Making Money

[knoddy]

Running LTC 3.1 so without kingdoms, and i have a major problem of not making any money :/ ive never had this sort of issue in original medieval or rome, but in m2tW i have always had money issues. anyone have some tips to generating some monies.

normally i have nearly all towns with only a few castles in my homeland for training purposes. i generally dont use alot of merchants, should i be putting them on every avaiable resource? i upgrade all my towns with markets etc, and i still have troubles

the only thing i can assume is that ill have to leave smaller garrisons, attack with smaller armies and not waste so much money on building stuff i dont need

any suggestions would be helpful

Cheers Knoddy

[Frets]

I wouldn't really know about this mod (I think) you speak of, but perhaps you have inadequate trade rights with the rest of the world? The more trade you have, the more gold goes to the royal coffers.

[the great zolo]

...
the only thing i can assume is that ill have to leave smaller garrisons, attack with smaller armies...

how many troops do you usually garrison? My typicall garrisons just include the best militia I can train and only keep what would be free upkeep in my towns. on my borders I like to keep atleast 1-2 archer units in my towns. I'm usually willing to go 1 over the free upkeep when it comes to the archers.

My castles usually consist of 2-3 spear men and 2-3 archers depending on they're size and closeness to enemies. I usually keep training troops untill I'm only making 1-2K florins per turn before recruitment and construction costs. That way I know I can keep upgrading troops and buildings as needed.

[knoddy]

not overly crazy on garrison numbers, maybe 3-4 units of militia in non border towns, few units of infantry and few units of archers in border towns

[the great zolo]

you are raising your tax rate to very high? I'd build farms over ports and ports over roads and roads over markets... Markets only make a real impact once you start to get alot of trade agreements with other factions. And if your on the coast especially in the Mediterranean ports will rack in money better than anything.

[knoddy]

yep my taxes are always fairly high just depends on the cities happieness

[N3rull]

With my blessings:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=75580

Additional advice - build farms prior to other stuff. They REALLY increase the rate at which your cities evolve and it is far easier to hold public order in M2 than it was in Rome. Bigger cities = better merchant docks (500+ income from one trade fleet), bigger amount of tax payers and a boost to all settlements that trade with that one, yours as well.

And also, don't mind reducing taxes if you have a thousand-men-only town. It will become something useful a lot faster, while you lose like 50 income by reducing taxes for those few peasants there.

[N3rull]

I raise taxes only when I need an immediate income. For example, in my last game I needed an extra 10000 money, so I taxed my 7 cities to hell for a round or two and voila. For the money and selling a small town I bought a Fortress from my ally. It was cool.
But generally I keep taxes on normal as raising them usually means more rebel spawns and reduces your settlements' growth rate considerably ( 0.5% is a considerable amount if you calculate by how much it changes the time you wait for your city to become "huge" )

[loquar]

I never buy farms until my population growth gets to 0% (or close) and have my taxes maxed out to the hilt (blue face). Havent had a game yet where ive been in money problems.

As has been said you dont need high pop growth as the game is so long that even with low growth you will get maxed out city size.

Started playing this way first with the danes, just build a bubble and make the soft inside full of free garrison only with the odd cavalry only "fire brigade" to take care of rebels

I appreciate that other ways work just as effectively, may be even more effectively, and imo you just need to try and find the way that suits your play style.

[Old Geezer]

Null3r is right about building up farms. Generally early in the game farms, roads and ports with warehouses produce the "biggest bang for the buck." The market line buildings are expensive and don't soon give much in return. Mines are better than markets because they recoup the outlay faster. Check the building stats when you build and see the projected income. The idea is to grow the population because people are power! If you don't improve the farms you'll have a difficult time ever building a citadel with all those swell advanced units with improved weapons.

[loquar]

With the length of the game you'll get citadels very easily even if you never ever build a single farm. I do it all the time by turn 100 I have them all over the place.

I agree that farms overall produce money faster due to the pop growth but I dont want pop growth. I like slow and steady, its my play style.

Current french campaign h/vh at turn 116 I have all of britain, scandinavia, germany, northern italy and africa as far as cairo and alexandria and everything west of there. Every town and castle is building something every turn, Ive 4 armour factories so im not just making cheap things and my front line troops are mainly scotts guard, french mounted archers etc. I still feel that even with the slow growth that ive enforced on myslef that ive grown too fast for my liking and i havent rushed my expansion having never been excommed for naughtiness. I'm waiting for the plague to hit with 97K in the bank as a cusion.

Not building farms wont harm your game in any way, just develope your play style the way you want to. Theres many ways to skin a cat as the saying goes

My production line usually goes with roads, ports, warehouses then markets. Switching to public order buildings when needed. Frontline places with muslim or orthodox borders get religious buildings fairly early on too. Farms i only produce when pop growth hits zero or after the plague when i want my settlements to grow back

[Old Geezer]

Farm income is not affected by the plague as is income from trade which drops to zero during the plague. Cities grow at about 6 percent after the plague anyway so farm improvements at that point are not very effective.

By turn 100 in a normal game my long campaigns are either won or so close that it is only a few turns away. In my current LTC French campaign the year is 1250, I have been chivalrous and not very aggressive, have over 60 provinces, the plague has not arrived, the Mongols have Kiev which is a crusade target, there is no gunpowder, and I am just now building a citadel in Tooloose which has been farmed and had a gov. to increase pop. I don't have mounted French archers yet and the building browser doesn't reveal them to me. I thought mounted bowmen would be recruitable from the casltle line. I assume that I need a citadel but don't see what building(s), if any is required. I think being chivalrous and not sacking cities has caused slower building.

