Tutorial : how to manage the economy in a HS/Strategy

[invicta]

This is a guide intended to teach everyone how to play the game at its maximum.
This is mostly intended to help less expert players who might feel discouraged to play against much more expert playing.
Problem is, that some player (I'd like to include myself among those) are very expert and know every secret about the game.
Secrets that like you will sonn see, can make a huge difference. I have played those game for years before getting here,
while others have played a little and then joined here.
So if you are interested in reading lets start with teaching.

Note: if you are interested in learning I suggest you to not skip any part of this guide and try to carefully understand everything I'll write.
Many of the things I'll write you won't find in any guide here on TWC or everywhere else.

Settlement's management: using the scrolls is the best ways.

I had the impression that very few knew here about how to use the scrolls to manage the settlements in the best way.

As you can see from the image once you get on this panel , you can check important parameters.
Putting on the cue a building, you can check on this panel how it will affect (if you see a semi-transparent addition it means that parameter will get an increase, on the other hand if it flashes it means it will get reduced):
1-population growth
2-Public order
3-Income

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Addendum1-How to check directly the effect of a building on the 3 above aspects:
As I wrote, every building has usually effects that affect (sorry for the unwanted game of words ) one or more of the 3 above aspects of a settlement (Population growth, Public order ,Income). Now lets see an example so that everything is clear. You can see here, the details regarding the Huge City of Wexford which make 2146 profit from trade.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I should choose now, which building put on the cue. Now lets see the projection if I upgrade the Wharehouse to a Docklands , the change of the trade output:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

As you can see the semi-transparent addition indicate that the output would change to 2908 once the building will be complete. That's a +762 boost! The same can be done with every building for checking the effect it will have.



Combined with the building tree scroll

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

you can plan the best path for developing the settlements of your faction . In fact with that scroll you can check:
1-how many turns to build a cartain building
2-Requirements to build a certain building (for instance some building might require a market in order to being built)
3-At what level you barracks should reach to being able to recruit a certain unit

Combining with the Trade-Settlement-Summary scroll you get an even better idea from where your money come from and how a war would affect you financially. Indeed with every mod (vanilla is the least dependent from it, and the most balanced under this aspect) most of the money come from the trade. Once you get at war with a faction, the trade with the settlements of that faction would cease.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

So if it's a neighboring faction, you might be greatly affected financially. On the contrary a war with a distant faction (like when you are on a crusade/jihad against a faction on the other side of the map) might not affect you at all (unless you have merchants on his lands, which will see their output reduced by 33%).
That's why usally it's not wise to be at war with all your neighbors.
Also that's why plague greatly affect your economy: when a settlement is affected by plague, all the income generated by the trade in that settlement will get to 0 (so the richest the settlement , the most it will affect you). And not only that.. also the nearby settlements will be affected as they won't be able to trade with that settlement as long as the plague will endure.

The Economy's management

Although many do not realize it, this is the key factor in winning an HS. The more moneys your faction make, the more (and better by developing the settlements) armies you'll be able to
make. And even the few ones who realizes it, do not very well which path to follow to get the maximum output.
Lets start analyzing the financial scroll:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

here you can see all the entry about the income and the outcome. Obviously to maximize the profit, you would want to increase the income part and decrease as much as possible the expenditure part.
So we start looking at the Income's entries:
1-Farms: contrary to what someone believe and you can see, farming is in the game the least indicate way to increase your income. Actually every farm upgrade will give you something like +70 coins per turn. The output you see here, include the "base" farming input (and represent most of that output) which you would get even if you didn't upgrade any farms. I'm not saying you should not upgrade farms! . But if you do that, you should do for a different reason than increase than increase the income from that development, because as we'll see there are better building which will gives you more.
Last note is that, in vanilla (and Retrofit ) mods, farming upgrade has better value under an economic perspective because is much more balanced (but still farming is not such decisive under the economy aspect) than any other mod out there.

