A few Questions

[ArtistofWarfare]

Yeah I just want to throw my 2 pennies in the hat:

The HRE provinces do not churn out big income at all...and your expenses start out quite high.

Of course, you need to expand slightly at first but make sure that you're sending your armies after the most lucrative provinces you can find. If you're going to spend money on an attack, make sure the attack will wind up earning you positive income. Not simply resulting in you taking a province that costs more to garrison than it accrues in income.

Due to the HRE's starting position and circumstances, I find the "dig in" and build a booming economy approach to just not be the most viable. You will of course have to do this at some point, but with the lands you start with it's not going to yield you the kind of results you're looking for.

Set up the best possible economy you can, stabalize the HRE, be prepared to protect yourself on your borders...and then begin forming a large army to expand...early. If you could move south and take some Italian lands, or even southeast into Hungary, you can start building a nice economy soon thereafter.

You just want to make sure that you're not spending time and money pumping out units that are not going to net you any real gain in the end.

p.s.- Just read through a bit more of the thread...considering what Martok is saying too: Indeed, you want to be careful with your farming upgrades early. Look at the time it will take you to begin earning a return on your investment and then calculate how much profit per turn you're looking at past that point.

Example:

Farming upgrade...costs 800 florins, would generate 110 florins per year. So in 7-8 years your entire investment has been returned. Past that point, you'll gain 110 florins per turn above what you were earning from that province before the farming upgrade. You need to decide if this is worth it. This becomes more important past the 20% upgrades to farming, as these are larger, longer term investments. Specifically dealing with the HRE however, your provinces are not going to yield you any large return on investment and will be flat out "not worth it" past the 20% upgrade in almost every province. You'd be talking about 2000+ florin investments, waiting 25-30 years for the return, and then only profiting (in HRE provinces?) an additional 100 florins at best. In other words, the farming production approach would be more viable later on in the game...not at all in the early portion with the HRE. Again- You have a farming income need. Go grab up a province that will fill this gap for you...spend your resources on taking that land, and immediately build the upgrade for farming in there. Now, you have a money maker sitting on the map for you and you can go from there.