How To Make Money

Unlike Empire, it seems to me extremely hard to make money in this game and still maintain a competent military to fight your foes. Many improvements seem to only add meager sums to a region's wealth, and few things excluding roads actually add to wealth growth to maintain that wealth. Trading as always is still expensive for ship building and maintenance for ships to keep your trade routes clean. With city improvements costing in the high thousands, and the need to maintain armies that can take on stacks of whatever the AI throw at you, how are you suppose to acquire the capital to fund what the game expects of you?

Reduce taxes, increase trade, turtle up, focus on a well developed economic building policy and tech research.

I think that accumulating wealth is more easier in Napoleon than Empire.
The industrial and commercial buildings and roads are extremely useful in increasing town wealth.
Reduce taxes first. Unlike Empire, taxation is more important than trade in Napoleon.

Industrial buildings? You mean the gunsmith which does squat and the factory? One doesn't add any money while the other adds like +250 compared to Empire's Smith's and Textile Mills with wealth in the thousands and adding to the growth?

At least you know that Russia has less money than you!... unless you play as Russia.
Never become a republic I did it and was raped economically.

I've played as a republic many times and I've never had any problems. Why do you think a republic would fare worse than a monarchy?

Originally Posted by antred

I've played as a republic many times and I've never had any problems. Why do you think a republic would fare worse than a monarchy?

Cause your ministers may suck and that greatly affects your economy maybe it was because I was a Russian Repubic.

Yeah, the ministers usually aren't that great, but I never found that to be too much of an impediment. I normally begin each campaign by doing exactly what Magicman2051 stated in his post, and after a couple years all money worries are a thing of the past.

By the way, it's funny that someone named "money" responded to this thread (the only ones who can answer that question are clearly your parents).

Originally Posted by antred

Yeah, the ministers usually aren't that great, but I never found that to be too much of an impediment. I normally begin each campaign by doing exactly what Magicman2051 stated in his post, and after a couple years all money worries are a thing of the past.

By the way, it's funny that someone named "money" responded to this thread (the only ones who can answer that question are clearly your parents).

I spend on units like a beast so that my regions won't rebel, appeasing rebels is my problem which is why I only get the best ministers and build massive things so I can make better units and hold off invaders and rebels.

Admittedly, I'm an utter newb (first campaign started two days ago), but my secret uber-plan for making money is this:

1) Play as England.
2) Smash everyone's navies in the Atlantic.
3) Spam merchant ships. You have 4 captive trade ports plus 5 around Spain that you can usually grab at least 3 of (albeit with some attrition in your merchant ships), and each ship on a port nearly pays for itself each turn (though I just figured out that you could put more than 1 ship on a trade port ~20 turns ago, and that doing this would increase your income immensely, so there may be a point of diminishing returns to this. Like I said, utter newb).
4) Take Spain and any French ports on the Atlantic and send navies to take over the Western Med.
5) Use your Med fleets to drive Russia out of the Eastern Med, and grab control of the ports there.

Congrats, you now control ~80-90% of the trade ports, and your allies control the other 10-20.

/Seriously, as England, this is a license to print money. I'm still not at the "It is physically impossible to spend this much cash" point I reached by this point in other games yet, but I have enough money to support 4 full stacks, 2 major half-stack fleets (which is something like 80% of the total warships on the map at this point), and a small yet viable building program (I can usually dump 15-20K into building/recruitment each turn). Combine that with swooping down upon the thousands upon thousands of coins running across the trade routes with your warfleets (and Russia's downright strange habit of shipping their ships one at a time through the channel and around Spain to get at my Med fleet only to be captured by my much heaver Atlantic fleet as they're passing by), and there's a nice chunk of change there.

Empire seems to center around trade ships. There are technological improvements like cooper bottoms and canning and bottling that reduce trade ship cost. Get those.

Vineyards, commerce centers and trade ports increase revenues in all provinces. Upgrade or capture as many as possible.

A lot of the 1st tier technology like Classical Economics increases tax revenue.

Get trade with any many countries as you can.

The other thing is the humble sloop. Buy a few and go Jeune École on your opponents backside and raid and blockade their ports. You will ether cripple their economy threw trade strangulation and constantly rebuilding ports, or cripple their army by for forcing them to build a huge fleet. Sure a sloop may get eaten by ships of the line time time. But such is war.

And hey, worse comes to worse go on a looting rampage threw Europe. That's how Napoleon pay for his army.

LOL only read the first comment. Uh... its on you. Depends on who you are playing as and the situation you are in. I do all kinds of stuff to make money. You arent suppose to have masses of armies all over but I do. I got like 6 legions (20 slot armies) plus a national guard (20 slot army), Royal Guard (20 slot army under my command, Id name the General after me) and a Imperial Guard (20 slot army under Berlins command kinda like SPQRs personal army) and the last but not least, ITALIAN GUARD (20 slot army under the HOLY SEE of Italy now, not Papal states). Thinking about making more but not enough enemies to attack. This isnt including the armies that are garrisoned that are 18 - 20 slot armies!!! And theres alot of regions I captured ( actually not that many).

Just go pillage villages!!! lol Go after the high population ones that have lots of town wealth/region wealth which are usually populated in the millions.

Beginning of the game, might want to fix your govt. to the one you want by over taxing rich or poor. Monarchy or Const. Monarchy or Republic. To be honest, they are all the same. It just has "cause and effects" on how stuff is played out. They should just put one called MILITARY DICTATORSHIP that gives you bonuses on everything. And high PUBLIC ORDER except relations are low with other countries but once you have high power. The bonus for relations in diplomatic relations will go up maybe +4 or something?

Originally Posted by Dark Prince

LOL only read the first comment. Uh... its on you. Depends on who you are playing as and the situation you are in. I do all kinds of stuff to make money. You arent suppose to have masses of armies all over but I do. I got like 6 legions (20 slot armies) plus a national guard (20 slot army), Royal Guard (20 slot army under my command, Id name the General after me) and a Imperial Guard (20 slot army under Berlins command kinda like SPQRs personal army) and the last but not least, ITALIAN GUARD (20 slot army under the HOLY SEE of Italy now, not Papal states). Thinking about making more but not enough enemies to attack. This isnt including the armies that are garrisoned that are 18 - 20 slot armies!!! And theres alot of regions I captured ( actually not that many).

Just go pillage villages!!! lol Go after the high population ones that have lots of town wealth/region wealth which are usually populated in the millions.

Beginning of the game, might want to fix your govt. to the one you want by over taxing rich or poor. Monarchy or Const. Monarchy or Republic. To be honest, they are all the same. It just has "cause and effects" on how stuff is played out. They should just put one called MILITARY DICTATORSHIP that gives you bonuses on everything. And high PUBLIC ORDER except relations are low with other countries but once you have high power. The bonus for relations in diplomatic relations will go up maybe +4 or something?

This post is incredibly confusing. are you saying that you made prussia = rome?

For anybody but Franc you should spam merchant ships, for France conquering your enemies should yield enough money to keep expanding economically.

Originally Posted by In3x

For anybody but Franc you should spam merchant ships, for France conquering your enemies should yield enough money to keep expanding economically.

protectorates = ridiculous amounts of income!