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.

[Thurak]

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.

Let me think about it... nothing? You have free upkeep for militia units in cities. If you have a huge city you can have six militia units in it and don't have to pay any upkeep. So don't waste those slots with cheap upkeep units

[WhiskeyGhost]

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.

You phrased it wrong. It's FREE upkeep units, higher or not it isn't costing you a dime (or florin) but it is however wise to keep those high risk areas garrisoned with the high $ militia (like spears) to max free upkeep then add some Xbows on top for the 100 florins a piece a turn (since it automatically makes your most expensive units the free upkeep ones, just try it with depleted units, and you'll see what i mean)

That way it only costs you 400 florins for the Xbows, but you have 5 Spears that don't cost a penny (you should be mixing defense troops anyways, since a unit of archers/xbows/italian xbows can be devestating on enemy attackers on the walls (more so then an infantry unit waiting for them to come out of the siege tower/ladders)

[ramela]

Being blockaded has never been a problem for me. I always experience a quick surge of expansion in the first 10 turns or so with every faction and as a result I always have too many ports for a blockade to hurt my income in any significant way.

Keeping a defensive fleet would cost a lot more than randomly getting blockaded every now and then. (At least so far I've never seen an AI sustain a blockade for longer than 5 turns.)

As a result I always cut my costs by disbanding all my fleets on turn 1 unless I need to transport troops/dudes in the early turns. (For example, as Venice, I always give Iraklion to the Pope on turn 2, since the Bysantium seems to always use a lot of resources to attacking it and defending it is definetly worth the cost. So I let the Pope get angry at the Byzantines.)

It is always better to make savings on your resources than apply pressure on anothers resources. Since resources saved you can use against anyone when you so choose, but resources expended need to be directed at only one enemy. As such directing, those resources as efficently as possible for maximum profit at maximum operational speed is a critical way of saving florins.

Due to units' upkeep costs, the later you have to commit florins to a military effort the more you save and the more resources you will have when you finally decide to commit. Disbanding a unit (one you don't have an immideate need for) and recruiting a similar unit again later is cheaper than keeping the original unit around for 3-5 turns depending on the unit's costs. It's all a big game.

[Didz]

Personally I keep a fleet, but not to prevent blockades. The main purpose of my fleet is to prevent the enemy landing troops by sea along my coast, and hopefully drown their army before it can land.

[Rebellious Waffle]

Quick question: under normal circumstances it's easy to avoid having a treasury with fewer than 50,000 florins -- which is good, because having more than that can rack up negative General traits very quickly. However, supposing you grossed more than 50,000 florins per turn; how would it be possible to avoid problems with Embezzlement and Extravagant traits?

[Thurak]

Buy settlements. Sometimes very good cities are available for something around 60,000 to 100,000. Castles are usually much cheaper (less population, I guess).

Oh... and if you are too rich: Lower taxes

[Rebellious Waffle]

Doesn't help -- I've got all my cities on low taxes, and I'm still grossing over 50,000 a turn.


Again, it's one of those strange moments in a campaign: "how do I get poorer? I need to get poorer."

[phonicsmonkey]

when I have the "money's too much to mention" problem I tend to give it away to far-away factions, in order that they will hopefully build themselves up and present more of a challenge once I start encroaching on their lands.

roll up roll up big money giveaway!

[WhiskeyGhost]

Either give the money away, or you could always buy a ton of stuff (like more soldiers) which will also help you get your income rate down by costing upkeep per turn

[Thurak]

Although I already mentioned it: If yo have too much money: buy settlements! No, I don't mean to bribe them (seems almost impossible) but to buy them from the king. Send a diplomat and ask them to give you one region and offer them enough money for an equal trade. If they don't take it offer 5,000 more, although it's most likely still an equal trade the AI may accept now. If not: 5,000 more... and so on.

Only works if the faction you are trading with holds more than three regions.

[andrewt]

Quick question: under normal circumstances it's easy to avoid having a treasury with fewer than 50,000 florins -- which is good, because having more than that can rack up negative General traits very quickly. However, supposing you grossed more than 50,000 florins per turn; how would it be possible to avoid problems with Embezzlement and Extravagant traits?

That's kinda backward. If you make tons of money, embezzlement and extravagant are meaningless. Just keep your generals out of your cities.

[ramela]

When I get the "too much money" problem, I try to buy good real estate and if that's not working I give it away. Usually I prefer making single payment since I might have to stop paying tributes if I get into a war or something else expensive and I hate taking reputation hits.

If I'm desperate, I recruit big stacks and invade someone...

[gardibolt]

I thought the "free upkeep" slot business was broken. Did they fix it in 1.2?

[Lupiscanis]

I thought the "free upkeep" slot business was broken. Did they fix it in 1.2?

Its never been broken afaik?

[Thurak]

Some buildings gave free upkeep for castle units in castles and that was broken in 1.1. Free upkeep for militia units in cities works.

[Didz]

Castles are still without free upkeep slots in 1.2.

[Thurak]

Yeah, but they removed any hint that there might be any free upkeep slots for castles

[Thamis]

Very good guide. I agree on all points!

[gingergenius]

SNAP!

I have a thing that I want to fight against every faction. The Turks were being destroyed by the Mongols before I got to boot them off a few battlefields. So I bought 3 cities in Spain and gave them to the Turks. There they started a new empire, pissed off the Spanish, Portuguese and Moors before my forces came through and blitzed them all out of Iberia. Last seen of the Turks was a Papacy siege of Fes in which the English helped them out.

Similarly the Egyptians were getting squashed by the French. So financial assistance comes their way plus bribing French cities and giving them to Egyptians... 200 years later and Egypt is the only power in the Middle East other than the English. Unless you count the French in Damascus.