Cobwebs in the Coffers

[The Centurion]

Hi all.

On and off TW player, recently been able to play it more often (hooray summer break).

So, I'm playing the HRE in the campaign again, and I've come across a lack of a huge substantial monetary funds for my growing Empire.

I try not to use cheats, I'm old school, but I've seen some other's that have at least 100k florins?

So, what my question here is... what can I do to increase profits aside from doing farms and trying to levy taxes on my people? I've got merchants spread across and the loot from sacking cities from time to time, but I feel like I should be rolling in a bit more, especially since I'm later in the game (have less than 100 turns.)

If there's athread on this already... Oops.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

[Scelesticfish]

This helped me a lot when I was starting out.
Maybe there will be something that will help you!
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=75580

[The Centurion]

This helped me a lot when I was starting out.
Maybe there will be something that will help you!
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=75580

There were few a helpful tips in there, thanks!


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I've been trying to centralize my military forces into just a few stacks; disbanding unnecesary units as I need. I'm running on average of 18-20k as an income.

When I take over cities I tend to just loot the place for the cash rather than exterminate everyone. Although, would just occupying it be better in the long run?

I'm hoping I can turn this situation around in the next few "years" so I can maximize my military and economic strength without worrying too much about overspending.

[The Glorious Moldovan]

Hi all.

On and off TW player, recently been able to play it more often (hooray summer break).

So, I'm playing the HRE in the campaign again, and I've come across a lack of a huge substantial monetary funds for my growing Empire.

I try not to use cheats, I'm old school, but I've seen some other's that have at least 100k florins?

So, what my question here is... what can I do to increase profits aside from doing farms and trying to levy taxes on my people? I've got merchants spread across and the loot from sacking cities from time to time, but I feel like I should be rolling in a bit more, especially since I'm later in the game (have less than 100 turns.)

If there's athread on this already... Oops.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Well you will never have a positive income if you have huge stacks of armies that eat up your income. And if im not mistakening you get like 100k later in the game...

[In3x]

One of the fastest ways to make lots of money is to blitz. If you take say 20 settlements by turn 10 you will be earning 10k+ a turn, plus the money you got from sacking all those settlements. If you can manage to get yourself on a crusade/jihad this is another very effective way of making money as you can have almost the entirety of your army on crusade/jihad. HRE is one of the best placed factions for this as you can build a town hall in Bologna and recruit a diplomat, you can have an alliance with the Pope by turn 5 and the Papal favour this grants you will enable you to call a crusade.

Also, when you take a town you can destroy buildings of no value to you to recoup some money, leather tanneries are good for this. When converting a castle to a city always remember to destroy all castle specific buildings; stables, barracks, archery ranges.

[AJenny58]

Sacking cities gives you an immediate boost in money, but you kill a lot of tax payers when you do so, which might be adversely affecting your per turn profits.

[crzyrndm]

Always occupy. The other two options kill alot of tax payers(less for looting but still a significant amount). On top of that, you decrease your reputation and make it harder to conduct diplomacy successfully.

[In3x]

Always occupy. The other two options kill alot of tax payers(less for looting but still a significant amount). On top of that, you decrease your reputation and make it harder to conduct diplomacy successfully.

For me, money now is always far far superior to money later. I think about it like this, say you want your empire to grow economically, you can set taxes really low to encourage growth to get more people to pay taxes or you can tax the crap out of people and use the proceeds to fund armies to take over settlements.

So let's say we are in a situation where you have an empire with 50,000 people in it, and you have low taxes on which means you get 1.5% more growth per turn than someone on very high tax rates which translate to approximately 750 more taxpayers per turn. However that person on very high tax rate gets 2500-5000 more florins per turn in tax income (dependent on the wealth of your empire) which means you can generate a full stack army in 2-3 turns. Once that army is assembled it should be relatively easy to campaign with it to take a settlement every 2 turns. So over 10 turns the person on high tax rate has earned 35k-70k more money(sack money aswell), has taken 3-5 settlements and has 2-3 full stack armies. The low rate taxer now has maybe 10k more people than he started with and depending on which cities are taken the high taxer/sacker could have anywhere between 5k and 20k more people in his empire. Do bear in mind that the high taxer will also start the snowball effect as he grows bigger and bigger he gets more armies and grow bigger faster gaining more money, military power, population and territory than the low taxer.

