Turks starting money.

[Rebel Jeb]

Okay, I want to make a faction as the turks, but everytime I do after a few turns I start gaining negative 1,000 gold a turn. I shortly end up with -5,000 gold and am forced to start talking alot of cities.


What do you think I should do?

[jahjeremy]

Yeah, I have the same money problems with Turks. Their economy is gimp at the start. I am currently on turn 40 or so in a VH/VH game, but I may restart.

I am thinking that Turks were designed as a sacking/marauding faction, which is why they start with negative income. It is supposed to get you immediately out there attacking Byz, Antioch, and Jerusalem. They aren't much of a "tanking" faction like Byzantine Empire.

Here are some thing you might try...

-Immediately go after Antioch and sack every city/castle you defeat. This is good for early game (first 10 turns). These settlements should be kept.

-A single sack of Constantinople can get you 45k in gold. I have sacked it three+ times in my current campaign. Don't necessarily plan on keeping Const, as it will likely revert back to Byz via rebellion or be sieged by them with a large army once you have taken it.

-Make basic improvements to your cities, including dirt roads and land clearence. Avoid really expensive improvements. Use cheap happiness improvements like Shisha Bar and basic religious buildings. In general, you will have to live with 85-95% happiness in your towns, at least for awhile.

-Disband field armies you are not using.

-Place merchants on top of resources such as silk, etc.

-Attack Jerusalem and surrounding cities, as they are lightly defended. You don't necessarily need to plan on keeping these, but the sack money should be pretty good (10k+ / sack).

-Convert conquered castles to cities for more income.

-Use cheap infantry units like spears, militia, and mercs, at least at first until your economy gets going. Horse Archers are fun but 1/2 size and very expensive and also somewhat fragile.

-Instead of expensive heavy cavalry, use general's cavalry units. Try 2-3 generals per army, especially in your Jihad army.

-Keeping marauding/rebel armies out of your territory. It kills trade to have lots of foreign armies in your territory.

-Complete all the missions that the Council gives you. The 5000 / rebel settlement missions are ones to look for. Additionally, the Council will sometimes grant you 5k just because they like you.

-Aggressively convert cities to Islam and add religious buildings. This will give you improved happiness which will allow you to...

-Raise tax rates as high as possible.

I have probably deployed too many expensive cavalry units in lieu of a cheap but effective army of infantry and missile troops. So I am probably restarting this campaign, as I'm loading back my save games a lot to fight battles that I'm not happy with. This is usually a sign that things are going bad. The real kicker is when those damn Venetians show up, and you start getting tag teamed.

I started a quick scratch campaign as Byzantine Empire, and by comparison, they are incredibly easy to play with the Varangian Guard spam, solid HA, and thousands of income every turn. Even early on, the Byz economy is incredibly solid (Const by itself is easily 7k+ / turn!). IMHO, early Turk is underpowered against that kind of money.

Anyways, just some ideas. Take with a grain of salt though. My current Turk campaign is pretty questionable. =)

[Taroc]

It's cheating but if you want money quickly press ~ then type add_money 40000.

[Silent Assassin]

The Turks are quite hard on the money side.

1- Keep low garrisons in your cities and try to have them free of upkeep but keep some more in Iconium as the Busantines will attack you sooner then later.

2-Capture on city at the time so that you will have only one stack to pay for in upkeep (First one should be Adana) and put her in a city then take Antioch she will be your money backbone.

3- Change the castle just a bit right-up from Iconium into a city.

4- Build Roads, Port and markets, Paved Road as soon as possible in that order as the Paved Road will be available later depending on the city level that you have captured. Ports are the ones that you need ASAP they will generat alot more income then Roads.

Recruit armies only when necessary.

Hope this helps

Rebel

[Grimmy]

Another thing you can consider doing.

When you take a town that you do not intend to keep, sack it as usual for the coin, then demolish all the buildings in it that you can. That gives you some more coin and also slows down enemy growth when they retake the town later.

[medieval elephant]

You should be sacking cities regularly anyway, no matter what faction you are. Aim for a settlement every 2 or 3 turns, on average. You can go a bit slower at the start, but you need to speed up once you have an army.

I recommend going south first, towards Egypt, as the Byzantine Empire are way too powerful at the start, and even if you defeat them, you'll have the whole of Europe to deal with straightaway.

[StalkAndStrike]

Well I'm usually not a fan of blitzing, but I find this a necessity in the turks case, as long as you keep capturing land, make basic economic buildings, keep low garrisons where you dont need them, and raid cities, you should start to get the feel of it. Also do not attempt to make naval units in mass of any kind, these will drain you dry, also try to aim for lesser quality horse archers, they basically do the exact same job anyways!

Best of luck