Paying a king's ransom...

[Didz]

@ Didz : we play along the same lines except that looking at your expenditures (439 recruitment and 1600 construction), your recruitment is almost nil (retraining ?) and your construction also (only one building that turn ? two at the most?)

Yes...not much going on that turn.

I don't recruit many units, as I don't lose very many. So the 439 was probably the replenishment cost from my last seige or battle. Most cities and castles have minimal garrisons and these will be reinforced by a combination of hastly hired mercenaries and nearby army units only if they come under threat. As you can see although I'm not recruiting I am spending over 29K on my army so it isn't that I don't have troops.

For my part, my recruitment is almost always around 1000 each turn (priest/spy/merchant) plus any needed units/mercs and my construction is almost always around 5000 if I can do it (ie one town upgrade and several other buildings as needed)...

I have already hired every merchant I can (Agent Limit Reached) so I only need to recruit new merchants when one dies of old age, and that obviously didn't happen this turn.

Likewise every city and castle has at least one resident spy and these only get replaced when they die. Also have 2 diplomat's, I don't do much diplomacy, and 6 Assassin's. But recruitment is low mainly because I don't lose many.

Buildings are an interesting issue. I tend to have something in the construction queue of every city or settlement, so my construction queue is frequently stalled. Why on this particular turn only one building was constructed I can't say, possibly all the other buildings were too expensive to start.

Anyway to a certain extent the issue was income rather than how it is being spent.

Moreover, I sack whenever the value is above 3000 fl and almost all cities are at VH tax rate... Furthermore I generally keep only one castle for every five provinces and change them to cities otherwise...

Likewise, I usually sack settlements after I have captured them. The only exception being the occasional city which rebels against my beneficent rule. Such cities are exterminated as a matter of policy.

TRADE
One obvious point I forgot to mention about trade is that factions you are at war with don't trade with you.

Seems pretty obvious, but if you are in the habit of waging unrestircted war on everyone around you your income is obviously going to suffer. In fact, the main reason I seek peace with the factions I don't actually plan to fight immediately is that I want to get my hands their money. If, I'm not planning to do that by sacking their cities then I might as well try and sell them my grandmother instead.