and defenses to your front, and earn income.

This is useful for facitons like SPain, denmark and others, where you can really create a wall between the rest of your cities and the enemy by only turning a handful of cities into castles.

Scattered
If your France or Germany or Byzantines or another large empire, then you can't really create the so called border, it may prove to costly and time consuming. In this instance you are just gonig to scatter based on what you need.


A important thing to remeber is while castle troops and defenses will own the first 200 years of the game, the last 200 city defenses will surpass them, do to cannon towers and the like. Plus city troops will get better as time goes on.


Merchants:

This is purely a choice, I always use them, some people don't. You have to use them though to get anything out of them, just having them sit on resources will get them taken quickly.

Merchants after a turn or two on a resource go up to 2-3 finance, and then you need to send them out to take other merchants. Try taking ones with lower amounts, but if you can't it dosn't matter try taking them, even if you lose your merchants.

Every time your merchant tries to aqquire another pushes you towards the merchant guild. Once you get the guild your merchants will really start to improve. Just keep them active. They truly can generate thousands of florins a turn if used right.

[Ratwar]

Building thing:

Really managing Settlements of all types in the game is just a matter of prioritizing. Basically you start out with several goals in each city. For example:

Marseille's Goals:
1. Make Money: Port city, can make plenty of cash
a. Get a Merchant's Guild to improve trade and produce Merchants that are worth buying.
2. Grow Fast: As your only starting Port city and potentially your most profitable settlement you want this place to grow fast.
3. Happy Populus: Essential for making money via taxes and needed to keep a large city in line.
4. Decent Defense: As a city on the border of Milan, it may come under attack at some point.
5. Safe to Governor: As a major piece of my future economic plan, I want Marseille to be able to have a governor without him becoming Prince Lou-Man of the Clap.

Then you build based on these goals. In Marseille's case, I'd follow the basic build order of any City-Level Upgrades, then any trade buildings. Following this up with a basic amount of farming followed with. The next three are pretty easy to combine as a lot of buildings are duel purpose (Barracks provide good troops and a order boost, building the townhall line and churches boost popularity and give govenors good traits). Finally it also means that I'm going to avoid building any brothels, since they have a bad tendency to attract bad Governor traits.

In General terms, I want all of my Towns/Cities to make money. After that usually I choose a Guild for them to work towards (Usually the inland cities are the unique Guilds while the coast just gets merchant ones to increase trade).

A sample Castle's priorties for Angers:
1. Cavalry Troop Specialization: Inland, roughly central to France as a region, if not as a Nation yet. Calvary are fast moving and can thus reach borders quicker, so creating a single major cavalry depot in the Center of your Empire has advantages.
2. Fast Growing: The fast it grows, the fast you'll get access to more powerful cavalry.

In the early going, Merchants are useless, but once you've got a Merchant's guild, they can become very fun.

As for your single player strategy, that is simply good tactics.

[thecoffeeguy]

Building thing:

Really managing Settlements of all types in the game is just a matter of prioritizing. Basically you start out with several goals in each city. For example:

Marseille's Goals:
1. Make Money: Port city, can make plenty of cash
a. Get a Merchant's Guild to improve trade and produce Merchants that are worth buying.
2. Grow Fast: As your only starting Port city and potentially your most profitable settlement you want this place to grow fast.
3. Happy Populus: Essential for making money via taxes and needed to keep a large city in line.
4. Decent Defense: As a city on the border of Milan, it may come under attack at some point.
5. Safe to Governor: As a major piece of my future economic plan, I want Marseille to be able to have a governor without him becoming Prince Lou-Man of the Clap.

Then you build based on these goals. In Marseille's case, I'd follow the basic build order of any City-Level Upgrades, then any trade buildings. Following this up with a basic amount of farming followed with. The next three are pretty easy to combine as a lot of buildings are duel purpose (Barracks provide good troops and a order boost, building the townhall line and churches boost popularity and give govenors good traits). Finally it also means that I'm going to avoid building any brothels, since they have a bad tendency to attract bad Governor traits.

In General terms, I want all of my Towns/Cities to make money. After that usually I choose a Guild for them to work towards (Usually the inland cities are the unique Guilds while the coast just gets merchant ones to increase trade).

A sample Castle's priorties for Angers:
1. Cavalry Troop Specialization: Inland, roughly central to France as a region, if not as a Nation yet. Calvary are fast moving and can thus reach borders quicker, so creating a single major cavalry depot in the Center of your Empire has advantages.
2. Fast Growing: The fast it grows, the fast you'll get access to more powerful cavalry.

