Florins

[blushful]

Please help me
Maybe its because i'm a woman and stupid i don't know but i keep losing money and end up in big dept.
I have done the usual build farms and gold silver and salt mines. That work for a while and then whoosh suddenly on my next turn my dosh has disappeared. Any tips will be gratefully received with a big kiss from me thanks

[YAKOBU]

Hi blushful

Only a novice but will try and help. I tend to only build farm upgrades in my best provinces, i.e. Normandy and Flanders (when I take it) as English, only build trade in provinces with at least 2 goods, and keep troops to minimum necessary in beginning. This is on easy but when I get farther into the game I have more money than I can handle and upgrade the rest. You did not mention if you use trade?

P.S. Thanks for the kiss (in advance

[Big King Sanctaphrax]

The big money earner is trade. Build ports and merchants in provinces with trade goods(some have more than one; Antioch, Sweden, etc)and then create a 'chain' of ships, with at least one in each sea region, to another port. This will start trade. If you have the right provinces, a big navy and are at peace with everyone you can make a stupid amount of money.

[nick_maxell]

welcome to the org blushful

a tip for the farming upgrades: build all the 20 ones (because you need them for Horsebreeder) but for the 40 ones, right click before building, that will show you information how much you will earn - build the best ones first and do not build any which give you less than 300 until later. Always be sure you make money by checking with the coin icon - if you are negative stop building and finish only farm/mines/trade related stuff.

Another boost is assigning the right govs - always give the title (the scroll sitting in province) to some unit with at least 4 quills - each quill increases income of province by 5%

hope that helps



nick

[Lord Ovaat]

One has to be very conscious of expenditures, especially early in a campaign. Be careful with the number and types of troops you produce. You have to hit a balance between defense and still maintain an adequate income to enable additional construction. Your economics button in the lower left corner of the campaign map can tell you the expected total income for your faction for the next year, the amount of expenditures, the balance, the total from the previous year, etc. For me, the first fifty years or so are the most fun. Very difficult sometimes to get your faction established. But once you do, it gets pretty easy.

You must also be very careful with what you are trying to build and how much it costs. Is it necessary at the moment, or can you put it off? Early in a campaign is a bad time to load up your building menu with future projects. Probably won't have the money when the time comes. Literally, play one move at a time. But most of all, have fun. Welcome to the ORG.

[Doug-Thompson]

I agree totally with Lord Ovaat. Cost control is the key. You need money to make money. You need to save money to upgrade farms and build ports.

Even a unit of peasants drains 37 florins every turn. So five units of peasants costs you almost as much in one turn as the 20 percent farm upgrade.

Ruthlessly purge units, especially disloyal ones.

My dad has a saying: It costs as much to feed a lousy dog as a good one. Make do with as few good, loyal troops as you can.

Also, what faction are you playing? If you play the Danes, for instance, you're going to spend some time in the red whatever you do.

=============

The rule of thumb I use is that if a farm upgrade will increase income by 200 florins or more, get it.

Pretty soon, you'll get the good steward virtue for your ruler and all your farm income will go up 10 percent.

[Accounting Troll]

In the long run, building up a good trading network is necessary, but ships are very expensive and time consuming to build, so this isn't viable in the first few years.

Be very careful what units you build early on. Cavalry units in particular are very expensive to maintain. While peasants are cheap to build, their support costs are rather high for a unit that is so useless in battle. A combination of spearmen and archers is a better choice.

Be very careful of hiring mercenaries - their support costs are twice as high as normal.

Raise taxes to as high as the people in each province will tolerate without the loyalty dipping below 100%.

All the construction costs of a new building or unit are paid for when construction is started. I count up the construction costs of new buildings and units with what's currently in my treasury. Most economic upgrades have high initial costs, so in the early years, I only do economic upgrades in 1-2 provinces at a time.

Look for any nearby rebel provinces you can easily capture. You automatically confiscate the estates of any rebel prisoners (so don't kill your prisoners to celebrate victory). You then get the income from the newly conqured province. Because of the costs of occupying a newly conquered province, you should only do this with rich provinces in the early days.

If I am leading the English in the early period, I like to start off by concentrating on building up a large army of mostly spearmen and archers, and then conquer the Ile-de-France and the two neighbouring French provinces. I auto resolve the battles and castle assaults, so the French King and generals survive. This gets me over 15,000 florins in ransom money, which is enough to fund my plans for economic development. Then the French are stuck in two provinces that are seperated from one another. The Turkish also have an excellent chance to capture and ransom the Egyptian sultan in the first few turns of an early campaign.

[katank]

my pattern for every campaign.

use starting troops and mercs to take out nearby faction.

only build watch towers and border forts for your provinces and build an inn instead in a front line one.

hit the enemy with mercs troops led by your best general. Your regulars led by the king follows to siege, maintain loyalty, whatever.

the use of mercs for attack is because they are likely superior troops and also when they die, you don't have to pay the insane support.

