How to be economically invincible.

[gingergenius]

This is a 'how to get rich' guide. Bear in mind I play with BigMap mod which has more cities and thus more money, but the principle works the same. First move is to set your settings so that taxation and building construction is automatic, allow heavy spending but YOU MUST REGULATE UNIT BUILDING. It will automatically retrain units for you despite this setting, which is good.

1. Cut Down On Military Spending. This is probably the biggest drain on your economy. A huge city has 6 free upkeep slots for militia, so allow 6 militia units per town. Whether they're crappy peasants or Heavy Bill Militia, they're still free upkeep so I'd recommend getting the best possible militia units, you only have to pay for them once. A force this size will be able to valiantly defend against any besieging force, and if you see an enemy army approaching you can always bolster your garrison temporarily. The trick is to have a free militia army defending your towns, and for the big battles you have a professional army, which I'll explain later.

2. Cities Make More Money Than Castles. In an ideal world you would have 100% cities. But with just 6 militia to each town that would make your military poor. You should have no more than 3 castles serving any one front at a time. For example, I had a front through Turkey fighting against the Mongols. Caesarea, Trebizond and Adana were my 3 castles. When the front moved to the Middle East, and I conquered castles at Acre, Edessa and Mosul, the 3 in Turkey were converted to cities to start making me money.

3. Have A Professional Army In Each Castle. Obviously, you need to have a good military. I can guarantee you that if you make a the best possible stack in your castles that no normal faction will be able to match it man for man. Spending nothing on your town's military means that having whole expensive stacks sitting in your castles is not too costly, assuming you don't have too many castles.

4. Sort Your Navy Out. Naval domination is simple. I have 3 Gun Holks sitting in every port. In areas of military activity, I have a few 20 boat fleets there to really crush my enemies. Not only does a strong navy ensure your ports cannot be blockaded for long, but also it is easily affordable.

5. Develop Trade. This is the easiest way of making money. Make sure you have trade rights with as many nations as possible. Try to invest money in building large ports, paved roads, farmlands, mines and Fairgrounds. Then, you're laughing. Build a coastal Empire and watch the money flow in. There are several lucrative trading areas:
North Sea - ports of Arhus, Hamburg, Antwerp, Bruges, London, Nottingham and York
Irish Sea on BigMap - Dumfries, Caernarvon and Tara all earn you 6000 plus fully developed
West Italy - Genoa, Ajaccio, Florence and Rome
Adriatic - Venice, Zara, Durazzo, Naples, Bologna all make 7-8000 florins
Constantinople makes 8,000 per turn
Eastern Mediterraenean - Tyrus, Antioch, Adana, Acre, plus Cyprus makes you a pot of money.

This makes sense since Italy, the Middle East and England are historically known for being immensely wealthy traders.

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Apply all these rules and you'll have enough money to hire as many mercenaries as you like to temporarily bolster your forces in times of need. Economic power is more useful than any other in MTW2, you can always buy your way out of a tricky situation if needs be. You'll have so much money that you can play one faction off against another with gifts and you can bribe your way out of trouble.

[John_Longarrow]

gingergenius

You may be a little large on your fleet size. I rarely need 20 ships TOTAL to dominate a sea, let alone 20 ship fleets.

Normally I simply keep fleets moving about, thus I don't need to keep a fleet in each port.

[CMcMahon]

How to be economically invincible: Go to the Sahara.

[Askthepizzaguy]

gingergenius

You may be a little large on your fleet size. I rarely need 20 ships TOTAL to dominate a sea, let alone 20 ship fleets.

Normally I simply keep fleets moving about, thus I don't need to keep a fleet in each port.

Seconded.

Good overall tips.

I personally never even field a navy. I usually just use mercenary ships to move my armies by sea and then disband them after as a cost cutter.

Ships don't win wars, armies do, at least until they have missiles on them; an unlikely scenario for this game.

I don't leave my armies on a ship at the end of a turn, I always disembark on land. You never lose any troops to pirates and other navies this way.

The number of ships you would need to comission to defend against port blockades costs almost as much as the blockades themselves!

[John_Longarrow]

Askthepizzaguy,

I generally keep a fleet around mostly to sink enemy fleets. Its always fun to catch a full stack moving around on two damaged ships.

It is also useful to blockade an enemy as it cuts down on their income.

[Rebellious Waffle]

Evidently, taking over the British Isles, France, Germany Denmark, Sweden and Norway gives you chronic awesomeness disease. On turn 50 with 31 provinces, I *can't* lose money even if I try -- a startling situation to be in, given my experience with other campaigns. Buying expensive buildings in every province, funding huge armies, and sending people lots of bribes just isn't enough to keep me from making 10,000 - 20,000 florins in profit every turn.

Moral: thou shalt love the English Channel with all they heart, with all thy merchants, and with all thy florins.

[khaos83_2000]

1) Garrison ur Cities with the LOWEST upkeep units.
e.g. archer militia has lower upkeep than spear militia.
During my Milan campaign, i only realise that spear milita has a higher upkeep than crossbow militia after i had 1/2 the map under me. I used only spear militia to garrison my cities. imagine how much $$ i can save if all had been crossbow mlitia.

2) Plan your Fortress and etc.
I usually have a Fortress "guarding" an area or choke.
e.g. For British isle, i only have 1 Castle there, the rest are cities and will be converted to cities.

3) Plan your Sea territory.
I disagree keeping 3 ships at each dock. This is a waste of units and $$$.
Always re-draw ur sea territory when u took over a continent.
e.g I have the british isle, the sea around it is my interest. Getting a stack or 2 to choke the important places or area.
Then i have the area from the british isle to spain and portugal. The area is extended there. But i also only need 3 or 4 stack of ships. If i choke the british isle and the desert crossing at the south well, i do not need to defend the top left of the map except for pirates. So only need 2 stack to chock and 2 more to chase away other problematic navy.

4) Plan ur garrison stacks and invasion army stack
garrison stack does not equal to invasion stack. For castle garrison stack, i only have heavy horses to kill of rebels stack popping out. For invasion stack, mostly are veterans. How u wan to swtich between both stack is up to u.


With enough $$$, nothing can stand in ur way. e.g. I was playing with the scots. Then mongols can and sweep from the west towards europe. I had most of europe and i cant seem to find a good tactic to solve the mongol problem. So i just spam stacks and stacks of anything and throw at them with auto-resolve. Starting part seems furtile but turns later the mongols are overwhelmed.

[Thamis]

Very good guide. I agree on all points!