In the early going, Merchants are useless, but once you've got a Merchant's guild, they can become very fun.

As for your single player strategy, that is simply good tactics.

Lots of good help here. Much appreciated.

Cheers,

TCG

[thecoffeeguy]

Building thing:

Really managing Settlements of all types in the game is just a matter of prioritizing. Basically you start out with several goals in each city. For example:

Marseille's Goals:
1. Make Money: Port city, can make plenty of cash
a. Get a Merchant's Guild to improve trade and produce Merchants that are worth buying.
2. Grow Fast: As your only starting Port city and potentially your most profitable settlement you want this place to grow fast.
3. Happy Populus: Essential for making money via taxes and needed to keep a large city in line.
4. Decent Defense: As a city on the border of Milan, it may come under attack at some point.
5. Safe to Governor: As a major piece of my future economic plan, I want Marseille to be able to have a governor without him becoming Prince Lou-Man of the Clap.

Then you build based on these goals. In Marseille's case, I'd follow the basic build order of any City-Level Upgrades, then any trade buildings. Following this up with a basic amount of farming followed with. The next three are pretty easy to combine as a lot of buildings are duel purpose (Barracks provide good troops and a order boost, building the townhall line and churches boost popularity and give govenors good traits). Finally it also means that I'm going to avoid building any brothels, since they have a bad tendency to attract bad Governor traits.

In General terms, I want all of my Towns/Cities to make money. After that usually I choose a Guild for them to work towards (Usually the inland cities are the unique Guilds while the coast just gets merchant ones to increase trade).

A sample Castle's priorties for Angers:
1. Cavalry Troop Specialization: Inland, roughly central to France as a region, if not as a Nation yet. Calvary are fast moving and can thus reach borders quicker, so creating a single major cavalry depot in the Center of your Empire has advantages.
2. Fast Growing: The fast it grows, the fast you'll get access to more powerful cavalry.

In the early going, Merchants are useless, but once you've got a Merchant's guild, they can become very fun.

As for your single player strategy, that is simply good tactics.

Excellent information here.
I think I just need to test things out a bit, learn the game.
Knowing what to build is probably a huge part of the game.

THe building browser....how do I figure that thing out? I think I have it figured out, then I dont.

Thanks!

TCG

[thecoffeeguy]

So, what about religion? I was testing out some stuff at France and the pope was really mad at me.

I thought I was doing ok, had churches in most of my areas and had Priests around. GUess not. I had some inquisitors trooping through my lands. Not good. I had two bars in favor from the Pope.

I think I was focusing so much on building my economy, I overlooked that.

I thought if I could jumpstart my economy, I could build other things later.

And upkeep of troops. That can be expensive. Only militia are free when garrisoned?

Do most people take their generals out and cruise through the lands? IF you take your General out (or your leaders), you cant build some structures correct?

Thanks!

TCG

[thecoffeeguy]

Only going to take econmic side here one step at a time.



Castle v Village


Depending on who you talk to there are a plethroa of strategies on this, two of the most common are the Frontier strategy and the scattered.

Frontier
Frontier is where you build castles all along your borders with enemies and let your "safe" zones turn into cities. This lets you get troops and defenses to your front, and earn income.

This is useful for facitons like SPain, denmark and others, where you can really create a wall between the rest of your cities and the enemy by only turning a handful of cities into castles.

Scattered
If your France or Germany or Byzantines or another large empire, then you can't really create the so called border, it may prove to costly and time consuming. In this instance you are just gonig to scatter based on what you need.


A important thing to remeber is while castle troops and defenses will own the first 200 years of the game, the last 200 city defenses will surpass them, do to cannon towers and the like. Plus city troops will get better as time goes on.

Good to know.
I am trying out France right now and so far, have managed to take back what is Modern day France.
But I have a pretty good idea of what you are saying. I will continue to test things out.

Merchants:

This is purely a choice, I always use them, some people don't. You have to use them though to get anything out of them, just having them sit on resources will get them taken quickly.

Merchants after a turn or two on a resource go up to 2-3 finance, and then you need to send them out to take other merchants. Try taking ones with lower amounts, but if you can't it dosn't matter try taking them, even if you lose your merchants.