2-Mining: mining can be a very important part, depending on what mod are you playing and which regions you own. Usually gold mines give a very good profit. So whenever you have a region with gold resource, building a mine (or upgrading the existing one) is one of the best way to quickly boost the income (usually over +600 for the basic mine, which becomes over +1000 when upgraded to the mines network) from such settlement (also because mines can't be destroyed, so even if your enemy manage to capture it from a short window of time, he can't destroy your effort in building it).
Other mine-resources (in order of importance silver, marble ,sulphur, tin ,iron , coal) might also offer some interesting profit boost .
2- Trade: trade is the aspect that might play the most decisive part in increasing the income from your settlements. Although things might differ from vanilla to mod and from mod to mod, here are my general indications:
A-Paved roads: unless your settlement is an island with only one settlement (on which road have no effect at all), the more the settlement is linked to other regions by road, the more the income will boost when you'll build paved road (keep in mind that simple roads do not give any boost on the income). Also they are very useful and decisive in moving more quickly your troops/agents and also they might give a slight boost on population increase. Also Wharehouse and Docklands usually gives huge boost in trade (deoending on the mod)

3- Merchant trade: this is another factor which might be very decisive, and many players underestimate. Let's start by making comparison among the mods. KGCM (among the mods usually played here) is the mod where the merchant trade can make the biggest difference. In fact the gold mines in Technochtitlan can give a good merchant over 3000+ and you can have 2 of them in that region for that resource. Keep in mind that there are regions where the same resource is present in 2 locations. That means to you, that in such region your merchant would get 2 times the income he would get in a region where the same resource is present just once.
Very importantly, is that if the resources is not in one of your regions, you should (unless it's your enemy) try to obtain the trade rights because that would increase by around 30% the profit your merchant would make out of that resource.
How to choose the most profitable resources? I know how the system work and which files to look, but that would be too long to explain. So I'll explain in the simplest way:
A-start a single campaign with the faction and the mod (or vanilla if you're playing vanilla) you're playing with.
B-It's important the capital stays in the same place where you have your Capital in the HS (as switching the capital change also the values that resource will profit to your merchants).
C-Open the console and press the code toggle_fow to see the clear map.
D-Now left-click your merchant and with the mouse point on the different types of resources to check which ones will give you the most profit. keep in mind that silk will always give you the same profit, whether you trade it in Italy or Baghdad. Differences might arise if you have trade rights with one of the 2 regions and not with the other one. Also as I already wrote, if the same resource is present in one region twice, it will also give you twice the income (unless a merchant from another faction is exploiting the other one..).

4-Taxes: there's not much to say about this. Not because it's not important, but because more important factors would decide whether you wanna keep your taxes low or high. Every step in raising taxes make decrease population_growth rate by 0.5.
So if you are not in desperate need of money and you might want to keep taxes as low as you can until you settlement reaches the population_requirement to upgrade to the level you wanted it to be.
Usually in KGCM and Vanilla you might want to keep low until you can upgrade to city level. After that , I suggest you keep as high as possible, because population will increase anyway very fast . In SS, instead increasing population would be very difficult in a HS. So it's up to you (as HS might finish in 50-60 turns your effort to develop the settlement might be in vain) decide whether lose money (by keeping taxes low) in order to reach more quickly the population level requirement.
Good governors might give a good boost with taxes and administration income.

5-King purse: that's decided by the the mod, and you can't modify with your actions. But what's important to know, is that King purse differ from faction to factions and from mod to mod. Why is it important to know? Because if for instance you are playing KGCM as Russia, and there's a Mongol human controlled opponent which you reduced to own only 2 regions, it might be important to know that he has a king purse of 5k (while the average is from 500 to 2500) and that so even with just 2 regions he can still represent a great danger (because he could support up 2 full stacks if he's given the time to recruit them) if you don't finish him off quickly.


6-Diplomatic entry: that represent the money you give or get from other factions (like tributes or one lump sum). It's important you keep track of them (for instance to verify if someone is actually really paying you the sum or interrupted the cash flowing towards you).

