Bankrupt

[The Evil One]

Right So I got about 40 turns into a vanilla campaign and wanted more of a challange, found APE:TI. Really enjoying it so far. Only about 6 years in as Prussa and Poland Attacked me. i have taken West Prussa and another small province and just rolling into Warsaw, however I am now bankrupt. Not building anything, no navy, not many more troops then I started with. Got a couple farms upgraded and another weaver mill but no money coming in.

I set West prussa up to not pay any taxes just till i got the anger down, not sure what to do with Warsaw because they are about -29 right now on the peasents so no way to get them not to riot. Think i will try and toss it back for peace. However I have no money coming in. Should I try and reduce my army or raise taxes?

Not used to not having a pile of money coming in each turn, school costs tripped me up a bit but I am used to them now. Just need more income. Oh, I have 2 trading partners right now, one sea lane is blockaded by somone else.

[Amaz]

what's costing you most?

[Danigol of South America]

what i suggest is this

1st- if you have some technological advances like ring bayonet, and some other farmsstuff to improve your ecomy demolish the school because it costs money.
2nd- try to setup some more trade rights as they do help
3rd- fight the rebelions that will rise up in the newly adquired areas
4th- then instantly move in into another region and try to take it under your control and wait for rebellion
5th/ if this didnt work then i guess trade regions in for peace

mostly i am done after the first step when i destroy the school since it usually costs like 3000 to mantain

[The Evil One]

The School in brandanburg is like a couple grand a month, want to say it was about 5. Bloody expensive. Trying to take Bravaria, recently went rebels so easy walk in. Tough though, Savoy just decided to declare war to so, would like to snatch those two and make peace with poland and consolidate.

[Stildawn]

Yeah demolishing the school is one of the first things I do lol... Early Campaign they are just too expensive.

Then I build a navy and kill all the pirates so I can get trade nodes... Trade income is where its at.

[Indus_Valley]

Also the resistance in capital cities is much higher than normal cities, so you are dealing with some heavy resistance. When it calms down you can tax again. That's hard because as Prussia you need to get by on tax before trade nodes.

[The Evil One]

Nice to have more info on things, still new at this, yea without some serious tax and building income it's tough. I put more trade routes in with austria, hungry, and bravaria, that's starting to help. I starting taxing Prague(which is the one I took, not bravaria) and west prussia which are not nearly as upset. Took over Savoy which are also not bad. Poland spawned some rebels but crushed them, still -19 but it is going down. Going to be awhile but I am taxing them, only a difference of 3 right now without tax. Everyone else is happy. Westphallian then declared war for some reason, everyone is upset and no one will take peace not even poland which is down to 4 provinces and at war with about everyone.

However I am not getting 4K a turn so my side is picking up. Getting some buildings repaired and upgraded. Should help if I can hold off all the crazy minors.

Thanks for all the help so far.

[Danigol of South America]

it would help alot if you destroyed the school

[Amaz]

I just pay for technology from other countries. The more you expand... the more friendly countries will give you tech for regions...

[Indus_Valley]

The Evil One isn't it refreshing to play a game where you have to think a lot about the regions you have instead of just planning the next land grab and the next land grab.

I used to burn schools but now I try to do anything to hold one school.

am.az you actually give regions for tech ??

[Danigol of South America]

well if he wants to keep it then he should get protectorates and lots of trade rights also technology from the economic section

[alpaca]

You can keep the college in Magdeburg if you like, I've played test campaigns with and without it and both work (pre-1.3 though). Just don't expect to do a lot of conquering besides West Prussia if you keep it until you built up your economy something proper.

[Matte979]

Slow is the proper way to do this and avoid taking capital regions it takes way to long to get them stable in the early game and you loose a lot of money fighting the rebels and the enemy. Pick off other regions and make sure your only at war with 1-2 AI at the same time. Then try to upgrade the port in brandenburg then establish more trade routes. Also its important that you build some trade ships and some brigs then get 1-2 trade nodes. Trading is much more worth it than conquering territory. The whole getting large is the only option to get more money is so over played in vanilla total war. Thats why a proper empire is so refreshing as its actually much harder to just stomp over the whole map.

I play on script vh -3 and the school cost 7500, so 5000 is cheap.

[Indus_Valley]

I play on script vh -3 and the school cost 7500, so 5000 is cheap.

Yea, I've been playing with script on Hard but I'm getting ready to step up to VH because it all makes the game better.

[Kurisu Paifuaa]

I play on script vh -3 and the school cost 7500, so 5000 is cheap.

