Need help with middle to end game!

[kublikhan3]

Sack every city you come across. Empty your garrisons and turn them into sacking machines. No sense having valuable income generators sitting around in your castles waiting to get attacked. Stop building those 4k-10k buildings unless you REALLY need them. Your money troubles soon turn into a gold bonanza.

[HoreTore]

Don't have bigger garrisons than you actually need. And make sure that they are the cheapest units you can recruit. F.eks. a standard garrison for one of your cities far from the border, would be it's full allowance of militia units, and then as many peasants/woodsmen as needed to keep the order.

Always remember to disband or use units!

Oh, and make sure that you don't have complete idiots as governors of your biggest cities, and a genius sitting in a wooden castle...

[Empirate]

The thing about the trade rights can't be stated enough. Send out diplomats, secure trade rights with everybody. Don't go to war with more than one or two factions at once, so your trade doesn't get hit too hard.
Remember to clear rebels away from your roads once in a while, too: These block trade flowing on that road. Attacking with a superior stack drives them from the roads; let them sit in the forest and rot, as long as they're not hurting your money.
Also, don't underestimate merchants. Level them up by monopolizing some simple resource close by, then send them abroad. Depending on where you are, try to find the following: sugar in southern Spain; amber in Norway; gold and ivory near Timbuktu; silks near Constantinople. I had typical exp eight merchants rake in more than 150 a turn, sometimes far more than this, up to 300. That way, merchants pay for their rather high starting cost and provide upkeep for one elite unit. Granted, you'd need a lot of merchants to pay for your armies, but every little helps.
Keep your ports unblockaded by maintaining a good fleet. This can then also be used to blockade enemy's ports to reduce the armies available to them a little.

I have to restate one point over all the others, because it's so important: Sack cities and castles when you take them! This nets you a five-digit sum typically, enough to keep you going for a long time. Even a full stack of elite units costs only around 3000 fl / turn in upkeep, so the 15000 or so you can get out of sacked settlements really help you take off.

[yezhanquan85]

Well, most of the vets have said it better than I could. Would just like to add that you may want to convert seaside castles into cities. The key is not getting 1 or 2 city ports; you want as many of them as possible (without compromising security of course).

[HoreTore]

Yup. Any castle you have that is not critical to troopproduction or defense, should be converted. And try to focus your production inland, so that it frees up the ports for cities. For example, when playing the english, convert every castle in england into a town when you have conquered France. Militias, mercenaries and the late professional troops are more than enough to beat the rebels.

[Flavius Gonzo]

My apologies if someone has mentioned this already but farms are super important for your economy!! Building them early in the campaign will make a big difference in the middle and end game on your income.

[DukeKent]

The three primary ingredients in war are money, money, and money. Always build income generating buildings first. You can beat the AI with militia and 1st level castle troops if you need to. Get trade rights with everyone as fast as you can, and keep them active as much as u can. Cities make more money than castles. So convert all castles that you can to cities. Especially castles with ports. Keep just 1 castle (inland) per region. Use the armies that you do have to generate money by sacking cities. The rest of your troops should primarily be free upkeep militia in cities, and cheap units in castles. Finish off one enemy before fighting the next enemy when ever possible. Did I say that war is all about the money "Money is easily converted to power". You want a big military, then you have to have the economy to support your war machine