Sicily economy problems.

[Goldenboy24]

Hey everybody,

I've been playing as sicily and i have no money!
I have tryed everything and i dont want to cheat.I have started about 4 campaigns over with sicily but it still happens. Please help!

[Valbruch]

Try to get trade rights with as many nations around Mediterranian as soon as you can. I played Sicily only once but I remeber I was able to make quite a decent amount of money from naval trade.

[Captain Spanky]

It can be tough, certainly. For me, I snapped up the two islands to the left of Italy and turned the lower one into a town, and I bought Bologna off the HRE in return for an alliance and money. It made things very difficult money-wise, but try to take Iraklion quickly as well to open up more naval trade. Once your debt to the HRE is paid off, you should be earning a fair income.

[TzuDevil]

It is really important to keep your armies the minimum size possible, only maintaining just enough units to keep your forces effective. Having too many troops drains your economy fast.

When you build strictures in your cities and castles, always build the farms first, before anything else. It improves your income directly, but more importantly, it increases your population, which is the basis for tax income and advancement.

Cheers!

[Joel92]

When you build strictures in your cities and castles, always build the farms first, before anything else. It improves your income directly, but more importantly, it increases your population, which is the basis for tax income and advancement.

i usually get more income from trade than from taxes
the first things i build are just the basic farms, a port, roads and markets. i upgrade the markets as high as possible before building anything else. it can really help you generate LOTS of money.

[Kietharr]

1. Buy Bologna from the HRE, set up trade rights with everyone you can and keep relations good.
2. Capture florence
3. Capture Sardinia and Corsica, convert both to cities, convert Palermo to a city, convert florence and possibly Bologna to castles.
4. Capture Tunisia and Tripoli if the moors don't have them already
5. Declare on Venice, take Venice, Ragusa, and Irakilon. If they have Zagreb you can take that too.
6. At this point it's a good idea to kill Milan because they will probably betray you. Either expand against Milan or the Moors and Egypt, Byzantines are also an option from here.

Sicily has two big advantages, a central position on the medditeranian makes their trade very efficient and lets them go anywhere they want with boats quickly, and they are close to the pope so any attack against you will likely go through papal territory, making him hate you.