[TW Guide] M2TW: How to Manage an Economy

[Atterdag]

Author: Kalis
Original Thread: How to Manage an Economy

How to Manage an Economy

It seems most people don't really know how to build and maintain an economy in MTW2, so I thought I'd write this post
I'll split it into 2 sections:
1. Rules to Follow
2. Explanation (to those who are interested).

Rules to Follow:
1. Minimize your army. Army upkeep is the number 1 killer of economy. This is especially critical early-game, when your economy is low. What you do in the first 10-15 turns completely affects your economy for the next 30-40.

2. Choose settles to be military trainers, and focus them on building military buildings, but only after all you built the following:
dirt road, land clearance, grain exchange, communal farming, port (market if you have the time, or just wait and market later).
Whenever your town upgrades and you get the option to make roads, build them. Roads are always worth it because they increase trade and resources, and lets your armies move faster to their destination.

3. The rest of your towns should be economic builders, where all economic buildings below 3,200 in cost should be built.
Priority should be given to roads (trade + resources), then farms (farming output), then merchant wharfs (trade), then ports (resources), and finally the market (resources).

4. Town halls / council halls are an absolute must. They drop squalor and increase happiness, letting you maintain higher tax rates and increasing population growth too. Fit them in as soon as you can!

5. Early on, you should always set tax at the maximum level possible. The ideal is yellow happiness (they only have a chance of revolt starting at blue), not green. However, cities you capture later that have low population should have their tax set at normal or low. You need them to grow to benefit from the trade income!

6. Minimize your number of castles, and place castles close to the front, but not right on the front. Castles have no militia, so maintaining an army to defend them is very expensive (800-900 upkeep) Plus, they have very little trade income (lacking merchant wharfs, merchant buildings, and the ability to change your tax rate). Plus, the castle upgrade costs 2400! The reinforced wooden wall upgrade costs 800.

7. Garrison your settles with free upkeep units. If that settle can only upkeep town militia rather than spear militia, then garrison it with town militia. 0 upkeep vs 300 upkeep/town has a huge impact on your economy..

Using frontline cities with castles in support:
Let's say your frontline city has 2 spear militia, 2 archers/crossbow militia. Your castle should be close enough so that cavalry can march to the settlement in 1 turn.
When you see the enemy coming, it's easy to instantly train 3 cavalry at the nearby castle, and train an additional 3 units here to have an instant army, and you began with 0 upkeep, rather than having to maintain an army that had a base upkeep of 800 or more!

Example 1: Holy Roman Empire



16,228 income, 8,753 expenses (subtracting construction).
Yes I blitzed here since it's turn 11. But I didn't sack a single settlement. I occupied every one, and I was focused on building land clearances, grain exchanges, roads, and converting to cities (so I would only have 2 castles, rather than 4-5). In fact, I'm still training town militia at every settlement but 1. But considering my economy, that's going to change very soon.

Example 2: Egypt




Antioch, Aleppo, and Adana were very recent conquests.
I spent 7,725 on recruiting troops (dropping my income), and 10,416 on construction last turn, and I had another 10,000 to spend this turn.

But look at my main cities, and their incomes:
Cairo 2850 (population above 20K), Jerusalem 2,577 (pop above 20K), Alexandria 2,198, Dongola 1,834, Damascus 1,999.
Jedda only has 4,000 or so population but is still generating 1,071.

Gaze and Acre (both citadels, so above 15K pop) are generating measly amounts despite huge populations: 1,542 and 1,399.
I have these 2 castles because I needed trainers for mamluk archers (didn't have sultan's racing track in cities), and I needed 2 trainers beside Jerusalem's to bring reinforcements every turn. With these 2, I was able to train and send 6 mamluk archers/turn to support Jerusalem, lifting the siege every turn, which then let me train/re-train 3 units in Jerusalem itself every turn.


Explanation:
Income has 3 primary factors in it: tax, trade, and farming.
Tax and trade are both affected by population. For example, trade income booms with lots of population (say over 20000), but sucks when the population is low. Farming income is pretty much the exact same regardless.

So early-game, where population is low, farming and tax are the primary sources of income. But as cities grow, trade income rises steadily, and is your main income boost.

This means early farm buildings are critical. They boost your income early on, and they increase your population growth (increasing tax and trade income). The earlier you build them, the better! In fact, I try to get crop rotation (the 3rd level building) at every settlement as soon as I can.

There are 5 major economic buildings: Farms, Roads, merchant wharfs, ports and markets.
Every upgrade of the same type provides roughly same income boost. So a grain exchange that costs 600 provides the same income boost as a great market which costs 4800.
As a result, early buildings are always worth building, but buildings beyond 3200 in cost are generally too expensive to be worthwhile (unless you're earning 15K+/turn, so you have lots of money to throw around).

For example... let's say every market building increases income by 100. Grain exchange? Paid itself off in 6 turns (great!) Market in 12 (good). Bazaar in 24 (acceptable), great bazaar in 48 turns (subpar), and the grand bazaar in 96 turns (basically never pays itself off).