It's the Economy Stupid

[kingme90]

My biggest problem with Shogun 2 is that the amount of money I make pure turn is in constant flux, sometimes I make over 5000 and then one turn later I make less than a hundred, with no real reason. At the moment I control the two southern Islands and three of the trade roots with the outside world and yet it is rare for me to break 2000 per turn. This is a real problem for me do to how expensive units and buildings are, I am constantly checking to make sure I will have enough money in the next turn. Now I wouldn't be complaining about this if I was playing on hard, but I'm playing on easy because when ever I try a more difficult level I never have enough money.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

Happens to me too, don't really get why. If this game was fair at all then a player should get about 10,000 per turn. But for some reason in every Total War Game I have difficulty getting even 5,000 a turn.

[The Lone Sparabara]

The AI's constant blockade (yours or most likely your trading partner's port), trade route raids and agreement cancelling is probably whats causing you to have this fluctuation. I got so sick of that that in my current playthrough that I completely depended on farms and random resources scattered across the land.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

Sometimes when I am really sick of it then I will just edit it and increase the amount of starting money for every clan.

[Condottiere 40K]

Fluctuating incomes only matter if you haven't built up a reserve and you have a large military overhead. Fluctuations tend to resolve themselves.

[Count_Zuokula]

Blockades(love those single-ship fleets blocking ports), trade route raiding and ofc trade agreement breaking. Those are the things that make your income unstable. After about 300 hours of playtime, I realised that you'll just have to deal with it. In most of my legendary or VH/VH playthroughs I try to develop agriculture and commerce and ignore trade as much as possible.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

I always start of all of my games by researching all of the Chi Agriculture technologies and building markets and trade ports to increase income. With the increase in food supplies then the populace should be slightly happier and building should be a lot easier. Then build all of your forts into strongholds to increase repression and to better defend your garrisons. But even then I make about 2000 - 5000 koku a turn which is really anoying. Of course I build like 5 armies in all of my games but that's because I need them. At most I built 12 armies and the result was disastrous for my economy so I guess 3 - 5 is the magic number for armies.

[sweetdice]

Try upgrading your economy, its a fail if you start building more units without money to back up. Basic concept...

[gyabo]

What clan are you using?
Do you tend to use more samurai in the early campaign? I suggest use some ashigaru.
Do you build a lot of dojo and upgrade your castle than economy building like sake den and market?
Upgrading your castle in vanilla is a big no no no in the game due it is expensive and it takes alot of food unless you want a province to be a military province.

My suggestions:
Research Chi 1st than Bushido! You need an economy to build an army.
Build more ashigaru in early campaign if you cannot compete with ai just be defensive like capture a province and make a vassal.
Build an economy province like build sake den in all your province and market if you have an extra slot. Sake den is quite useful due it adds happiness and money
Try to add some mods it will make the economy easier like monthly turn mod and radious mod making food not quite essential.

I found shogun 2 economy quite easier due having all the upgrades for farming and market, you really don't need to trade.
Compared to Fall of Samurai have retarded economy due farming in that game is useless.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

^ So then what do you recommend for Fall of the Samurai economies?

[gyabo]

I have a campaign with Tsu which is very hard to make money. I currently wipe out three clans especially Obama sadly its 3 clan allies is at war with me and another 2 clans declare on war on me and my income is plainly retarded due i focused on military than economy. Having Obama as an enemy killed my economy XD. Their like Ikko ikki w/ steroids. Seriously in my early campaign i already went bankrupt due to Obama sending 2 stacks of army in my land. I tried to be defensive which is work in few turns but Obama could build stack of army in less turn and my retarded economy building are incomplete due it takes a lot of turns to build them. I make my mine province as a military province due to Obama.
Seriously they declared war on me because i got a mine and that mine province is near on their border. At that time they declared war on me. I only have 2 province.

I know focusing in economy is better in early campaign but it useless when you are at war with multiple front and they got a freaking cannons i cannot compete. Also some of my army have samurai which is expensive. Having only 6 samurai killed my economy. I am thinking of removing all my samurai and recruit some cavalry and peasant spearman to protect my infantry and be defensive in a moment until i stable my economy and focused on trade and build more economy building like some gambling den and some traditional building. Those 3 clans are faraway in my clan but there is one clan near my border sending a stack of army which i could dealt with.
Totally wish their is a monthly turn mod in this expansion due i spent 30 turns to rebuild my economy.

