Balancing the budget - how do you guys do it?

[Memnoch]

Long post here - be warned!

At risk of sounding like an accountant, does anyone have any insights on how to balance your budget and not run out of money, particularly in the early game? The early game is usually where the "land grab" happens, especially if you have many tempting rebel provinces bordering yours. I thought rather than just asking the question, I'd share my own situation and then ask for opinions on how to best manage this.

I'm playing as the Turks right now and after (foolishly) expanding as quickly as possible to the north, east and south I've now run out of money. The biggest drain on my finances is (not surprisingly) army upkeep - it makes up 51% of my expenses. I've now gotten to the point where I'm maintaining a huge army because I've just taken Constantinople and Nicaea from the Byzantines (who have been eliminated as their Emperor was slain without heirs and their remaining cities of Thessalonica and Corinth have gone rebel, which provide opportunities if I had the money). As its taking a while to convert these cities to my religion (I'm trying to roleplay as the chivalrous Sultan Jalal and so I do not sack cities for cash so they usually have high population when I take them) I have to maintain full armies in these cities, given that I've had crusaders now starting to come through my lands (a crusade has been called on Antioch and they're all coming through the Bosphorus). Where possible all my interior cities are militia-only, and only up to the free upkeep limit, and my castles (Mosul, Caesarea, Tbilisi, Acre, Gaza, Rhodes and Nicosia) are all garrisoned by a single unit (usually Turkish archers or javelinmen).

The bulk of my "ranging armies" used to be Sipahis until I worked out that they cost nearly 3 florins a man so all those Sipahis got the flick and I've replaced them with Turkish HA, which are cheaper at 2.5 florins a man. My infantry has been downgraded from Saracen Militia to Spear Militia (again cheaper at 1.1 florins/man compared to 1.4 florins/man - I know these are fractions but every bit counts). I thought the Azabs would be a cheap source of manpower, but they're bloody expensive (2.1 florins/man) and not even as good as Spear Militia! I got rid of them too. Consequently my military performance has suffered somewhat...

All up I estimate (I got tired of counting manual army stacks) that my army costs me about 20,000 florins, give or take a couple thousand.

I ended up using a calculator and working out unit costs/man/type of unit, and I discovered that my navy is pretty bloody expensive - I wanted to follow British Empire doctrine of having twice as many ships as the next two navies combined, but doing so is massively expensive - each full stack of dhows (740 men) costs me 3000 florins, and a half-stack (10 dhows of 390 men total) costs me 1500. I think I have one full stack and about five or six half-stacks, so I'm estimating the total cost to be about 10,000 florins just for naval fleets (+ or - a couple of thousand). I'm starting to think that navies are overrated.

Then I've got my Eastern Med "patrol line" (basically a line of single dhows equally spaced throughout the Eastern Med to remove the fog and deter pirates, as well as give me early warning of perfidious Egyptian attacks) which costs about 1000, and my Black Sea "patrol line" costs a bit less. Then you add the single dhows that I have near rival ports as surveillance (I have this for the Egyptian ports in the eastern Med as well as Hungarian and Polish ports in the Black Sea and some (not all) Venetian and Sicilian ports around the central Med) as well as single dhows in my harbours for quick transport of troops if required - I reckon I'm paying about 4-5K for that all up.

So let's say my navy costs me 16,000 florins approx. I haven't even taken into account the mix of stacks I have which are part-dhow and part-war galley (war galleys cost 200 for 56 men vs 150 for 37 for dhows), so there could be quite a bit of upside to that number.

Given that my existing income is about 60,000 florins, and 35,000 florins is used up by my military, and another 10,000 goes to wages (I'd give the generals pay cuts but I can't) and another 5,000 to corruption, that leaves me with 10,000 to a ) recruit new troops when needed and b ) to engage in construction of value added buildings to either improve my military capability or help me earn more money. In many cases I've had to halt construction in certain cities as I just haven't got the money (and unlike RL I can't run constant budget deficits). My taxes are all at high (again due to roleplaying a benign Islamic empire, I don't want them at very high). Also, as you queue up buildings I think you still pay the charge for those buildings the year you queue them up, not the year you build them, like in RTW.

I've been trying to get my trade figures up, but given that most of the Catholic world is at war with me because of that bloody Crusade the chances of trading with them are pretty much slim to none. I'm also at war with Egypt (they attacked me) so no trade with them either. I remember raking it in around the Levant and Baghdad area with my merchants when I was playing as Denmark, but as the Turks I'm not making anywhere near as much with the same level of merchants (must be a distance to capital thing).

I don't want to continually put off construction of key buildings which will assist development of my empire. So the only options I can see ahead of me are:

1 - brutally reduce troop levels to a manageable level. Where necessary give up cities which cannot be maintained
2 - cut down my navy, give up the "patrol lines", eliminate at least a couple of the half-stacks which will probably save me about 12,000 florins
3 - "shrink" my empire - give up my Byzantine possessions as well as the ones north of and in the Caucasus Mountains (Sarkel, Tbilisi, Yerevan)

I can't see any way by which I can grow my topline, so it's really only reducing expenses which will help me. I don't remember it being this hard to manage money in RTW - there was that initial stage where you had to live like a pauper, but after a while, as you scaled your empire up, you started printing money.

Any advice on how you guys balance your budget and manage your territorial expansion with your fiscal constraints would be much appreciated.