[Callawyn]

I've played a number of mods where money is hard to come by, some lessons I've learned for building priorities:

Minimize # of castles, cities make way more money and castles cost a lot to upgrade. Keep only the castles you are sure you will need and max them out. BTW, pop growth in castles can be difficult, so I usually build a farm or two, and then park a high chivalry leader in them for the extra pop growth. Getting a castle or two to Fortress then Citadel asap is very important, regardless of the cost.

You really don't need to build all buildings in all settlements, max out your castles but cities should specialize for agent/guild production, but otherwise it is definitely not cost-efficient to build everything everywhere. Early in the game its often better to NOT build some buildings in most cities until your economy starts rolling. In particular, you don't want to be spending on buildings that give marginal advantages when your build queue is stalled, clear them out of the build queue and build only what you really need to get your income flowing.

Whenever conquering a new province, build priorities are:
1) Barracks, for the free upkeep. Crappy new provinces can easily be costing you money if your garrison upkeep is not free. Talk about bang for the buck, one crappy barracks per region will save you 200-500 fl per turn depending on what you garrison it with.
2) Grain Exchange/Market, You really need to build this line to get Merchant recruitment limit up. Your income from the building may suck, but you have got to get merchants built to get your economy rolling (some mods require Grain Exchange, others Market, and some have prereq buildings before you can build either). Otherwise, I only max this building line in one or two cities where I plan on getting merchant guilds. At the start of every campaign, ~ then toggle_fow and select a merchant, look around the map and figure out where the top 20 or so locations are for your merchants (varies by location of capital).

After all regions have the above two covered, then start spending on other stuff.
3) Mines, wherever possible, depending on the mod can bring big money
4) Ports in provinces that have resources to export, in provinces with 0 resources ports are not a priority (for income anyway, some are key if you need a safe haven to park your fleet).
5) Farms: You get income from farming as well as population growth. Also, any region with Farm 3 or 4 that has a governor you have a chance of getting Overseer ancillary
6) Any building that increases population growth (health + happiness modifiers will increase pop growth)
7) Buildings that help keep your population happy when you want to start raising taxes.

Of course, there are build priorities for things other than income, like roads for income + ease of travel, religious buildings to increase priest agent limit (and prevent inquisitors appearing in your lands), and other agent buildings as well. Also, many factions have one or more worthwhile military units that can be built in cities.

I usually keep taxes at Low, for the pop growth, in all cities until they get close to becoming huge cities, then gradually increase taxes. Trick is to get city to huge with enough infrastructure to be able to max out taxes without a revolt. Towns/minor cities have such crappy income anyway that the difference between low and very high taxes isn't enough to justify the loss of population growth.

Also, pay attention to your traits/ancillaries. When you get a general that is born with the cheapskate trait line (which increases from +5 to +10 then +15 construction over time), make an effort to get him the goodbuilder trait line (+5, +10, +15 construction, need him to be governor of 12, 24, 36 cities on the turn their building construction is complete - not hard to do if you coordinate build queue of 3 or 4 cities close together to alternate construction completions), and the Architect ancillary (non-transferable, small % chance to acquire if governor of city when it completes construction), and Overseer Ancillary (only a +1 Construction, be VERY easy to get, just park governor in a city with a farm at lvl3 or 4), and if playing a mod some cities have title ancillaries w/ + to construction. As you can see, its not that hard to get a general with +20 or better construction. I call him my travelling salesman - march him around your empire queueing up buildings at a discount. BTW, the anti-trait to cheapskate line is the extravagant trait line. All of your generals have a chance to gain this traitline (which will then naturally get worse over time) every turn that you end turn with >50,000 florins in your treasury. So, spend your money, or give it away if you want to avoid having the majority of your generals with this crappy trait line.

[Pontifex Maximus]

Running LTC 3.1 so without kingdoms, and i have a major problem of not making any money :/ ive never had this sort of issue in original medieval or rome, but in m2tW i have always had money issues. anyone have some tips to generating some monies.

normally i have nearly all towns with only a few castles in my homeland for training purposes. i generally dont use alot of merchants, should i be putting them on every avaiable resource? i upgrade all my towns with markets etc, and i still have troubles

the only thing i can assume is that ill have to leave smaller garrisons, attack with smaller armies and not waste so much money on building stuff i dont need

any suggestions would be helpful

Cheers Knoddy

that's strange because i experianced problems in RTW, but M2TW has been great for cash. capture some generals and sell them back.

[Baron Thunder-ten-tronckh]

How do you capture generals?
I capture about 1 in every 30 battles with generals.. I usually just kill them.
And when i do capture them, I capture a heap of other soldiers and the enemy is to poor to afford the whole ransom.

[Callawyn]

Ransom is not a consistent money earner, AI tends to refuse. In any case I hate having to fight those same soldiers again, especially if the ransomed troops go straight into a city I'm about to siege. Also, you can faction eliminate by killing off an AI family tree, so I never offer to ransom a captured family member. Besides, I like having high dread on my army leaders: greatly reduces casualties by causing enemy army to flee sooner.

Sacking cities on the other hand can net huge profits. For both release/ransom/execute and occupy/sack/extirminate, the choice is between chivalry,+rep/cash/dread,-rep. Depending on the general fighting the battle, one of the three should always not be an option, since you'll want to maximize either chiv or dread with each leader. Cash is always an option