7-Corruptions and others: under this voice on the income side the should represent the income derived by "good administration" thing. Good Governors and building like city hall help to increase the amount coming from this entry. Usually this entry is not very important on the "income" side. On the other hand this entry becomes very crucial as far as you expand your "empire". Why? Because corruption output depends primarily from the distance of your settlements from your capital (which is actually represented by the number of tiles separating your settlement from the capital).
So if for instance you own Bologna as capital and only 2 other close settlements (for instance Florence and Venice), you'll have 0 corruption, no matter what. So in areas where settlements density is scarce (means settlements are far one from the other , like for instance in KGCM in the Russian steppes ) even with few settlements you have a high level of corruption. On the other hand where density is high (like in KGCM in the British islands) you'll have very low corruption even with a relatively high number of settlements.
Now keep in mind that in mod like KGCM, there's a cap to the max corruption drain you can have from a settlement. This malus is capped to 1000 max. But as long as it doesn't reach that level, the more you increase the trade/tax/farms/mining the more, proportionally will the corruption increase until it reaches the max of 1000. On MTW vanilla and SS I believe there's no max to corruption, but in any case it can never be higher than the sum of the income from that settlement.
So I guess your big question is: how can I reduce the corruption, so that I can make more profit each turns?
There are mainly 3 ways:
A- the cheapest and most important is to move your capital in the most "centralized " zone, which is not necessarily the exact center of your empire. Well now it's difficult to explain exactly what I means, so I'll explain an easy method to do that:
Open the financial scroll and get note of the corruption outcome. Then move your Capital in settlements which you think might be more central in your empire. Every time you do that take note again of the new level of corruption in the financial scroll. Then after you made all the trial you feel necessary, you move the Capital to the settlement where you registered the lowerest level of corruption outcome. This trick can save you up to several thousands of coins every turn. It also will improve (generally speaking) the level of public order in your empire. Keep in mind that changing the capital, might change (for good or worse) the income from merchant-trading.
B- Another effective way of reducing corruption, is to build building which gives +law bonus. Indeed law bonuses effectively reduce corruption. City hall usually give the best low bonuses. Also Barracks in KGCM and vanilla (I'm not sure about vanilla) and some other buildings (sometimes guilds too) or settlements upgrades.I can't give the exact list as it changes from mod to mod.
C-Governors:the ones with the right traits, can greatly reduce the corruption to 0 or close to. On the other hand bad governors will increase it. So as advice regardless of the command stars they have, keep the best governors to manage cities and the bad ones use them as generals. Tips for having good governors: buildings like city hall help to get good traits (that are good to decrease corruption), and markets financial ones (to increase trade generated from the settlement), on the other hand churches usually increase chances to get give bad financial traits and brothel to get "corrupted" traits.

Ok now lets keep more attention on the expenditure side. We already analyzed one of the major components: corruption.
Let see the other ones:
8- Wages. It's certainly not the most important one, but if you don't keep it under control, it might become a problem.
Usually you'll want to keep this entry to a max within 1/10th of the income sum (5% is the recommended). It included the cost of generals ( in some mod though generals have no cost) and your agents (priest ,spies, assassins , diplomats..). If the generals have an upkeep cost, do not make increase their number indiscriminately . Take only the good ones ( if offered for adoption) and distribute them according to your needs. The same goes for the other agents.
9-Army upkeep: normally this one will be your main expenditure during the whole campaign. It's a good rule you keep this entry around no more than 40% of your income during peace-periods and to max 60% during war times. Only when it's really necessary you should pass that limit. This because the more you spend on them, the less you can spend for developing (which will secure the future growth of your income ) your settlements. Also if you spend almost everything on army upkeep it means that during war-time you won't be able to easily replace your loss as you'll barely make some profit every turn.
It's important you keep this balance. Many players (even the ones considered experts) make this mistakes, although I noticed lately someone learned a bit this lesson.
10-Recruitment costs and Construction costs: I put together as those are the 2 entries which you'll have to manage every turn.The money you'll have to spend on them will depend on how much you contained the cost of the other 3 expenditure entries. I personally always give priority to developing settlements. I recruit units only when strictly necessary and needed. Your ability to recruit units only when needed will make a huge difference during the HS.

