how to become and stay rich?

[bottenbreker]

ok, so i'm playing a very hard campaign. but everybody seems to attack me: poles, hungarians, venetians, milanese, sicilians, french, english. hell, i've even had to counter a scottish invasion :s. anywho: since everybody know that waging war is quite an expensive hobby my question is: how do you become rich and stay rich? i constantly try to upgrade my economy but this is rather expensive after a while so i don't have any florins left to create a professional well equiped army to counter all these invasions. every tip might would be usefull

[Primvs Sextvs Loverlord]

I'm assuming you're playing HRE. The way you start your campaign is vital for your economy. I did a blitzkreig article for vanilla HRE, I think it's gonna help you out.

Here's the guide.

Here are some starting tips from the guide that you can also incorporate into your later game:

1. - Send all your armies out, except 1 unit each for public order.
2. - Move towards other Rebel settlements in the same turn as you take a previous one.
3. - Always Sack settlements for some bonus gold.
4. - While fast expanding, spend all your income on (in the very order): +Farming, +Roads, +Ports and +Market.
5. - Don’t stop, keep moving forward, recruiting Mercenaries when needed.
6. - Auto-resolve siege battles at the start, fighting them yourself might end up in you losing badly or getting your general killed.

I made the following post a while ago but it should help you out with some basics:

As a direct way of increasing your revenue, I'd suggest the following steps:

Upgrade Agriculture: This includes farming, irrigation, land clearance, etc. Always upgrade your agriculture when you settlement reaches a new level. Remember to always check your Production graph on the Factions tab.

Build agriculture upgrades on all your settlements and see your Production graph go up. Do it now.

Roads: Needless to say, roads not only make your army move around faster, they increase the amount of trade that comes in and goes out of your settlements. Trade = more money.

Garrison: Always use the lowest cost units as garrison units. When it comes to keeping the peace inside your cities, the quality of your troops matters not. So if you have a city well within your empire with no threats from outside, use cheap units to maintain law and order.

Navy: DON'T build naval units. They cost a lot and they're good for nothing.

Ports: Build and upgrade ports, shipwrights, etc in all your settlements.

I'd like to add to his point about sending Diplomats for Trade Rights: while you're at it, sell your Map Information for 1,000 to 2,000 Florins. This is vital money at the start of your campaign.

There are strategy guides in the TWC Wiki. I'd post link to those but I'm running late for college.

gl hf.

Don't waste money on unnecessary army units. Upkeep takes a lot of money and you have to make sure that each and every unit you recruit and maintain goes into battle to expand your empire. Your army can drain your treasury if you make it in large numbers and camp with it.

Oh and yeah, you don't need a "professional" army to move forward. If you've got a small empire, stack all your family members, generals, etc in one massive army and use them to rout the enemy. The vanilla AI sends stack after stack of crossbowmen and peasants.

And at the last, if you're feeling bogged down and surrounded, pay heed to this:
Think aggressive. Assimilation is important but that doesn’t mean you reject opportunities thrown at you.

gl hf

Edit: Here's another guide I found that might help you. It's a post by NobleNick.

I am a M2TW newb, but an old hand at RTW. I have carried my RTW economic strategies forward to M2TW, and they seem to be working well. Here is my put...

The important thing is to give your economy the highest priority, and to view troops as an extension of your economy (capturing towns to help economy). I am not yet an expert on all the mind-boggling variety of buildings; but the first two upgrades of roads, ports, markets, mines and farms are all no-brainers: do it.

Less obvious are the buildings which increase happiness and order. I build these, too; and use them to help keep taxes cranked up as high as possible. All my cities run on Very High tax, unless there is a special Public Order problem in the city which prevents it. This slows population growth, but if you built the first two farm upgrades, it shouldn't be a problem.

IIRC the first mining rig costs 2000 and returns 200/turn, which gives you pay off in 12 turns (2 to build + 10 turns at 200/turn). The next upgrade costs 3500 and returns 350/turn. This is only 150/turn more than the basic mine, but still worth it IMO. Pay-off for the upgrade is about 25 turns. The earlier you build these, the more you get out of them, but do not build unless you KNOW you will not lose the city. In RTW, building a mine in a border city was like hanging out a sign saying, "Attack me!" I usually build the first mine in each town as soon as I can (around turn 10) and then upgrade when finances loosen up (around turn 40).

Crank out a diplomat or two and get trade rights with everyone you can, starting with your nearest neighbors. To maximize your trade income, try to keep your wars limited to one country at a time, since warring countries do not trade with each other.

View your troops as investments. What is the return on your investment? If you build troops to lounge around the castle, then the return is zero. Actually the return is negative if you account for the troop upkeep. Build troops only to get more cities (seems obvious, but I need to keep reminding myself of this). A "fortification" mentality will bog your economy down. Have a clear plan in mind when you build troops. That plan should not include loafing in the city unless it is absolutely necessary.

Build quality troops so that you can get by with fewer of them. Get a hold of brandybarrel's FAUST to see what troop costs are, so that you can be as cost effective as possible. Run your military "lean and mean." Example: English Dismounted Feudal Knights (EDFK) cost 570 to recruit. THe only slightly better English Armored Swordsmen (EAS) cost 610 to recruit. It's a wash, right? Wrong: upkeep on the EDFK is 225 and is only 150 for the EAS. If you recruit an EDFK unit, and it takes you 5 turns to get them into battle, you've spent a total of 1695 on the unit. EAS costs only 1360 for the same period (and did I mention it is a superior unit?). IF you are getting these guys to just loaf around the castle (bad idea) then after 21 turns, the EDFK have cost you 5070, whereas the superior EAS have only cost you 3610. It adds up.

I hope this helps.

[Pyrebound]

By building ports and farms, and using militias to secure the safe settlements in middle of your country. Just focus on economical buildings. I think youre playing as HRE, so if youre waging war on every side of your country, youre just screwed :p No real coastal cities nor super trade cities of italy and greece.

[kelvintyk]

He can always pack up and migrate somewhere safe fast. Build up at the migrated spot and reclaim his lost lands when he gets powerful enough.

[bottenbreker]

ok, so you guys suggest i blitzkrieg all over europe? does blitzkrieging in the begin also means attacking "real" factions like france, poland etc.?

btw, yes, i'm playing HRE, srry for not mentioning.

[pwijnands]

I wouldn't go out and attack each faction you encounter for the reason Pyrebound gave (no trade rights). I would only take rebel pronvinces first, then pick a faction to expand into (preferable a faction without an ally and/or an excommunicated faction). Get an alliance with the pope, it helps when other factions attack you. You may get lucky and have a crusade called on them.

[Monsieur Alphonse]

Be careful when building mines. They don't give an fixed income of 200 for the first level and 350 for the second level. It depends on the stuff they are build on.check in the building screen by right clicking on the icon nd you will see the revenue you will get by building the mine. Mines in Vienna, Zagreb, Stockholm and Hamburg for instance will give a huge boost to you economy. Building a mine in Edessa is useless because it will give you 80 florins per turn.

[bottenbreker]

oh, i didtn't know that Monsieur Alphonse. thnx for the information everybody now i'm actually surviving with my new campaign