Couple question: Economy, religion...war

[Quintus.JC]

The biggest thing I think I get stuck on is, what to build in a village?

Realistically a village is pretty useless, and it would be ideal to try to upgrade them as soon as possible. In villages and towns your priority should be building farming upgrade, this improves the settlement’s income but more importantly adds a nice population boost to your meagre little settlements.

As for a normal settlement (not particularly tiny) the best stuff to build is most definitely roads (and paved if possible). This stuff improves trade by a great deal and also improves the movement distances for your characters and armies, which could prove invaluable at times.

As ratwar stated, ports are absolutely money making machines when it comes to trading. The sea is paved with money, and not fully taking advantage of this could prove costly. Get as much trade agreement as you can and your ports could make you an extremely healthy amount of profit.

Markets are the standard trade building within a settlement, so build them obviously.

Other additional stuff such as Merchant’s Wharf and Banks are all nice, build them if you can.

Quoted shamelessly from M2TW FAQ by Econ21

What to build in a castle?

What to build in a castle depends on the strength of the faction, or at least this rule applies earlier in the campaign. If you have superb ranged units then always go for Bowyer and upgrades, if you have excellent infantry then barracks will be your priority, and stables for cavalry. In the case of the French I suggest you try to build a Drill Square as soon as possible, these give you the ability to train Armoured Sergeant, which is pretty much the best you can get within castle level. Once advanced into Fortress you are almost spoilt for choice, as you get both mounted and dismounted Feudal Knights. And as you progress into Citadel you should be quite invincible.

The use of Merchants.

Merchants are tricky to use for relative newcomers to the game. Merchants basically stands on resources and make money for the mother faction, the more finance they have the more money they will make, and the more chance of success they’ll have on acquiring other merchants’ assets.

Four ways Merchants pick up more finance:

Random chance – Merchants can have high finance by random chance, it is possible for you to recruit 3+ finance merchants in simple towns, though the chance is low. Also retinues help finance, but they are random chances as well.

Experience – Merchants standing on the same trade resources for a substantial amount of time will gain more finances.

Acquisition – Merchants putting other merchants out of business will gain more finance. This is best done to use higher merchants to prey on weak merchants with low finance. A 3 finance merchants should have no problem acquiring 1 finance merchants, this will also gain your merchants finances, this would drive the opposition merchants out of business for good. But the AI merchants can do this to you as well, and when they do it is very annoying indeed.

Guild – Merchant Guilds are good for boosting the settlements’ trade. But they also give a significant boost of finance to your merchants. Merchants guild and master merchant guilds are good for any merchants trained in the settlement with that guild, this will normally give your merchants a 1-3 finance boost. Merchant HQs adds a significant boost to your merchant, and will ensure you that every merchant trained will have a 5+ finance, and they also have global effects as well.

You attract merchant guild by your leadership style. Marseilles is an ideal destination for a merchant guild, my advice is to keep on recruiting all of your merchants in Marseilles, when it reaches city level the merchants should probably offer you the chance to have merchant guild in the settlement, then its plain sailing from that point.

This a cheap tactic? or just sneaky?

William I of England applied the same tactic in Hastings, and he'll always remembered as a cheat.

Cheating is the only cheap tactic; everything else is considered legal and justified.

Hope this helps.

[thecoffeeguy]

Realistically a village is pretty useless, and it would be ideal to try to upgrade them as soon as possible. In villages and towns your priority should be building farming upgrade, this improves the settlement’s income but more importantly adds a nice population boost to your meagre little settlements.

As for a normal settlement (not particularly tiny) the best stuff to build is most definitely roads (and paved if possible). This stuff improves trade by a great deal and also improves the movement distances for your characters and armies, which could prove invaluable at times.

As ratwar stated, ports are absolutely money making machines when it comes to trading. The sea is paved with money, and not fully taking advantage of this could prove costly. Get as much trade agreement as you can and your ports could make you an extremely healthy amount of profit.

Markets are the standard trade building within a settlement, so build them obviously.

Other additional stuff such as Merchant’s Wharf and Banks are all nice, build them if you can.

Quoted shamelessly from M2TW FAQ by Econ21




What to build in a castle depends on the strength of the faction, or at least this rule applies earlier in the campaign. If you have superb ranged units then always go for Bowyer and upgrades, if you have excellent infantry then barracks will be your priority, and stables for cavalry. In the case of the French I suggest you try to build a Drill Square as soon as possible, these give you the ability to train Armoured Sergeant, which is pretty much the best you can get within castle level. Once advanced into Fortress you are almost spoilt for choice, as you get both mounted and dismounted Feudal Knights. And as you progress into Citadel you should be quite invincible.



Merchants are tricky to use for relative newcomers to the game. Merchants basically stands on resources and make money for the mother faction, the more finance they have the more money they will make, and the more chance of success they’ll have on acquiring other merchants’ assets.

