Originally Posted by
Callawyn
Some of my advice:
- Aim for a ratio of 4:1 cities to castles (depending on whether you use Vanilla or a mod map, this could change)
Point here is, cities generate alot more income than castles, castles are expensive to develop and have slow population growth, so you'll want to convert as many castles to cities as possible. Don't worry about some ratio to maintain, you'll need a few really good castles in your starting area, and when you capture a well developed castle that you actually plan on using for recruitment/repair of units, keep it, otherwise convert to a city. Small, undeveloped castles can take forever to upgrade, much better to convert asap. The criteria on whether to convert or not should be based on the castles location, population, and developed buildings. Location is key, but if population is too low you should consider how long it will be, and how much it will cost, before it is useful to you. As for the ratio, early on you may have a 1:1 ratio, eg if you have only 4 provinces but intend to develop 2 castles there. That ratio will grow rapidly over time, since the majority of regions are cities to begin with and you'll be converting most castles you capture into cities.
- Disband military units you will not use within the next 5 turns (except militia garrisoned for free). A 600FL DFK unit costs 250FL/turn to maintain. Unless they're veteran or at the front, disband them. Especially artillery at 350FL/turn. I only keep really high valour units, and tend to send them to the front.
This may make sense for players that really really like to turtle, and try to have long periods of peaceful development. I'm pretty much always at war with at least 1 other faction, so I've ALWAYS got a use for my military units. I may disband a few on turn 1 (fleets usually) if they're very expensive and not overly useful. Otherwise the only time I'll ever disband anything is if its really obsolete (like peasants after about turn 20). If your army is too expensive to maintain, rather than disband part of it, use it to go conquer something. You'll take some casualties, so your maintenance cost will go down, and you'll gain the income from the captured territory + sacking income.
- Build land improvements because they are the quickest way to getting big cities, which produce higher level buildings and more tax revenues from a larger population; squalor isn't as big an issue as it was in RTW
Generally good advice, but there are some exceptions. Buildings that allow you to increase the number of agents you can hire should be prioritized, particularly for merchants.
- DON'T sack a Christian settlement unless that faction is excomm'd and you really need the cash immediately; otherwise the settlement takes a long time to recover and you lose standing with other factions. NEVER exterminate Christian settlements if you are a Christian faction, and if you are an Islamic faction, that's a great way to get a Crusade called against you.
Don't hesitate to sack if the cash is really good, recovery time for population from sacking isn't too bad, and the standing you lose is almost unnoticeable compared to the hits you take for exterminating. The choice to 'Occupy' or 'Sack' is generally determined by whether you want the victorious General to be Chivalrous or Dread. You gain Chiv pretty quick by occupying, you can lose Chiv/gain Dread by Sacking but the chance of this decreases dramatically if the religion of the region is <50% of your own, and Chivalrous generals should never Exterminate. Dread generals should never 'Occupy', gain Dread by killing prisoners or Exterminating populations, but you mostly Sack with them until you strong enough to stomach the hits to your global reputation. As for Exterminating, a couple where necessary won't affect your rep too much (eg, if you capture a Huge City and have 0 or extremely low religion in that region, and you need to exterminate or face revolt). Exterminating regularly to boost the dread of a General should be avoided until at least mid-game due to the damage this does to your global reputation. You'll get unwanted wars as a result, when you're strong enough this isn't a problem, but early on it can put you in a desperate situation.
- Always upgrade settlements ASAP (otherwise you'll have an irreversible squalor problem which affects future growth)
This is nonsense. Squalor is based on the size of your population relative to the upgrade level of your settlement. Period. There is no permanent penalty involved. Now, if you upgrade asap, you'll likely see your squalor go to 0. If you wait, it may not go to 0, but this is because your population continued to grow and when you finally get your upgrade done the population has reached a level where, compared to your new level of walls, you should have some squalor.