Hmm. I believe -2 is the hardest which uses a modifier of 1 x base = 5000 for a school, 7500 for college, etc. Prussia starts out with a college, so that would be consistent with 7500. Perhaps that's it

On the topic of bankruptcy...

It would seem that the base income for minor nations has been reduced by something like 40% since the 1.3 patch. This makes the impact of research cost for minors even more likely to put you in the red, particularly if you try to grab a region with an existing school. You still have to pay the research cost for one turn even if you raze the building immediately and covering that cost is now well outside base income on any difficulty. Also, if the building becomes occupied, you can't demolish it until you boot the occupying army. Playing as tiny Wurttemberg on VH has become even more dismal (which is fun)

I was wondering, however, if it might be possible to alter this scenario somewhat. Is it possible presently to read the value for turns remaining for the current research? If so, a 0 value (or whatever it is when nothing is selected, building damaged,etc) could be used as a condition where only a fractional upkeep cost is deducted. This would make it possible to suspend research funding when needed and also not get caught in implausible situations where you're paying for research that you aren't actually conducting. I like the planning you need to do to acquire and maintain schools, but have a hard time rationalizing the need to demolish the most expensive buildings just to stay under budget (or the inability to do so).

Anyway, just a thought. Enjoying the mod as always

[alpaca]

Hmm. I believe -2 is the hardest which uses a modifier of 1 x base = 5000 for a school, 7500 for college, etc. Prussia starts out with a college, so that would be consistent with 7500. Perhaps that's it

On the topic of bankruptcy...

It would seem that the base income for minor nations has been reduced by something like 40% since the 1.3 patch. This makes the impact of research cost for minors even more likely to put you in the red, particularly if you try to grab a region with an existing school. You still have to pay the research cost for one turn even if you raze the building immediately and covering that cost is now well outside base income on any difficulty. Also, if the building becomes occupied, you can't demolish it until you boot the occupying army. Playing as tiny Wurttemberg on VH has become even more dismal (which is fun)

I was wondering, however, if it might be possible to alter this scenario somewhat. Is it possible presently to read the value for turns remaining for the current research? If so, a 0 value (or whatever it is when nothing is selected, building damaged,etc) could be used as a condition where only a fractional upkeep cost is deducted. This would make it possible to suspend research funding when needed and also not get caught in implausible situations where you're paying for research that you aren't actually conducting. I like the planning you need to do to acquire and maintain schools, but have a hard time rationalizing the need to demolish the most expensive buildings just to stay under budget (or the inability to do so).

Anyway, just a thought. Enjoying the mod as always

The free money for the minors will be increased to 3000 again, like all other factions. CA apparently tried to placate all the "the minor factions are too strong, yadayada" players who were annoyed at not being able to steamroll over all factions equally easily because the minors actually had a stomach to fight. In APE:TI they are curtailed by supply and manpower so posing them at a financial advantage in addition to this isn't necessary.

As for the research cost: I like it that you have to pay for it even if you don't research - after all you pay for the potential research (staff, infrastructure and so on) and if you can't capitalize on that because your school is being raided by the AI due to a lack of defense on your side, that's your problem isn't it? Research, especially economic research, yields huge benefits in APE:TI because the higher-level economic buildings are much more effective than in vanilla, so the trade-off is potentially huge. Ideally, I'd like to add an option to stall research (halving research cost and stopping research) for a short time but I don't see how to do that at the moment.

[Kurisu Paifuaa]

I agree with you on the implied 'upkeep' aspect of research costs. I suppose I just didn't like having to pay another faction's bill for a turn and then again when they sat on the school (which was out of reach) preventing a planned takedown and subsequently going bankrupt due to severely limited early game income. OTOH it was one of the more interesting/unexpected twists to pop up lately (now that I've whined about it )

[alpaca]

I agree with you on the implied 'upkeep' aspect of research costs. I suppose I just didn't like having to pay another faction's bill for a turn and then again when they sat on the school (which was out of reach) preventing a planned takedown and subsequently going bankrupt due to severely limited early game income. OTOH it was one of the more interesting/unexpected twists to pop up lately (now that I've whined about it )

Yeah that's true, I forgot that an AI raid keeps you from destroying the school.

[Matte979]

A way to control research speed would be ideal. Imagine if you could decide on full speed / half speed that would be great and solve any problems in the early game when forced into wars.

[REQUIEM]

sell warsaw back to poland for peace and some money, worth a try