Fiscal Tips

[A Nerd]

Good advice, I'll keep that in mind when I play again! Thanks!

[Galain_Ironhide]

My cousin wants his puter back so I'll make this quickish. Apologies if I miss something.

Also don't forget to send your diplomats to the far reaches of the map and arrange trading rights with everyone you are not at war with. Won't add much however it will help a little.

With merchants I use the old Pack hunting technique. Whereby I will couple 2 or 3 rookie Merchants with a more experienced merchant plus an assassin and a spy or two, send them to a medium to dense area with plenty of tradable goods icons (around Danish lands comes to mind and also around constantinople/byzantium - though that place is hectic) and have the lesser experienced merchants sit on the more safer tiles while the spies keep look out for oncoming enemy merchants. Meanwhile the assassin and the experienced Merchant are knocking these enemy merchants off (Using the merchant over the assassin is better because you get florins for acquisitions, but if he cant do it safely the assassin usually can). The longer a Merchant sits in one place trading goods, he becomes more experienced (20+++ turns) so it is important to make sure their stay in one area is going to be safe. Once that merchant has plenty of experience, move him on to higher paying tradable goods and expand your Merchant empire. Getting a monopoly on the area in south Egypt is essential.

Lastly keep in mind which troops you have in your army especially the ones you choose to have garrison your cities/castles. There is nothing wrong with having a few militias defending some walls with maybe only one decent sword unit or spear unit in it (the ai generally cant mount a great attack anyway), in the earlystages you really need to keep your upkeep low. Another thing that can catch you out is if you go on crusade and recruit all of these uber crusader type units and when the crusade finishes the upkeep of those soldiers goes through the roof as you are suddenly paying for them. Either make use of them or disband them - Personally I would make use of them and take down a city or two so their upkeep can be covered.

[A Nerd]

I didn't know you could stack merchants. Somewhat tedious moving merchants and diplomats about though. Often in a campaign I forget about them for a few turns, they get older and die before I get them anywhere. Start over and do it again. Guess I just have a swiss cheese brain or something. Garrison thing is tough though. While I have a small garrison in all my settlements to maintain order, the AI will send a full stack, early in the game to take a settlement, I can't defend, especially when several factions are picking on me. Don't know if they are contending with one another in a similar fashion. Doesn't seem like it. But I complain. I don't go on a crusades. I don't like war with those far distant provinces that aren't near my provinces to take an underdevelop city, with poor troop producing capabilities, and surrounded by factions that no longer like me due to the crusade in the first place. Nothing worse than taking Jerusalem when egypt and its large armies are looming everywere ready to take back the city from my perhaps depleted army. Though this is all in speculation because I never do crusades...perhaps I should. I stray from topic and I am loosing the me sense of direction, I apologize...will keep your ideas in thought, thanks, and will ask more questions should the need desire.

[Viking Prince]

Something that is often overlookerd (but obvious to all of us): War is very expensive. It is best to stop building and conserve your cash the moment that war breaks out. Even better if you are going to initiate the conflict to build up cash reserves before unleashing the dogs. End the war quickly and then reorganize and demobalize to reduce the outflow of the gold. The diplomats then need to go out and reestablish trade where possible and get the money flowing again.

[A Nerd]

How long until you start your 'Roman expansion' if you will? Is there a point in the game where the economy is quite stable and one can repel multiple attacks at the same time expanding the empire?

[Viking Prince]

If you were to play the short campaign, my guess is about the time you were to win that campaign you would be at that magic point where you will be taking on active multiple front campaigns for expansion. This assumes that you are not a blitzer and that you have a certain amount of roleplay to your game style as well.

[Empirate]

You can also just forget economy-building and go for a conquering spree instead. When you capture a settlement, sack it to gain tens of thousands of florins, use these to build more troops, expand in every direction at once, and just keep on conquering. That way, your invading armies will outrun your money problems by a turn or two. This is the blitz strategy, which (to me) is fun only once, but should be tried anyway.

But for a more conservative answer:
In the beginning, I usually like to improve my economy as others have noted. Roads are number one, followed by ports, merchant wharfs, mines and agriculture. All these bring in money, and overseas trade from ports is probably the big one here.

Concerning merchants: merchants are nice but non-essential. You can add around 5,000 fl a turn with a few of them, however. Train them up for a few turns, and they'll gain finance points. Each resource nets you a certain amount of money, which is multiplied by the merchant's finance rating. Meaning high-finance merchants are going to rake in the dough just nicely. Send them to a resource whose closest instance is as far from your capital as possible. This, along with the resource's base price (gold, ivory, silks: high; fish, coal, timber: low) determines your earnings. For example, if you're the Danes, all that amber in your provinces isn't going to pay well, but the silks around Constantinople, the gold at Timbuktu, the ivory in southern Egypt, and the sugar and spices at Antioch are going to make you rich. A finance-10 merchant can make over one grand each turn from these. If you're the Turks, though, you might want to send your merchants north to Sweden and get at that amber and furs.
Keep a lookout for foreign merchants. Take them over with your own higher finance ones for an instant cash boost, or assassinate them, or simply avoid them. Foreign merchants will only try to take over your merchants if you have them sitting on a resource. The more removed regions of the map (Timbuktu, Dongola) are mostly safe from foreign merchants. The silks at Constantinople are the most hard-fought economic region, on the other hand.
I like merchants. They're quickly trained, only cost 550 fl each with no upkeep, and can earn you from ten to thirty grand over the course of their lives, if you play it well. Training them in one city will also give you a merchant's guild there, improving overall cash gained through trades, as well as producing better merchants from the start.