- Watch your governors' traits. Some of them can get cumulative tax, squalor and unrest penalties that can practically destroy your economy in a big city
Absolutely, take a real close look at any new generals you acquire and decide what to do with them based on their starting traits. If there are any traits you particularly want to develop, or avoid, take a look in export_descr_character_traits.txt to see what the triggers are.
- Always have the tax rate set to at least "high" (where possible) otherwise your governors get tax penalty traits; you don't need 100% public order in all cities.
General rule is to tax has high as you can while keeping happiness >70% (>= 70% if you prefer), but there are definitely some exceptions. 1) If you're in good shape financially (ie. you're build queue isn't stalled), you may want to drop tax rate to low in your smallest cities, for the pop growth. For Lg towns and up, you generally get good growth from your buildings/farms, but for villages especially, and to some extent small towns as well, there just aren't enough buildings available to speed growth. Its cheap enough to do, you'll probably be costing yourself <100fl a turn per settlement since you're focusing on low pop undeveloped cities that give very little revenue to begin with. 2) You can get +Chiv for a General by parking him in a city with 'Low' tax rates (up to +5 Chiv, its a bit random, on average takes 7,11,19,35,67 turns for 1,2,3,4,5 Chiv). 3) You can gain Dread (or lose Chiv) if tax rate is Very High, but there are additional criteria which can block this (notably >10k in your treasury, not an issue for much of the early game).
- Only build brothels/taverns/inns in cities with older governors who already have fathered children, or else you may get the "Adultress" retinue character which can devstate a family line if a young governor gets it
Nonsense, this is really bad advice. These buildings give Happiness, which increases population growth as well as helping to keep your population happy (which allows you to increase taxes without risking revolt). They're also necessary for recruiting spies/assassins and in many mods they increase the limit on how many of these agents you can own globally. Also, they give some good traits/ancillaries as well as some other bad ones. If there's one in particular you really want to avoid, like the "Adultress" ancillary mentioned, look it up and see what the triggers really are, it may be avoidable by means other than not building an entire building line in some/all of your cities. For "Adultress", what he's afraid of is the -2 Fertility penalty to your general, which means he'll have less children (big deal). But to get one, you have to 1) End Turn in settlement with >= Brothel, 2) have 100mp remaining (ie, not have moved at all that turn), 3) be married, 4) have an ugly wife (<5 charm), and 5) have <3 Chivalry, and even then its only an 8% chance you'll get the Ancillary. Even if you pay 0 attention to avoiding it, it'll still be very rare, hardly worth avoiding building the Brothel line of buildings.
- Only build militia buildings in cities where you have an unrest issue, unless those cities may be open to attack
There's a couple big exceptions here too. First off, and this is huge, you only get free garrison in a city for a particular unit type if that city is currently capable of building that unit. This means the militia building must exist in that city that can build the unit types you want to garrison there. Also, check your building browser when you start a game with a new faction, see what you can actually build with higher level militia buildings. Most factions have at least 1 really good unit that you can access faster, by building militia buildings in a starting city, than you can access comparable units in castles. Some of these units don't ever have comparable units in Castle barracks, so they're worth going for. I'll usually take one of my starting cities and build militia buildings and armory building lines rapidly to gain access to these units, and provide armor upgrades for militia units (which then get swapped around to other garrisons, most cities should never get even a lvl 1 armory). Also, check out the triggers for Mason's Guild, and their effects. They globally reduce construction costs, so its well worth the cost of building whatever is necessary to trigger one.
- Kill off Rebels/Brigands/Pirates ASAP as they affect happiness. Rebels/Brigands also cause Devastation which is an issue
Indeed. Devastation will reduce your income for that province. It takes awhile to build up, but it also takes awhile to recover even after the rebel is dead.
- In the Trade Summary screen, flashing income items mean you are not getting the most out of your trade potential. Improving roads and ports is vital.
The income gain from upgrading the port itself may not be that great, but it allows (in cities, not castles) construction of the warehouse series of buildings, which increase the number of trade fleets. More trade fleets will greatly increase your income for that city.
