The Pope and Excommunication

[Didz]

I would strongly recommend that you have a look throught the existing advice and guidance here.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=185

You'll find a lot of useful information and tips organised in a way that should make it reasonalby easy to focuss on what you need to know.

On the specific issue of cash flow.....I know where your coming from. There is an art to managing finances in MTW2 which is quite different to previous titles in the series, and to be quite honest I found it so frustrating I actually shelved the game for something like a year before coming back to it quite recently.

The break-through for me was finding OG Gleeps guide to handling merchants. It was located here http://forums.totalrealism.net/showthread.php?t=2798 but for some reason I am having trouble accessing it today.

However, that guide got me playing again and gave me the inspiration to actually play factions as economies rather than war machines. I summarized the key points here https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=81603 just in case OG GLeeps guide has been deleted from the web.

Merchants become less important in the late game, but can be a make or break option in the early years.

I would also ask if you have patched your game yet?

If you haven't then you may be sufferring from the infamous revenue re-calculation bug which used to nerf all trade income during the initial version of the game. So, I would recommend patching to 1.2 before getting to heavily involved in a campaign.

Finally, I get the impression that there are two fundemental strategies for playing this game which I will classify as 'War' or 'Trade', and you really need to decide which is the most suited to your playing style and interest.

In the extreme examples, the Warrior ignores trade and relies upon the money he gains by 'sacking' enemy cities to feed his troops and keep his country afloat. If you follow this path then salvation depends upon continued conquest, if you stop taking cities you starve.

The Trader on the other hand relies upon trading to keep his people fed. That means he can't afford to be at war with everyone, because people who are trying to kill you don't want to trade with you. So, typically you would only want to wage war on one faction at a time e.g. 'The Perfidious French' and keep everyone else happy and co-operative. Which basically, means you can't afford to piss-off the Pope.

Both approaches present a challenge in their own way, but the sure way to disaster is to try to steer some sort of middle road. There is no use investing in trade if everyone is at war with you, likewise there is no use investing in a military advancements if your not going to use them.

So, I think right at the start you need to decide which strategy to adopt and stick too it. If you go for the Warrior strategy, which it sounds like you have, then forget the Pope, just pump everything you can into the army and keep taking cities.