[invicta]

Blitzzing the AI

Blitzing the AI is something that some new players, not used to tricks, might have difficulty with. Problem is that if you don't expand fast enough, others will do, becomeing too powerful while letting you weak.
Beware: many players, including veterans do not understand that over stretching (expanding too fast, which means getting too many settlements without being sure you can defend them) might be a fatal mistake.
If a player overstrech himself in the first turns against the AI, and his neighboring players are smart enough, they'll attack him taking advantage of his weakness. On the other hand, if you play against weak/ineperienced/hesitant players, over stretching may pay up.
Also keep in mind a very important aspect: depending on the mod, and the difficulty level set for the campaign, the AI generally develop faster than the players the settlements (both with population and buildings built). So a very master of the game, will weight carefully
when capturing settlements. For instance in one HS, as Novgorod (SS6.4) I purposefully had my army waiting on the borders of Palanga region, to wait that the AI controlling TO faction would make reach the settlement the level of population required to upgrade it to a Fortress.
This way I rather than taking the settlement on turn 7, I waited turn 11 and immediately upgraded to fortress. By turn 15 the fortresss upgrade was complete. If I had taken the castle on turn 7, I wouldn't have been able to upgrade the settlement before turn 30 in the best case scenario.
This because the AI get a 2.5% population increase bonus, as also the TO faction leader has a +2.5% influence in increasing the population due to his chivalry level.
The same apply to buildings: for instance, remaining with my example of playing with Novgorod, if you wait to capture Turku, you might have the AI building Barracks or Archery ranges for you. It's also a matter of luck, as also you need to be sure no one else is going to point that settlement.
Now there are 2 kind of tricks to blitz against the AI: battle tricks and campaign tricks to easily beat the AI.

Battle tricks:
1-No matter what mod (or vanilla) you play, cavalry is overpowered. With a cavalry unit you might beat a full stack of infantry. So most of the blitzers, will fight this way: have the enemy's infantry tire out by foollowing the cavarly units
along the map and when they got extremely tired (you should notice that as the spped of the enemy's infantry will visibly slow down), he'll charge them and they'll easily break. Obviously if the enemy has cavarly and archers things get more complicated,
and you'll need to destroy first the cavarly and then the missile units before taking down the infantry.
Now this in the open field is pretty straightforward, but what about sieges? The game is a bit bugged: if you attack with a small force (compared to the enemy forces, lets say with odds worse than 1:4) then the garrison inside the settlement will sally out (with the exception of the general unit)
from the walls and chase you down in the openfield. So all you have to do is take few cavalry units and either a siege weapon or you should have your spies opening the gates, and then attack the settlement. Then you apply the same tactic above, letting the enemy chasing you to one of the corner of the map and then when it's tired
enough, charging with your cavalry.

Campaign tricks:
The AI works in a predictable way. That's why more experienced players do better than less experienced ,since they know already what's going to happen. Basically the AI (I'm reffering to factions, so rebels makes exception) has a tendency to keep one or more units just next to its settlement.
By attacking those units, the garrison inside the settlement will be forced to supported the attacked army, and by destroying both of them you can occupy the settlements. So knowing that, and depending on the faction you choose and the AI factions around you, if you plan carefully your moves on turn one then on turn
2 you might be able to take many settlements without needing spies or siege weapons.
In some mod also, there are rebel settlements with quite powerful garrisons not easy to beat. This is for instance the case for the ERE in late era campaign with SS6.4. You could beat those garrisons if you manage to use the trick I told you before.
But if you're lazy (if like me you played so many time battles that you don't like watsing your time doing it over and over, but you prefer auto-resolve), or you prefer to dedicate yourself to other targets first, knowing that no one will try to anticipate you in capturing those settlements you might wait..
Because like I said the AI behave in quite predictable way: so getting back to our expample, the garrisons in Athens, Thessalonica, Corinth and Byzantium get out from the settlement at a certain turn.
Knowing when this happen you might prepare yourself with a General with nightfighter trait and a siege weapon, and attack the settlements as soon as most of the garrison gets out from it.
Once you occupy the settlement, you can decide when dealing with the rest of the rebel garrison when it's more convenient to you.


