How to get the money

[Alexander: The hellenic empire]

Whenever I play with a slightly difficult faction (eg. Byzantium, HRE, French) I am never able to achieve a status where I can spend without making calculations and investing only on border regions. I invest on Merchants, developing trade and always fire any old units or mercenaries when they are outdated, however I still need to find a way to actually become a WEALTHY nation. This might be redundant but can you please post all your hints and proposals to how to make money in the game:

Thankyou

[Jason X]

1) check your upkeep - i cap it at 50% of total income. use free upkeep (militia) units in cities.
2) make sure you have many more cities than castles (at least 3:1)
3) make sure you have trade rights with everyone you are not at war with
4) make coastal provinces (and provinces with valuable resources) cities
5) build FARMS, roads, ports and markets early
6) pick a trading hub to get the merchants guild, train your merchants there
7) i like playing a turtle/high chiv style, and what i do is set all my taxes to LOW (to speed city growth =>taxes) and don't forget to dump high chiv generals in settlements you want to grow quickly. this sacrifices some early game income for high mid-late game tax revenue.

that'll do to start with.

[Philbert]

Every now and then I go through my list of settlements to see which settlements are content (green face) to see if I can extort more money out of them (by nudging up the taxes). This can make a huge difference.

[homefry]

Keep your army upkeep under your tax income. This is a good gauge to tell you how many more units to recruit.

Plan ahead. What I mean is you don't have to always be building in settlements that will probably become a castle. (example... Byzantine... there is no use building infantry buidlings in castles in the early game because your cities produce the same spearman.

Going off of Byzantine example. You have to go easy on building buildings with this faction because you start out with low money and have more settlements than other factions and Constantinople is already an advanced city which requires expensive buildings.

Quickly recuit merchants and grab all 4 resources near constantinple (cotton?). Your merchants will level up quickly and as soon as 1 of them gets 4 points, head west for the gold lot near Ragusa. There are always tons of enemy merchants in that vicinity and your high level merchant has some easy pickins.

[Zenicetus]

Adding to what the others said:

Always build a road right away in a newly captured province for the trade boost, if there isn't already one there. You don't have to build the road upgrades until later, but that first one is important. Upgrade to paved roads when you have a little extra cash and don't need it for something else.

Always build a port as soon as you can, in a coastal province. Following the line of port upgrades is a great way to boost the economy.

Be frugal with use of mercenaries, since they tend to have high upkeep. I'll frequently hire a few mercs if I need the extra manpower to siege a settlement or win a field battle, and then disband them right after the battle. That way it just becomes an added one-time price to capture the settlement, not a long-term drain on resources when I could build a similar unit with lower upkeep costs (and easier to retrain, most places).

In a similar vein, don't keep depleted units around that aren't militarily effective. Combine depleted units after a battle. If you're left with a few very low-strength units, either move them to a settlement where they can be retrained (if you can't do it locally) or disband the unit. Don't continually pay upkeep on units that aren't useful.

For city garrisons, make sure you use free upkeep Town Militia instead of other units as the standing garrison. Don't use more garrison than you need in castles, since morale is high there. Just a few peasants should be enough.

I tend not to use merchants at all, unless I have easy access to Timbuktu. Too much micro-management for me, in leveling up and defending against hostile takeovers. For the way I play, I've found the real key to a healthy economy is managing the upkeep costs of the armies. I try not to build a single unit more than I really need to maintain homeland defense and whatever conquering armies I'm running. Cutting the armies "close to the bone" also makes the game more challenging, since I'm not always steamrolling the enemy with superior numbers.

[TevashSzat]

Be careful of how many agents you have; they cost upkeep too.

Disband as many militia within your cities that are deep in your territory. Try to only keep those with free upkeep.

Adjust you capital as necessary to minimize corruption.

NEVER NEVER build the brothel line of buildings because your governors will get horrible traits and you'll have to end up killing them all.

Send a couple of merchants near Constantinople for the silk relatively quickly. Good merchants can make a couple hundred gold on one easily and get much more from taking over nearby merchants

[Viking]

IMO,

most important is how many castles you have versus how many cities you have. Castles that are 3~4 or more provinces away from the closest common border with a foreign faction should be turned into cities.

secondly is naval trade. Don't bother to construct ports in castles for any other purpose than ship production. Ports and naval merchant constructions in cities are on the other hand an awesome source of income, so make sure you have built the best port avaible.

third is the farms, which provide about as much income in desolate regions as trade does. Also they increase population growth which again leads to new upgrades of ports and farms and more income.

lastly there is the tax rate, which I usually have set as high as possible. If you have a city that was created huge by always having low/normal tax rates, you might suffer problems with popularity as when spies enter or if you get excommunicated or similar since you cannot lower the tax rate much. I don't know if it is more profitable either.