Every time your merchant tries to aqquire another pushes you towards the merchant guild. Once you get the guild your merchants will really start to improve. Just keep them active. They truly can generate thousands of florins a turn if used right.

I can really see where Merchants are powerful. I tried doing some things by getting trade rights with another faction and having my Merchant sit on some resource. However, my merchants always seem to get "taken" out by another merchant, yet I cant do it back to them.

I recently was able to setup the Merchant's Guild in Paris. I am still learning this, but what does the purpose of the new unit (Merchant Unit of some sort)...help with? I wasn't sure on how to use this unit.

Thanks for your help.

TCG

[anweRU]

Good to know.
I am still learning this, but what does the purpose of the new unit (Merchant Unit of some sort)...help with? I wasn't sure on how to use this unit.
TCG

That should be Merchant Cavalry, which is simply a light cavalry unit, same as Mounted Sargents, Alan Light Cavalry, Hobilars, etc. It isn't a very good unit (as you can't see from the stats). Turks get Sipahis, which are much better cavalry. IIRC, the Egyptians & Moors should get Arab Cavalry.

[thecoffeeguy]

That should be Merchant Cavalry, which is simply a light cavalry unit, same as Mounted Sargents, Alan Light Cavalry, Hobilars, etc. It isn't a very good unit (as you can't see from the stats). Turks get Sipahis, which are much better cavalry. IIRC, the Egyptians & Moors should get Arab Cavalry.

Ahh...ok....so really, its about getting the Merchants guild than?

[Quintus.JC]

The biggest thing I think I get stuck on is, what to build in a village?

Realistically a village is pretty useless, and it would be ideal to try to upgrade them as soon as possible. In villages and towns your priority should be building farming upgrade, this improves the settlement’s income but more importantly adds a nice population boost to your meagre little settlements.

As for a normal settlement (not particularly tiny) the best stuff to build is most definitely roads (and paved if possible). This stuff improves trade by a great deal and also improves the movement distances for your characters and armies, which could prove invaluable at times.

As ratwar stated, ports are absolutely money making machines when it comes to trading. The sea is paved with money, and not fully taking advantage of this could prove costly. Get as much trade agreement as you can and your ports could make you an extremely healthy amount of profit.

Markets are the standard trade building within a settlement, so build them obviously.

Other additional stuff such as Merchant’s Wharf and Banks are all nice, build them if you can.

Quoted shamelessly from M2TW FAQ by Econ21

What to build in a castle?

What to build in a castle depends on the strength of the faction, or at least this rule applies earlier in the campaign. If you have superb ranged units then always go for Bowyer and upgrades, if you have excellent infantry then barracks will be your priority, and stables for cavalry. In the case of the French I suggest you try to build a Drill Square as soon as possible, these give you the ability to train Armoured Sergeant, which is pretty much the best you can get within castle level. Once advanced into Fortress you are almost spoilt for choice, as you get both mounted and dismounted Feudal Knights. And as you progress into Citadel you should be quite invincible.

The use of Merchants.

Merchants are tricky to use for relative newcomers to the game. Merchants basically stands on resources and make money for the mother faction, the more finance they have the more money they will make, and the more chance of success they’ll have on acquiring other merchants’ assets.

Four ways Merchants pick up more finance:

Random chance – Merchants can have high finance by random chance, it is possible for you to recruit 3+ finance merchants in simple towns, though the chance is low. Also retinues help finance, but they are random chances as well.

Experience – Merchants standing on the same trade resources for a substantial amount of time will gain more finances.

Acquisition – Merchants putting other merchants out of business will gain more finance. This is best done to use higher merchants to prey on weak merchants with low finance. A 3 finance merchants should have no problem acquiring 1 finance merchants, this will also gain your merchants finances, this would drive the opposition merchants out of business for good. But the AI merchants can do this to you as well, and when they do it is very annoying indeed.

Guild – Merchant Guilds are good for boosting the settlements’ trade. But they also give a significant boost of finance to your merchants. Merchants guild and master merchant guilds are good for any merchants trained in the settlement with that guild, this will normally give your merchants a 1-3 finance boost. Merchant HQs adds a significant boost to your merchant, and will ensure you that every merchant trained will have a 5+ finance, and they also have global effects as well.

You attract merchant guild by your leadership style. Marseilles is an ideal destination for a merchant guild, my advice is to keep on recruiting all of your merchants in Marseilles, when it reaches city level the merchants should probably offer you the chance to have merchant guild in the settlement, then its plain sailing from that point.