- Turn down the Thieves Guild for high income settlements and work towards the Merchants or Explorers Guild; only build Thieves Guilds in lower income cities where you'll train most of your spies. Most of the AI settlements you capture will have Thieves Guilds anyway.
Plan ahead from turn 1 where you want your Guilds. Merchants is most important, for the traits you get on newborn merchants. Merchants/Explorers/Spy guilds should be built in port cities for full effect Some traits/ancillaries are only available for newborn agents if port/warehouse buildings exist, you'll want all the possible starting advantages for your agents that you can get. There are city size reqs for each level of guild, so if you want a city to have more than a basic guild it'll have to be one that gets a big population. I never build more than 1 Thieves guild, since you capture lots of them, including multiple master thieves guilds. Be sure to build Town Hall asap in cities you want to recruit merchants in, it eliminates chance of a bad trait line and allows a chance of being born with a good trait line. Explorers Guilds, IMO, do very little. There are few traits/ancillaries associated with them, and to get them you need to park a General/Agent/Fleet in that city (or port for the fleet) until you get lucky enough to get one. Most are for +movement points. I rarely have more than 1 Explorers Guild in my empire, usualy close to, but not in, my capital.
- Don't ever destroy a Guild building, even in a captured settlement, as that destroys your ratings with all Guilds.
Not true. The penalty is "Guild this s -100" and "Guild this o -20", which means that if you destroy, say, a thieves guild you get a -100 hit for Thief guild in that 'S'ame city and a -20 hit for Thief guild in every 'O'ther region you own, but not 'all guilds'. If it was 'all' guilds in all regions, the penalty would be "Guild all o -20". So, feel free to destroy all the Thieves guilds you want, it'll reduce the number of offers you get for Thieves guild in that city by alot and for all other regions by a little, but will have no effect on other guild types.
- On VH, make sure your good generals are pious or they'll get killed by Inquisitors. Building Churches early on makes it easier to get 100% Catholic regions that don't fall to Heresy, which is a mid game problem.
I pay 0 attention to my General's piety. I do pay a LOT of attention to avoiding a visitation by the Inquisition. I'm not sure how the code works, but from experience I've found that if you build churches everywhere asap and use priests to get religion to >90% in regions you own (both pretty easy to do), they don't spawn in your lands. If they do, there are a variety of ways to get rid of them. If you see one, be sure ALL of your generals stay out of reach.
- Merchants can be powerful so use them wisely and move them off a resource if you spot a high valour AI merchant closing in. The AI doesn't buy out merchants who are not trading. Build up a merchant's experience close to home and only move them away when they have 3 coins rating. They'll usually die just when they're getting good; nothing you can do about that.
I never build a merchant's xp on a crappy resource close to home. It takes too long. There are traits for +Finance that are only available if sitting on a resource that is >x distance from your capital, and other traits only available for being on a resource that is 'exotic' (not sure the list of what is 'exotic' and what is not, but you can bet it doesn't include that timber or iron a turn away from where your merchant was born). If you're having trouble with merchants from other factions, acquire or assassinate them.
- Only execute captured troops when you are absolutely certain they would defeat you in an ensuing battle. Otherwise your reputation suffers and a chivalrous general loses points. Likewise, if you want a dreaded general, execute when you have a small number of troops. It also seems like the AI doesn't pay the smaller ransoms, only for larger numbers of troops.
The traits you get for executing may not trigger if executing too few prisoners, and also varies by religion. Check the Traits file for whatever version of the game you're playing. This, however, doesn't include the reputation hit you get. Early in the game, I avoid rep hits like the plague. Once I'm rolling tho, I really don't care who hates me, so I'll always execute if general is going for dread, ransom and occassionally release if going for chivalry. I haven't been able to discern the specific priorities regarding how the AI decides to pay ransoms other than they never pay if they can't afford it and usually (but not always) pay if they can.
Tiro
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