Strategy against other players

Reputation: it's important you keep a high reputation, otherwise players would be little inclined to make deals with you, or if they do they might back stab for the fear of being betrayed by you as soon as you make your first suspicious move. There are also players ,like me, who would ask something in return
for making deals with untrusted players or give worse conditions (in order to cover myself for the risk). Since reputation is important, it would be advisable to not lie about facts. Sooner or later you'd get caught with your lie and you'll lose the trust of other players. You might lie about the motives beyond your actions, but then again, don't push it when it's obvious what you're doing: lying it's most of the time a drawback. I personally never do that (not even about my motives), since gaining trust of the players is much more important.
What you can do instead, without risking to affect your reputation, is to present to other players selectively only bits of the facts. For instance it might come to your knowledge that player x, intends to attack player y. If that outcome is convenient to you, you might wait to warn the player who's gonna be attacked . Or , if the attacked one is weaker and you don't want him to be destroyed you might warn him. This is a simple example, but you might make things much more complicated.

Betrayals: not all the betrayals are seen the same way by other players, the same as you don't judge the same way a person stealing some food for hunger or a rich person stealing from poor people to become richer, despite being the same crime. Same way, betraying or breaking a deal, for necessity (like breaking a NAP with a stronger faction,
because that other faction is piling up armies on your borders and you spotted a good chance to destroy those before the NAP expires and he destroy you) or for more noble reasons (a coalition of factions became too strong, and you decide to switch side, otherwise the game would become too boring) is not seen the same way as vile betrayals
motivated just by greed (like back stabbing your neighboring-ally as soon as he moves away his armies, trusting that you won't attack him). A good advice for new players, is to ask around (through pm) to veterans about the reputation of the player you're dealing with. Such a simple thing might save you a bad and ditter surprise.


How do you expand
This is not difficult to understand, once explained, I believe. But somehow, I think almost no one fully understood such matter. This is the key to win the HS.
Like I mentioned earlier, blitzing strategy (the same you might use when playing sp campaigns) only works with weak players. But if a HS, theere are at least 3 veterans strong players, such strategy not only won't work, but it will also bring you to ruin as they can easily exploit such weak strategy and turning against yourself.
That's because of the recruitment rate: you need a certain time of turns to start recruiting in your new settlements (depending also on the mod). Moreover, the more you expand the more you expose yourself to new enemies normally. Last but not least, the further you get from your capital the more corruption will makes
your new conquest less profitable (corruption might get reducded by buildings with law bonuses, but it requires turns and money to build those).
So main question is how do you expand?
Lets see a wrong way to do that in a real case example:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...S-6-4-Late-Era

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Now look on how HRE expanded in the first 10 turns. Is there anything you see wrong? Sure he expnded a lot, but are you sure getting all those lands was the right thing to do?
Now along with factions already bordering with him (Poland,Denmark,Venice), he got new neighbours (England,Aragon,Byzantium). Sure bordering with Englad,being France AI was inevitable.
But his worst mistake was getting to deep into the Balkans: this way he gave very good motives to Venice,Poland and ERE to form a coalition against him.
And obviously HRE can't win against ERE: ERE has all his core provinces (and so his armies) there. HRE has not his core provinces there (only Varad, in which he might-with a slower recruitment rate than ERE- recruit his best units).
To win, he'd need most of his troops there, leaving mostly undefended its German lands. Even then, ERE can still recruit and replenish his armies by moving units from its settlements by sea.
So, why putting yourself into such risks which could cause a war in which you have everything to lose and almost nothing to gain?
A smart player is the one who is capable to create situations favorable to its own politics. A master of the game is capable of influencing the politics and events between other players without even taking part in it.
How that translates in practice? Lets see to what HRE could have done with such map:
-the most dangerous enemy is England: strong position, and one of the best units roaster. So HRE ,which is in the middle of the MAP, needs to keep his focus in its French-German lands.
So if I was HRE, I would have traded the Hungarian regions (Varad, Estzergom, Belgrad) with Poland for its western regions (Prague,Stetting,Wroklaw). The deal is not favorable to HRE: you give away a Fortress (very valuable at the start of the game), a large Town and a City in exchange for a City, a Wooden castle and a Town.
BUt look at the map: look at how easier is to defend now. And very importantly look at the Poland position now: he has very good reasons now to attack the ERE. And smart thing about this swap, is that if Poland somehow still decide to come after you, the ERE could be more interested to join you than allying with Poland.
Worst case scenario, ERE still decide to not help you out, your lands now are very far from him (at least 4-5 turns) and as such it would be more difficult (and risky, because if he sends away his armies he makes himself vulnarable to other factions) for him to help Poland out.
I'd also have gifted Zagreb to Venice and Clermont to Aragon to buy their allegiance.
If you get too powerful at the start, like wrote before there's a high risk of facing coalitions against yourself.
Of course, if you wanna win the game, you have to become that powerful sooner or later. But that's the point: better later than sooner, particularly if you're at the center of the map (it may sound absurd, since by being at the center of the map you think you need lot of power to keep at bay your enemies).
You need first to develop the core of your empire: both economically and militarly .Don't push yourself forward, but rather just keep up with others. I try, as hard as I can to keep myself with the possible lowest size, not because I lack opportunities for expansion, but to keep a low profile and rather focusing
on development. When you fight other humans, you need money to finance the war, good units (and usually are better the units you can recruit in more developed settlements, like Large cities and fortresses at least, in some cases you need Huge cities and Citadels) and very importantly a high recruitment rate
to easily make up for the inevitable losses. Now the recruitment rate of each faction units can be checked in the export.descr.building file of the mod (inside the data folder). With certain mods, like Stainless Steel the quality and the recruitment rate of units changes dramatically when upgrading for instance
a drill square (available to be built in castles) to barracks (available to be built in Fortresses).
Lets take a look at a real case: mod Stainless steel 6.4, faction England.
In a full developed castle you can recruit units at the average of 2.2 units every turn. More than half of those are low quality (levy archers and weak spear militia/fyrd).