Once you kill that faction, hopefully managing to trap and ransom their king, disband all mercs and use enough peasants to maintain loyalty.

BTW, always have a border fort in every province. That' +30% loyalty and saves on garrisons.

WHen taking on a faction, try and split their provinces with their king on one side and then hitting that province and even if you don't get him in battle, he has nowhere to retrreat to and is captured.

provided any heirs are also captured with him, they will ransom him which should give you 10k florins or so which really help.

BTW, only buid farm upgrades that are profitable. right click on upgrade and see the income generated. if that amount if 10x the percentage of upgrade, then it's profitable to invest in that. otherwise, hold off on it and go for something else.

ie. 200 florins for 20% farm is worth investing in whereas 100 florins for 20% is not.

Also, trade is everything. After you are done with rushing, tech all coastal provinces to ships.

I use 6-8 provinces for ships which is fort + keep + port + shipwright.

THen building merchants and spamming the ships into every sea zone gives you so much money it's not funny.

case in point. my turk campaign, I have 1.3 million in the bank in 1170 with citadels everywhere and building stuff all over the place and still can't spend it all.

Very important tip: don't build royal BGs early on. They are so powerful in combat but cost so much, it's not even funny. Try to have your early armies consist of a high command cavalry general (quite possibly a royal), archers, spears, and militia.

[Red Harvest]

Money management:

1. Focus on building money improving ag upgrades first. Build them first in your best provinces. Later in other provinces, but you might skip them altogether in provinces that pull in much less than 200 florins a year with high taxes and a good governor.
2. Build mines quickly. Good source of steady income. Not as good as ag upgrades in provinces like flanders.
3. Appoint good governors. If he doesn't have 4 star acumen, he's not a good governor. A good governor will add something like 20% to your province income.
4. Use maximum tax rates all the time for every province you can. This is not the Bush economy where you can run a 500 billion florin deficit every turn. Tax 'em 'til it hurts, but be careful of loyalty, never let it fall below 100% in any province. Corollary: beware of the save/reload loyalty bug. The game reports loyalty about 25% higher than what it actually is when you load a fresh save. If you end a turn at 100% loyalty the turn after loading a save, you will probably get a rebellion since actually loyalty will be in the 75 to 80% range.
5. Attack and hold lucrative provinces and ignore non-lucrative ones when you can.
6. Disband some old obsolete units from time to time when you want to produce newer units. This will reduce your overall upkeep costs or at least allow you to keep good units in place of bad ones. An elite army is much more effective than rabble.
7. Trade is a money maker beyond compare. Build ports in provinces that have lots of trade goods, then build a trader. Use a string of ships. Try not to get into a war with your best trading partners. Negative about trade is that it can go to zero in a hurry and it is unreliable.
8. Focus building specific unit producing structures in various provinces (unless you have money to spare.) Especially true for provinces that have unit bonuses. Also, build units in provinces with metal (metalsmiths) where possible.
9. Build minimal structures in places like the Sinai where you will only be pouring money down a hole.
10. Use border forts to keep loyalty up. This allows smaller garrisons, and prevents enemy agents from assassinating your leaders, revealing nasty vices, or fomenting rebellion.

[PseRamesses]

Beside the good advice you´ve already got from my brothers-in-arms I also tend to have an early strategy of what to build and where.
Ex: When playing the English I tend to build military in Wessex, Mercia and Wales. The rest only gets money upgrades and warfs. With the HRE I only build military in Tyrolia, Switzerland and Swabia. With the Danes only in Denmark etc etc. So in the beginning restrict yourself from building everything everywhere and follow the unique province feats like Wessex and Denmark specializes in ships with high valour, Mercia billmen, Wales longbows and so on. Good luck

[Ragss]

Didnt read the replies, so this might all be mention already.

Well I saw trade was mentioned, so I wont get into that.

Make sure you give the titles of high grossing provinces to generals with AT LEAST 4 accumen. For provinces like Constanopole that can make 2000+ each turn you use your extremely rare 7+ accumen general.

I dont even do farms past 40% unless there is a lul in the action. Its all about trade.

[Gregoshi]

Trade is key, but it eventually dries up as you end up at war with your trading partners one by one. If you haven't prepared for this by building up farms & mines, you'll end up in the poor house very fast.

[meravelha]

Trade is so profitable that I am currently aiming for a bank balance of 7 figures (1,000,000 fl.)
Simply to see if the game-engine coughs :)

Of course, you can only trade with other factions.
Which may be a good reason for not fighting wars of conquest at all...

[Gregoshi]

Welcome meravelha.

You are right about trade - BUT, I've seen many frantic posts for help in this forum when their huge treasury collapses after trade disappears. They relied heavily on trade income to build huge armies that sucked the treasury dry when the undeveloped farming and mining became the only income to support them. You should be taking that 1000000 florin and building up your farms and mines. The day will come when you'll be glad you did.