This a cheap tactic? or just sneaky?

William I of England applied the same tactic in Hastings, and he'll always remembered as a cheat.

Cheating is the only cheap tactic; everything else is considered legal and justified.

Hope this helps.

[thecoffeeguy]

Realistically a village is pretty useless, and it would be ideal to try to upgrade them as soon as possible. In villages and towns your priority should be building farming upgrade, this improves the settlement’s income but more importantly adds a nice population boost to your meagre little settlements.

As for a normal settlement (not particularly tiny) the best stuff to build is most definitely roads (and paved if possible). This stuff improves trade by a great deal and also improves the movement distances for your characters and armies, which could prove invaluable at times.

As ratwar stated, ports are absolutely money making machines when it comes to trading. The sea is paved with money, and not fully taking advantage of this could prove costly. Get as much trade agreement as you can and your ports could make you an extremely healthy amount of profit.

Markets are the standard trade building within a settlement, so build them obviously.

Other additional stuff such as Merchant’s Wharf and Banks are all nice, build them if you can.

Quoted shamelessly from M2TW FAQ by Econ21




What to build in a castle depends on the strength of the faction, or at least this rule applies earlier in the campaign. If you have superb ranged units then always go for Bowyer and upgrades, if you have excellent infantry then barracks will be your priority, and stables for cavalry. In the case of the French I suggest you try to build a Drill Square as soon as possible, these give you the ability to train Armoured Sergeant, which is pretty much the best you can get within castle level. Once advanced into Fortress you are almost spoilt for choice, as you get both mounted and dismounted Feudal Knights. And as you progress into Citadel you should be quite invincible.



Merchants are tricky to use for relative newcomers to the game. Merchants basically stands on resources and make money for the mother faction, the more finance they have the more money they will make, and the more chance of success they’ll have on acquiring other merchants’ assets.

Four ways Merchants pick up more finance:

Random chance – Merchants can have high finance by random chance, it is possible for you to recruit 3+ finance merchants in simple towns, though the chance is low. Also retinues help finance, but they are random chances as well.

Experience – Merchants standing on the same trade resources for a substantial amount of time will gain more finances.

Acquisition – Merchants putting other merchants out of business will gain more finance. This is best done to use higher merchants to prey on weak merchants with low finance. A 3 finance merchants should have no problem acquiring 1 finance merchants, this will also gain your merchants finances, this would drive the opposition merchants out of business for good. But the AI merchants can do this to you as well, and when they do it is very annoying indeed.

Guild – Merchant Guilds are good for boosting the settlements’ trade. But they also give a significant boost of finance to your merchants. Merchants guild and master merchant guilds are good for any merchants trained in the settlement with that guild, this will normally give your merchants a 1-3 finance boost. Merchant HQs adds a significant boost to your merchant, and will ensure you that every merchant trained will have a 5+ finance, and they also have global effects as well.

You attract merchant guild by your leadership style. Marseilles is an ideal destination for a merchant guild, my advice is to keep on recruiting all of your merchants in Marseilles, when it reaches city level the merchants should probably offer you the chance to have merchant guild in the settlement, then its plain sailing from that point.



William I of England applied the same tactic in Hastings, and he'll always remembered as a cheat.

Cheating is the only cheap tactic; everything else is considered legal and justified.

Hope this helps.

Wow..that is an awesome post man. Tons of information there. Much obliged.

THe more I play the game, the more complex I see how it is. Very rich.
I will try and make Marseilles the way suggested.

Cheers,

TCG

[FactionHeir]

Please cease double posting and re-quoting whole posts you already quoted.
Thank you.

[Old Geezer]

To have just 2 pips on the PopeMeter you must have been doing something more than just ignoring the Pope, I think. Did you get several warnings for attacking catholic nations or not go on crusades or ignore a mission that the Pope requested? I have seen excommunicated factions with 2 Pope pips.

[thecoffeeguy]

To have just 2 pips on the PopeMeter you must have been doing something more than just ignoring the Pope, I think. Did you get several warnings for attacking catholic nations or not go on crusades or ignore a mission that the Pope requested? I have seen excommunicated factions with 2 Pope pips.

Possibly because I kept fighting the Spanish?

[thecoffeeguy]

Please cease double posting and re-quoting whole posts you already quoted.
Thank you.

That was my fault. I accidentally did that, but could not find the delete post function.
Sorry.