On a fortess level the average recruitment rate of units is 4.2 per turn, with over 70% of quality units.

[Jiub]

Easier said than done when huge armies are at your doorstep. In the americas it took a long time to build up other things... The construction turns are long and to build some, even basic buildings cost. I started from scratch with the barracks and it took a long time to upgrade just to the second level ....

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Loose Cannon]

Damn you for giving away all the secrets!!!

Excellent write up But I'd like to suggest to everyone that they also read the last few pages of "Catholic 4" to learn even more about improving how they play hotseats. I also love the file of screen shots you added there yesterday. Fifty pictures with no fear of giving away information. I think that's how all screen shots should be posted.

[Jiub]

I was far surpassed in the trade and merchant area by Invicta. The trade area is somewhat logical he would surpass me since his area is more cluttered, but he exceeded me by almost twice as much income, which is enormous, even if he has the more cluttered area.
Also, I never expected anyone to surpass me in the merchant income department. Like cmon, I had complete monopoly over the Americas and he still owned me.

[invicta]

Easier said than done when huge armies are at your doorstep. In the americas it took a long time to build up other things... The construction turns are long and to build some, even basic buildings cost. I started from scratch with the barracks and it took a long time to upgrade just to the second level ....

Yes but that's where the ability of the player comes into play.
I said many times that I'm not impressed by players who expand extremely quickly.
The real ability is expanding without sacrificing development. I ,as a rule, give total priority to development and if necessary I disband units.

When I started C4 on turn 80, I asked you and Timur a NAP of 20 turns. That was the moment in which you should have disbanded units and concentrated on total development.
I know it takes too much time , but it's a long-run investment and that's why it's important that you do that at the start: the sooner you do that, the sooner (and the greater) you get profit from it.

I was far surpassed in the trade and merchant area by Invicta. The trade area is somewhat logical he would surpass me since his area is more cluttered, but he exceeded me by almost twice as much income, which is enormous, even if he has the more cluttered area.
Also, I never expected anyone to surpass me in the merchant income department. Like cmon, I had complete monopoly over the Americas and he still owned me.

No as I told you any times, in trade you could have been ahead either.
The only reason I'm ahead it's because I have Docklands in most of my settlements or at least Wharehoue in the rest.

Docklands give you +1500-3000 income on a settlement compared to a Wharf.
Multiply that for a big number of Huge cities I have and you see where the difference come from. I didn't find any Dockland in your cities. Venice settlements are also strongly underdeveloped in the north of Italy.
English settlements are the poorest in KGCM. The richest of them, London and Dublin can't make more than 7k even when fully developed.

On the other hand settlements like Venice and many others can make over 10k when fully developed.
That depends on the fact that they have richer trade resources.