[Jason X]

lastly there is the tax rate, which I usually have set as high as possible. If you have a city that was created huge by always having low/normal tax rates, you might suffer problems with popularity as when spies enter or if you get excommunicated or similar since you cannot lower the tax rate much. I don't know if it is more profitable either.

well, the point about setting tax rate low in early game is that you get to huge city as quickly as possible, THEN you bump up the tax rate for that city. it also raises the chivalry of the governer (which also helps the population boom).

[Viking]

well, the point about setting tax rate low in early game is that you get to huge city as quickly as possible, THEN you bump up the tax rate for that city. it also raises the chivalry of the governer (which also helps the population boom).

Most valid. Personally I set the tax rates high so I can sustain bigger armies early on and start the conquests right away. In my Scotland campaign I wiped out England without any field battle ever been fought, maybe by turn 30 or so. I tend to make my generals dreaded also.

[Syrous_PL]

If you looking to get some cash quick and you happen to be playing a catholic nation, then going on a crusade is a good option (should also work with Jihads if you are Muslim).Assemble 3 or 4 decent armies and ask the Pope for a crusade to holy land. While your armies are on a crusade you don't pay the upkeep, so that is the first bonus. Secondly, starting at Byzantium pillage every city on your way to the holy land, but don't leave your armies there. Destroy all buildings (gets you cash) and move on. You can give the city as a gift to one of your allies and castles to the pope to keep him happy (we want pope to be our buddy, plus castles would give too much advantage to our neighbours who can become our enemies soon). But I digress.
The reason you don't want to stay in the city for too long is that it takes some effort to keep the city happy and productive far away from your capital, plus your crusades will desert if you don't keep moving forward. You will loose some soldiers on the way, so at the end you may need to consolidate your armies, but with 3-4 stacks you will crush most enemies on your way.
Once you reach the target city you will be nicely rewarded with experience for your general and the troops. At that point you may start marching back and pillaging the same towns, that probably turned rebel by now (as I said it is hard to keep them happy...).
So, that's a quick and ruthless way to riches.

[Atreides]

well, the point about setting tax rate low in early game is that you get to huge city as quickly as possible, THEN you bump up the tax rate for that city. it also raises the chivalry of the governer (which also helps the population boom).

Personally i disagree with your statment.

Population booms can also be enhanced with farms which will provide every turn money ((economic benefit I), secondly with higher taxes more earnings (economic benefit II).

See the economic benefits are very import since you always short on money in the beginning. It's preferably to build every turn in every city/castle. Just make sure your building the high return buildings.

With high taxes your population will still grow rapidly but enable you to build al the good buildings (trade, happiness, culture/faith) (cultural building policy) more over it enables your population to become 'your' way (for example catholic).

[SeekerDK]

Get some merchants to the Ivory, spice and especially GOLD deposits in Africa. There are (as i remember) 2 gold + 1 Ivory in west, in what would today be the border of Morocco and Algeria (you can just see one of the goldmines on the brim of the blackened map-part). There is some Ivory and lost of spices (and other middle income resources on the west bank of the Red Sea (Egypt).

The gold mine easily generate 1000+ each pr turn (finance of 3-4). Last i check I got 1500+ with an 7-8 finance merchant on a goldmine with my capital in London (profits are positively affected by distance to capital). And when merchants are so far abroad, they develop trait fairly fast. My experience is that you have to fight some other merchants in Egypt, but in the west you have no competition.

Of cause, as someone else mentioned, you can always go on a sack'ing rampage. It doesn't need to be a crusade (which has the positive of cheap crusade armies and no upkeep, but the downside of major side trips resulting in desertion).

Jason X makes a very good point, thou easily overlooked.
"chivalry of the governer (which also helps the population boom)"
I think you get 0.5% population growth for each chivalry, that give you 5% at max chivalry. That can make a Castle into a Citadel in no time which is a life saver in hard campaigns / hard difficulties. It's also good for buffing up cities which have build what is needed on the current level, but still needs some population to upgrade.