Playing Castile?

[Anjwalker]

Playing as Castile, I'm having a repeating problem around 1560. I'm going good, have established some colonies which have turned self-sufficient, conquered parts of Aragon, Portugal and annexed Granada, and then suddenly I go bankrupt in a matter of ten years, even after I stop colonizing, cut off the missionaries from funding, fire my advisors and disband half my military and navy. What strategies do you suggest to get around this problem?

[Turrosh Mak]

3 things come to mind

-Hire a "Master of the Mint" advisor for inflation free minting

-Pick the National Bank Idea

-Make war on anyone you suspect may have money in the bank then shake them down for cash at the peace table

[Anjwalker]

I did extract $350 out of Portugal recently, but that was drained up. I'm loosing $20 a month/day (whatever rate it is you loose it). I'll look into a Master of the Mint advisor, I haven't seen one ever.

[Snapze]

what is the cause of this huge loss? Minting can indeed helt to solve the problem, especially with master of mint and Natiol bank

[Anjwalker]

According to it, military maintenance.

Thanks for your advice.

[uat2d]

Don't build over the forcelimits and don't fund your troops fully when not in a war.

[KillingMeSoftly]

Sounds to me like you have your Army and Navy maintenance sliders maxed out. You should turn them halfway or all the way down during times of peace.

[Snapze]

Sounds to me like you have your Army and Navy maintenance sliders maxed out. You should turn them halfway or all the way down during times of peace.

Yep, just remember to turn it up again if you must fight a big rebel stack or get dow'ed! I've forgot that quite alot

If you really need a bigger army or navy, building high lvl buildings + national ideas is a great way to improve your forcelimit. It will make your millitary cheaper.

Just remember to disband all mercenary regiments if you haven't. They are pretty expensive

[Conax]

Have you met your money leaking punching bags, the Incas, the Zapotecs, the Aztecs, the Creeks, and the Iroqois? You can grab $1k to $3k from each of them quite easily.

Edit: Are you trading? As in sending merchants to centres of trade (CoT), like your CoT in Andalucia?

[Anjwalker]

Not sure how merchants work, so I assume no.

I fixed the problem by letting the AI run the country for a year, while I sat there as a minor nation and did nothing and then returned to playing Castile.


Before AI intervention.


After AI intervention.

However, I didn't think you could lower one slider without raising another - effectively spending the same money, just on something else?

I will look into taking some money off the New World nations. And I'll choose some better national ideas then.

[Snapze]

Ok, first off you paid 15 denars a months just on interest before the intervention, which means you had taken a lot of loans. But now they are paid of, so that's great!

Your inflation is extremely high! 54,1 inflation means that everything(colonizing, building armies etc.) is 54.1% more expensive, so you really need to put all effort into decreasing it. I think you should decrease your army way below forcelimit, avoid big wars for a while and just stabilize your country Get the national bank idea, a master of mint advisor and centralize to decrease the inflation as fast as you can. That means mint as little as possible(the slider that says treasury). I guess your tech is pretty bad at the moment, but hopefully it'll get better

[KillingMeSoftly]

That inflation!

You can manipulate the research sliders easily. Right click on the slider to lock it in place, including the Treasury slider. Something that helped me is to research one thing at a time. You may want to focus on Production and Trade to get better efficiency, so you make more money. Like Snapze says, you should turn your Treasury slider all the way to 0 after you hire a decent Master of the Mint. You can switch National Ideas as well, if you didn't know, but you will take a stability hit in doing so. Moving to Centralization will not only reduce inflation, but increase your trade and production output.

[The-King]

I think having no trade income is the killer here.

[Snapze]

I think having no trade income is the killer here.

Trade is nice, but you can easily manage without. If he has bad sliders and no trading NI's it may not be worth it. He should still trade in his own COT though. When i play a game with lots of expanding i often ditch trading completely in the early game becuase of low efficency and low probability of success

[MrQwerty]

Also make sure to have +3 stability whenever possible. Anything less (especially at 0 or -1) and your economy won't fare nearly as well.

[Casiru]

Don't take so many loans, you should always be aiming to play with 0 inflation and no loans. If you take out a loan pay it back asap. The first thing your AI seems to have done is pay off those horrible horrible loans.

[Snapze]

The AI probably went bankrupt. Gaining about 15 inflation is pretty impossible in one year, also the huge drop in prestige and negative stability makes it a probable explanation.

[Emperor Hans]

Ok, first off you paid 15 denars a months just on interest before the intervention, which means you had taken a lot of loans. But now they are paid of, so that's great!

Your inflation is extremely high! 54,1 inflation means that everything(colonizing, building armies etc.) is 54.1% more expensive, so you really need to put all effort into decreasing it. I think you should decrease your army way below forcelimit, avoid big wars for a while and just stabilize your country Get the national bank idea, a master of mint advisor and centralize to decrease the inflation as fast as you can. That means mint as little as possible(the slider that says treasury). I guess your tech is pretty bad at the moment, but hopefully it'll get better

Doesn't 54 inflation also mean you pay 54 ducats a month on nothing?

[grommile]

Doesn't 54 inflation also mean you pay 54 ducats a month on nothing?

No. Inflation has no direct additive effect on your monthly balance. It just has a multiplicative effect on the cost of everything you spend ducats on.

[Kerschey]

Yeah, your main problem is that your inflation is extremely high. If you have a save from pre-AI intervention, I would go back to that (the one where your inflation is only in the 30s). Can we get pics of your military screen, or can you describe how many troops and ships you have, and what your land and naval forcelimits are? The long term fix is to move towards max centralization as a top priority for slider moves, grab the national bank idea, get a good master of the mint, set your treasury slider to 0, max out your stability, and disband/de-fund your military to the point that you can afford this budget. Unfinished colonies are VERY expensive to maintain, so if you are colonizing during this recovery period I'd maybe only have 1 growing colony at a time. Also, check the provincial decisions for your capital city and make sure you've implemented formalized weights, scales, and measures.

Once your inflation is back down to the low teens or single digits, things should start to seem much better.

I notice that you actually have a decent amount of cash on hand. Keep in mind that when you hover over your money, its okay if it says that your monthly income is negative, as long as your annual change is positive and you keep an eye on how much you spend during the year.