[Jiub]

Well then, I'll see if I learned anything in the future, the near future I hope.

[Húrin the Steadfast]

Very nice tutorial. I didnt know many of the things you mentioned, because i havent played the game that much in and out.

[Tonno]

Why dude why... I just got my best game on... why couldn't u keep it for your self for some more time... I would enjoy in kicikng some asses...

Now u ruined it all...

Now I will see what is this...

EDIT

Thx for the Kings purse tip.
And I think u shold make a tip about changeing forts in citys where and why.
I started thinking about that.
Like in KGCM there are a lot of places to do that, and it's verry cost-effective.
In vannila as well. I got to check other mods (I think there is some good positions in SS Iberai and South Europe)

[invicta]

Why dude why... I just got my best game on...

In which HS??...

[Tonno]

In which HS??...

That hurts

[invicta]

Oh no it wasn't meant to be offensive, I thought that with 'I just got my best game on' you meant that you were doing great in a specific HS and not your general gameplay


Edit: please everybody note that I added an example about how to check the effects of a building .
The section is named:
Addendum1-How to check directly the effect of a building on the 3 above aspects:

[Tonno]

Oh no it wasn't meant to be offensive, I thought that with 'I just got my best game on' you meant that you were doing great in a specific HS and not your general gameplay


Edit: please everybody note that I added an example about how to check the effects of a building .
The section is named:
Addendum1-How to check directly the effect of a building on the 3 above aspects:

I was joking, irony...
U wana see my best game, I'll give u every save where u are not playing . The best there

Directly??? there is passive effect as well??? EDIT- Don't read this... it's just dumb

And what about my proposal??? Forts/citys???

[invicta]

And what about my proposal??? Forts/citys???

So i overlooked this one.
Changing forts/cities, is something for which I don't know if a guideline can really be made as it depends on many factors, starting from the mod you're using.

I Vanilla/Retrofit it might be very convenient doing that. But it mainly depends on which faction you're playing with . With muslims factions might be very convenient, as I did in Retrofit HS as I couldn;t recruit anyway good units (for AR) in fortresses .

In KGCM, I won't do that. Only TO and Kievan Rus can recruit good units in cities. And you need many recruitment points in a campaign against Humans.

SS: I'd rather do the opposite and convert cities to fortresses if playing with a catholic faction. Indeed cities are crappy for recruitment, and fortresses are a rarity and never in sufficient numbers. Units you can recruit there are even 5x-6X stronger than the ones you can recruit in cities. Only exception is Byzantium.

[Timur_the_Lame]

All very helpful Invicta.

About Northern Italy: I have been building it up since I owned them. Part of it may be just building the wrong things (I put high emphasis on farms). But its good to know the trick about finding how much it improves your economy for buildings. Thanks for that. And btw, if you look at the early campaign, I didn't expand that fast. I largely turtled until turn 40 or so, just improving my economy.

[invicta]

.
And btw, if you look at the early campaign, I didn't expand that fast. I largely turtled until turn 40 or so, just improving my economy.

About expanding fast, it was referred in general, as I read many times different players stating that it's more convenient to expand fast rather than concentrating on settlements development.

[Timur_the_Lame]

Oh gotcha. Yeah, I agree with you that it is not necessary to expand super fast. I do it with the armies I start with, but I don't really make more. I use my money to build ports, roads, and farms, mines and such. Also, just want to point out our economies aren't really that much different (in C4). It is just a case of corruption (look at mine vs yours), with a couple things that you have done better. But it is mostly similar. I've never concentrated much on corruption, and that is a mistake.

[Tonno]

This won't be cool anymore...

[invicta]

This won't be cool anymore...

Oh c'mon..it would be funnier instead.
The more the balance the funniest is the game. People always want to win easy, but when that happen they get bored. See reloadable for instance. The funniest HS have been the one that were undecided until the very end

[Tonno]

Nope... U ruined it for me...

They got it the easy way... I had to watch a whole cartoon series

Acctualy... NP
I will still deafeat u with my special war tactics...

One more edit...
Could Jiub set this as a sticky... so every newguy that comes here can see this... That would be fair, I still remeber when I came here, it was hard to find anything, includeing HSs (yea I know).