Now on to sacks, I always sack unless the settlement will go under 800 people and does not have walls. The reasons for this are very similar to the reasons for high tax rates, money now pays better dividends than money at a later time. Typically when you sack a city you tax revenue you lose is about a tenth of the sack income so the person who occupies will after 10 turns have more money than the person who sacked, as long as the sacker did not use his own money and just left it useless in his treasury. 10k can recruit a decent enough stack and as long as that stack captures at least one city that makes more than a tenth of the sack income you received from the first city a turn within 10 turns of the initial city's sacking you have made your money back. This is not including the money you get for the second sacking or the likelihood that you manage to take more than one city in the 10 turn period.

If you really want to make money and expand your population the best way is to tax everyone into the ground, sack every city you conquer, destroy unwanted buildings for gold and invest all the money you can into training troops.

Now, I am aware that people don't really want to play like this a lot of the time so if you want to maintain good relations and reputation this is not a great way to go.

[Tidybeard]

Occupy if the face at the bottom of the settlement's status bar is green. If you crusade and take Jerusalem, for example, there's a chance the population is high and when you conquer it, the face will be red due to culture difference and geographical distance to your capital, so you'll likey face a riot soon after taking the city. Even if you cut taxes to Low, the peasants may still revolt, so sack. If your population in Jerusalem is 20000 it'll probably only knock about 5000-7000 off the population, but this will give you improved public order (for the time-being at least) and a potentially massive cash injection.

I rarely, if ever, exterminate a populace.

[Veliky Kaiser Theos]

Hit the f key and see your expenses. You've probably got a disproportionately large army for your economy.

[Aeratus]

When conquering territory, I recommend sacking except in the early game when you need chivalry generals. The reason is that if you don't sack, public order will take a hit so you'll have to station more garrison. By sacking the city, you can leave fewer troops there and go conquer another settlement. Furthermore, by sacking, you get the temporary income to hire mercenaries to conquer another settlement. Therefore, the notion that sacking reduces the number of taxpayers is not the correct way to look at it, because you can gain even more taxpayers (while also eliminating additional enemy threat) by conquering additional settlements.

However, in the early game, you'll need chivalry generals, so only occupy in the early game.

During peacetime, do the following:

1. Set taxes to low, unless you have a huge city or a citadel

2. Distribute generals across the cities so the cities are managed.

3. Use the following build order priority: roads; basic church [if different religion]; paved roads; grain exchange; ports/warehouse; markets. These buildings directly influence financial revenue. After you've built all of these, then build town halls and other buildings. Always make sure your settlements are building the buildings listed above if you have the money.

During war time, use "auto-manage taxes only." Then, after wartime, change the tax rates back to low for all settlements. (When I say peacetime and wartime, I don't literally mean that, but it really refers to the number of stacks the enemy has near your territories, because I am always at war one way or another, even if there is not a lot of direct fighting)

[Re_Minder]

3. Use the following build order priority: roads; basic church [if different religion]; paved roads; grain exchange; ports/warehouse; markets. These buildings directly influence financial revenue. After you've built all of these, then build town halls and other buildings. Always make sure your settlements are building the buildings listed above if you have the money.

A good piece of advice, but not always the best one economically, especially with RR. Chances are good that you're better off building some military buildings in order to make the troops you left get "free upkeep". If, let's say, you attack a city with low level barracks and you're forced to leave some units of Spear Militia to keep its public order (and the town can only build Town Militia after a few turns with RR), improving barracks will save you more money than, let's say, a port.

Going for paved roads early doesn't always pay off too, but I assume it's better to stick to the rule till you learn the exceptions.

[Aeratus]

Yeah, the spear militia building is pretty important. If it's already there, then getting that is a top priority.

[ChivalrousKiller]

Well, the HRE is a difficult faction to play financially, but basically it should be possible for every faction to gain a huge amount of money without a great number of settlements. Playing as Spain recently (no cheats of course), I was up in two million florins in the final turn

[=Bright=]

the HRE is a difficult faction to play financially

The HRE can actually expand pretty quick and build up a strong economy, especially if it takes over Antwerp and Bruges and have sea trade with england. And unlike nations like Russia they're able to have trade agreements with several neighbours.