Economy Help

[Jason X]

i haven't played HRE, but most factions are best with a city to castle ratio of at least 3:1, then you make sure the cities use their free upkeep militia for garrisons, and only use a limited number of field armies to fight your battles. this has the biggest impact on upkeep costs

in terms of building the economy, build roads, at least the first two levels farms, ports and markets in cities, early on. in the early game, i even minimise taxes to boost growth so that when i actually do go a-conquering, my economy can support it.

[GeoBeeChamp]

Dank u Wel
Yeah turned out I had around half of my regions as castles. My economy just collapsed after I turned some places into castles to protect my border. Then I went back 2 turns and changed them back and turned some of my castles into cities. Palermo makes a lot of money as a city

[TevashSzat]

Also, do an audit of your garrisons. Disband any unnecesary merc as they have high upkeep and dont keep large garrisons in your heartland as it is redundant. Finally, if you have some governors with really bad traits, just send him off to suicide and hope for better governors.

Remember, dont build the brothel line of buildings if you want competent governors

[GeoBeeChamp]

Sometimes when you send a bad general off on a crazy mission they succeed and become amazing generals. Good for crusades. Not so smarticus

[Galapagos]

I had this problem with the HRE too when i was attacking France.

[Gray Beard]

Also don't forget that militia units in a City can, up to a point receive free upkeep. Get the Faust, find out which ones and garrision cities for Free.

The HRE is somewhat different from the Byzantines but I find that the 3:1 city-castle ratio gives you too many castles. I try not to have more than a 4:1 ration and maybe less than that.

Example out of an empire of 31 provinces:
Zagreb
Budapest
Raggusa
Durazzo
Sophia
Bran
Bucharest
Corinth
Thessaloníki
Constantinople
Nicaea
Smyrna
Iconium
Trebizond
Cesarea
Tbilisi
Yerevan
Mosul
Baghdad
Edessa
Aleppo
Antioch
Adana
Nicosia
Iraklion
Rhodes
Acre
Damascus
Jerusalem
Alexandria

I have only
Ragussa
Bran
Cesarea
Acre
Tbilsi
Mosul
as castles which is a 5:1 ratio. Of those only Ceasarea is not on or near a border.

But, if you do that kind city/castle ratio you MUST build up the drill square in the cities to get whatever pale and barely adequate HRE equivalent to the Varangian Guard is. Otherwise you will probably not have access to enough good troops