[Doug-Thompson]

Quote[/b] (Gregoshi @ April 18 2004,23:56)]You should be taking that 1000000 florin and building up your farms and mines. The day will come when you'll be glad you did.

Absolutely right. Don't concentrate on building the perfect army, then finding out you can't afford it once trade collapses. A good army you can afford beat a great army that breaks the bank.

[DeadRunner]

in the napoleon mod with the danes i have 400000 florins
many times i each a way to make a transfer of money to the others saves

[katank]

No matter what, I try to keep my miltary upkeep below 5k.

if you use garrison troops like slav warriors and peasants intelligently, you don't need much more than that.

5 good defensive armies and maybe two elite strike force complemented by mercs in war time is mroe than enough.

[squippy]

If my income is under a grand per yea, I invest in the economy. Is not a hard rule... but it means that I have a little buffer in case things go wrong. I also try to reach thresholds if 1000 and 10,000 'in the bank' and then keep them.

My most succesful game to date is with a not-very-expanded Danes - just took the Baltic rim - raking in 10,000 per year with a treasury of 300,000. Rock on.

But under these circumstances, I am still over domestic budget to the tune of about 5k per year, if my trade broke down suddenly. With a big enough war chest though I can likely ride it out.

[Doug-Thompson]

Quote[/b] (squippy @ April 19 2004,08:42)]But under these circumstances, I am still over domestic budget to the tune of about 5k per year, if my trade broke down suddenly. With a big enough war chest though I can likely ride it out.

I never thought about it much, but I guess people should use trade to build up a war chest.

Invest in the real economy first, then save money for a war chest. After the war breaks out, casualties and conquered provinces take care of the rest.

[mfberg]

Gregoshi is right, trade is chancy income.

20% farms in every homeland (either before or after the towers). Basic mines either before or after 20% farms advanced mines before or after 40% farms.

Kill your mercs/low acumen peasants.

Build peasants in one province and keep any with 4+ acumen, replace/dismiss all low acumen governers as soon as you can.

If your loyalty rates are high in most provinces you can tank a province, and capture the rebel leaders. This provides training and money at the same time, but is chancy when you have an heir appointment.

mfberg

[SpencerH]

The cash flow that comes with sea trade can be interrupted, so I also build farms and the like in order to provide some income when naval warfare blocks trade. On the other hand, you need sea-trade income in order to purchase the buildings necessary for well protected high quality troops.

I'm playing as the Poles. During the early period, with 6-7 provinces but no sea-trade, my income was so small that I was limited to buying (at best) 1 unit/turn or 'saving up' and buying a small building. Now (1225AD) I have only 2 more provinces (took the sea trade cash cows Norway and Sweden HE HE), a ship in every naval zone, 350000 in the bank with 10000/yr coming in despite constantly building improvements (up to citadels so far) and buying troops in every turn (the GH are coming after all).

[blushful]

Thanks everyone all the advice is working, im sure i will be back for some more advice.
What a clever lot you all are

[meravelha]

waves@blushful

looks like we joined up at the same time

@theAristocracyOfCarnage

shouldn't I perhaps be reinforcing success and spending it on an invincible navy such that I never do lose that income stream?

[octavian]

hey blushful, see how much advice a simple kiss can get you. i'll have to remember that line..........just hope nobody checks my profile

[YAKOBU]

carsolan

I'm still waiting for my kiss........................off blushful before you get giddy

[gaelic cowboy]

Quote[/b] (blushful @ April 17 2004,07:23)] Please help me
Maybe its because i'm a woman and stupid i don't know but i keep losing money and end up in big dept.
I have done the usual build farms and gold silver and salt mines. That work for a while and then whoosh suddenly on my next turn my dosh has disappeared. Any tips will be gratefully received with a big kiss from me thanks

I suggest a good read of this stragety guide posted on the org by a very experienced member FROGBEASTEGG
TOTALWAR GUIDE ENJOY

[octavian]

hey dont tell her that then froggy will get all the credit, and a kiss wont do froggy any good, unless of course she is lesbian

[Obex]

Quote[/b] (blushful @ April 17 2004,06:23)] Please help me
Maybe its because i'm a woman and stupid i don't know but i keep losing money and end up in big dept.
I have done the usual build farms and gold silver and salt mines. That work for a while and then whoosh suddenly on my next turn my dosh has disappeared. Any tips will be gratefully received with a big kiss from me thanks

Ha ha ha

obex asks dozens of questions into the void that is the apathy here at the org. blushful shows up, bats her virtual eyes, and everyone trips over themselves to reply. well ive learned my lesson.

[Lord DeVeau]

Hey Blushful,

I'm new to MTW also. I had hoped that they'd allow us to pick our own Avatar but I guess we'll share for now. Thsi one doesn't look anything like me. Anyway, Good questions.

Good answers also. I guess it's easy to spend it all so fast. Too much to build etc.

Anyway, keep up the good fight.


WAR IS HELL
-General William T. Sherman,
speech 1880 from which we derive the phrase War is hell

Lord DeVeau

Later