Four ways Merchants pick up more finance:

Random chance – Merchants can have high finance by random chance, it is possible for you to recruit 3+ finance merchants in simple towns, though the chance is low. Also retinues help finance, but they are random chances as well.

Experience – Merchants standing on the same trade resources for a substantial amount of time will gain more finances.

Acquisition – Merchants putting other merchants out of business will gain more finance. This is best done to use higher merchants to prey on weak merchants with low finance. A 3 finance merchants should have no problem acquiring 1 finance merchants, this will also gain your merchants finances, this would drive the opposition merchants out of business for good. But the AI merchants can do this to you as well, and when they do it is very annoying indeed.

Guild – Merchant Guilds are good for boosting the settlements’ trade. But they also give a significant boost of finance to your merchants. Merchants guild and master merchant guilds are good for any merchants trained in the settlement with that guild, this will normally give your merchants a 1-3 finance boost. Merchant HQs adds a significant boost to your merchant, and will ensure you that every merchant trained will have a 5+ finance, and they also have global effects as well.

You attract merchant guild by your leadership style. Marseilles is an ideal destination for a merchant guild, my advice is to keep on recruiting all of your merchants in Marseilles, when it reaches city level the merchants should probably offer you the chance to have merchant guild in the settlement, then its plain sailing from that point.



William I of England applied the same tactic in Hastings, and he'll always remembered as a cheat.

Cheating is the only cheap tactic; everything else is considered legal and justified.

Hope this helps.

Wow..that is an awesome post man. Tons of information there. Much obliged.

THe more I play the game, the more complex I see how it is. Very rich.
I will try and make Marseilles the way suggested.

Cheers,

TCG

[FactionHeir]

Please cease double posting and re-quoting whole posts you already quoted.
Thank you.

[Old Geezer]

To have just 2 pips on the PopeMeter you must have been doing something more than just ignoring the Pope, I think. Did you get several warnings for attacking catholic nations or not go on crusades or ignore a mission that the Pope requested? I have seen excommunicated factions with 2 Pope pips.

[thecoffeeguy]

To have just 2 pips on the PopeMeter you must have been doing something more than just ignoring the Pope, I think. Did you get several warnings for attacking catholic nations or not go on crusades or ignore a mission that the Pope requested? I have seen excommunicated factions with 2 Pope pips.

Possibly because I kept fighting the Spanish?

[Quintus.JC]

Possibly because I kept fighting the Spanish?

Did you ignore Papal warnings for a ceasefire?

Any refusal to join a crusade?

The Inquistors are possible punishments, but they also could be random ones that just walks about for no reason and burns any low piety generals.

[Ratwar]

Possibly because I kept fighting the Spanish?

Yeah, that is probably it. Even if the Pope doesn't ask you to stop attacking, he generally dislikes you for doing so. He'll also dock you a few points for exterminating or sacking Catholic cities in my experience.

Also, on your question about being able to build things without Generals, there should be an option when your choosing the faction and difficulty of the campaign called 'Manage all Settlements' if this is selected, then you can build in settlements without needing a Family member or General. Alternatively, you can move a single General or Governor around to multiple cities and use the time spent between building and completion to make your 'rounds'.

[thecoffeeguy]

so, I just played around on the ME:II Kingdoms Brittani campaign playing the Danes. That was cool.Love the strength and might of their units. Very impressive.

I really just wanted to get a feel for more of the game, what to build and test out. I have a few more questions.

Looking at my money expense, to things jumped out at me:

1) Army upkeep. It was pretty high. ANyway to get that down?

2) Saw something about corruption?

Anyway, in this campaign, played about 18 rounds. Did pretty well on the battlefield. Tested out blockading ports a lot.

On the economy though:

I did have a lot of cities to begin with, so I tried to see what I had and start from there.
I tried to focus on building things like farming and ports (when available) as well as roads (roads help on a island?)

I guess my strategy has been to try and get the economy going first, then work from there.

It seemed for about the first bit of the game (up to 10 or 12th round), that when I would start a new turn, I would only have 1000 gold pieces, maybe a tad less. I am guessing, this is probably pretty normal in the first part of the game. Takes awhile to get the economy going, correct?

I was offered the Explorers guild. Since I was testing this one out, brought it on anyway.

Build ports when i could, even built a shipwright in one of my cities. Only had 2 merchants to start with, and didn't build any grain exchanges to get more (probably should have).

I have always been a RTS fan, so this game is making me learn different tactics. :)

Oh ya, and how do you read the building browser? I dont get that.

Thanks!

TCG

[thecoffeeguy]

Please cease double posting and re-quoting whole posts you already quoted.
Thank you.

That was my fault. I accidentally did that, but could not find the delete post function.
Sorry.