Economics of the Golden Horde: How can I get those?

[Grond]

The Khan regularly rolls into town with a super army of 30-50 thousand troops. He usually slices through a few dozen provinces, then settles down to consolidate his little kingdom. It's annoying and horrific if you're on the east side of the map.

Now, I thought something is a little fishy. Say the Khan shows up with 50,000 troops. That's a lot of mouths to feed. Assuming, arguendo, that those troops are purely peasants (and we know they're not), that's 250 units worth of peasanty happiness. At 75 florins a turn, those peasants eat up 18,750 florins worth of whale fat each year. Now, if we make an assumption that those are hayburners and their maintenance is more about 150 florins per troop (on the low side, really), that's 625 troops of 80 horsemen, for a yearly cost of 93,750 florins.

In most of my games, I could sustain that rate for MAYBE 6 turns, at the most, before I'm out of money and options.

So, how the hell does he do it? Or is he just broke from the first turn, and not creating new units? Does the Khan have a huge war chest in the beginning? If the poor bastard in landlocked economically-challenged Poland has to live on 12 kopecs a day, then the bastard Khan ought to also.

Maybe this is all clarified in one of the mods that lets you play the Horde. Are these numbers close, or am I mistaking things?

[Feanaro]

Best as I can tell, the A.I. is just way better than you at investment banking. Or they cheat. :D

I see things like this, on a smaller scale, all the time. In my longest running game yet(HRE, played over a year... yeah, I'm slow), the Italians have been sitting on Sicily with a stack and a half of units. Over four princes sucking cavalry sized amounts, along with sundry peasants 'n spearmen. They make something like 100 florins in that province.

In my Scottish VI campaign(I wish they had an option for the Scotch-Irish. As it is, playing the Irish kinda sucks. I can't believe they short changed the makers of such fine whiskey.), the Picts re-emerged on the little island north-west of England(I'm a Yank, I can't keep track of all the funky British names). Two full stacks. Only half the men are peasants. They sat there for over two decades, until their king keeled over without any heirs.

In both cases no one talked about inflation, unemployment, rampant wage differences, or how monarchies are, like, totally not cool. No Maynard Keynes fans came along to propose that the crown intervene, Adam Smith didn't mention an invisible hand, Marx didn't shout anything about the proletariet. I guess some medieval people didn't need "food" or "money", they ate dirt. So grandpa WASN'T lying about how horrid it used to be when he was little and sex was just a twinkle in God's eye, not to be invented for another fifty years.

[antisocialmunky]

They start with enough money to pay that 40,000 florin ransom for their Khan.

[miho]

I just think they're broke. Once I played with them and I never had more than 2000 florins in my treasury until I conquered Constantinople.

[Ironside]

They are broke.

Using -ian command and god mode, I've seen factions with -200.000 in thier treassury, as they never disbands troops to get the economy in order.

Never tried the horde that way, but I've never seen them build troops. That's why their army withers so fast.

[Ludens]

They are broke.

Using -ian command and god mode, I've seen factions with -200.000 in thier treassury, as they never disbands troops to get the economy in order.

Never tried the horde that way, but I've never seen them build troops. That's why their army withers so fast.

Indeed. Troops don't desert when their leader runs out of cash; it simply means there will be no recruitment anymore. Not that this is very important for the Horde: they cannot recruit any units anyway, appart from steppe cavalry and some basic infantry.

Incidentally, Horde cavalry and infantry have a very low upkeep (probably reflecting their nomadic status).

They start with enough money to pay that 40,000 florin ransom for their Khan.

Factions always pay the ransom for the faction leader if he has no heirs. They only refuse when they are out of cash and there is a heir available.