Also i currently stop this campaign due Fall of Samurai have one major bug that ruin my strategy and immersion.

[Hikki]

I remember having a Tsu for starting faction, everyone wants a piece of you and you're right in a middle. What I've done is hurry and build imperial faction's agent equivalent of a monk and then went causing revolts in all of my surrounding territories, leaving them always rebelling as a buffer zone/wall from being invaded (if rebellion were to be stopped, I'd start a new one). After that I've pushed hard towards north with ALL my units until hitting the utmost top, and then done smooth sailing diplomacy with factions to the other side of my buffer zone (and making sure I have a railroad secured and expanded on) before expanding to the left-most side of the map (where one of target territories happens to be few feet away from your capital). After that I set a vassal to be my buffer zone to the left (with a backup army against Shogunate troops) and spent rest of campaign rushing right side while converting any and all soldier I could find (and using them to take over empty cities, turning city into vassal, rinse and repeating while that army grew) until hitting the last target territory to win the campaign. Personally, I mostly avoid using traditional units outside of few basic ones. Only time I've ever used traditional units was beginning of play due to lack of technology, and end game when feeling like having a more diverse unit.

[Unchained]

The only other option is to rely purely on your own empire or well... Edit the files.

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[Plan C]

There are mods out there, like True Samurai, which better reflect economic realities of the time by making farms a great deal more profitable than trade. During that time, the majority of feudal wealth came from the land. Trade taxation and tariffs did help but were by no means the main source of income for a feudal lord.

Any of the coastal clans can dominate trade nodes pretty early on; I can get 3 - 4k from nodes as Tokugawa no probs. I think it's wildly off the mark myself.

[Hikki]

There are mods out there, like True Samurai, which better reflect economic realities of the time by making farms a great deal more profitable than trade. During that time, the majority of feudal wealth came from the land. Trade taxation and tariffs did help but were by no means the main source of income for a feudal lord.

Any of the coastal clans can dominate trade nodes pretty early on; I can get 3 - 4k from nodes as Tokugawa no probs. I think it's wildly off the mark myself.

Yeah, but Tokugawa also gains crazy high diplomacy+trade bonuses.

[Plan C]

Yeah, but Tokugawa also gains crazy high diplomacy+trade bonuses.

You're thinking about the Uesugi - they have the trade bonus, Tokugawa gets +5 diplo (clan is respected) and buffs to metsuke and kisho ninjas.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

You should really be getting way more money from agriculture and trade nodes and less money from provincial trade but a slight increase in just having a port as ports contributed much more to trade than overland routes. Aside from that trade in Kyoto and the surrounding provinces should be highest so the player that controls the "Home" provinces all the way to Mino and Owari should have a bonus in cash flow from trade.

[COLHarry]

I am a Systems and Process Engineer, and in all these total war games, kept running across the question, "Which is best for money? High Taxes or Low Taxes?". Shogun 2 actually lent itself very well to statistical testing. Without going through all the work behind it, the end result was this. If you keep lower taxes, and develop your agriculture, you will - over time - end up with immensely more money than if you crank higher taxes to make a few more stacks to "blitz" your neighbors. The key is the food surplus, and watching the town growth numbers. Town growth is critical to making all that money in taxes. The majority of your provinces should be making you money, not draining it. This means, you have only a few, key provinces which crank out your military units. Not every province should have a citadel. High level forts cost food - and you want to keep that surplus as high as you can get it. Higher surplus + Low Taxes = higher town growth = higher money from taxes. Even on Shogun 2 vanilla, it's not uncommon to have towns cranking out 3-4,000 income in the first dozen turns, and 11 - 15,000 later on during mid and late game. With FOTS, the numbers go up even more dramatically. And as every person here knows, Money = Military.

Some folks are short term "I want it now" thinkers. Others - like myself - are longer term "I will own you over time" thinkers. These two philosophies will always compete, however in my personal experiences in nearly any game of this nature where economies are involved, "Over Time" will nearly always succeed against "I want it now". It's simple - the AI programmers nearly never program an AI to think and plan, long term, whereas we humans always have that option.

[AngryTitusPullo]

True. Low taxes in the long run brings more money that you will ever need. Works the same in Rome 2 as well. Shogun 2 is fun to play with economy. Don't build high tier units until you can really afford them.

[Sir Jeongbun]

do you even see the financies tab to see a logical reason for why such thing happens?
i have never experienced money problem, i mean yeah sometimes im poor, but i know why.