Does Byzantium handle taxes differently?

[unmerged(49330)]

I've wanted to play a Byzantine game for a while now, so I started one up on Easy to see what it's like. I've taken Ghazi and then won my first war with the OE by using my ships to isolate their main army in Asia Minor. Now I'm in pretty good shape with Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Rumelia, and Ghazi under my belt. My plan was to build up some cash and just play peace until I can diplo-annex Morea and get a good ally.

The problem is that even though I control 6 provinces and only have an army of 9,000 men, my monthly income is still negative, even with some substantial minting.

I've never played a country that couldnt support a 9,000 man army with one or two provinces, more or less with six. Is this just a Byzantine thing? Should I just ride it out? How can I get any money coming in if I'm on the verge of bankruptcy and can't build tax collectors?

 

[Sterkarm]

I have never played a country which can make a positive income each or any month (besides December) without minting. However, I think your problem might be that you have a loan. Check that, it might be the loans interest. If so, try to remember when you took the loan(s) and be ready to pay them off with 200 ducats when it is 5 years after you took the loan(s).

 

[unmerged(49330)]

But I am minting. I think the slider is at about 20%, so I'm racking up some substantial inflation, but I'm still at -1.3 per month. I just went into bankruptcy and for some reason even though all the loans have been wiped out, and thus I have no loan interest, I'm still negative. It's something like -2 per month for maintenance and it says +4 per month for taxes. But then after it takes out my investments, I'm in the red.

I don't expect to be making big money each month, but even the money I geet from my yearly salary is only about 15 or so. Not even enough to cover my losses with substantial minting.

If everything is the same, I'll just have to ride it out, but I've played Milan before and didn't have near the problems making money that I'm seeming to with the Byzantines.

 

[Ciçatrix]

What is your stability? And what about revolt risk? Both these decrease income.

 

[DSYoungEsq]

1. Byzantium is one of the harder countries to play, economically as well as strategically.

2. "Mint" the full amount of your monthly income to get ahead (move the "To Treasury" sider all the way right). You MUST have tax collectors in all provinces or you simply won't have enough yearly income to cover your needs. You will incur some inflation, but you will be able to stay closer to 0% inflation per year afterwards.

3. Take a loan if you have to.

4. Make certain your maintenance levels for your fleet and your men are at 50% unless you are at war. 100% maintenance doubles the cost of maintaining troops, which you often cannot accept.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

I found that Byzantium has serious issues with religion, too. With those provinces mentioned you should have mostly Orthodox provinces. Make sure the Orthodox religion tolerance slider is high enough so that you have very little or no revolt risk in those provinces, but if you put it too high, the Muslim and Catholic provinces in your realm will give you much less money.

Ooh! Ooh! Another thought. The event that changed my religion to Catholic (I wanted Italian as a state culture) moved my Catholic religion tolerance slider up for me so my Orthodox countries were making almost no money from the high revolt risk. I didn't notice why I was so poor for almost five years. I was basically trying to live off my production income and not knowing it.

If you took the event to go Catholic to get Italian culture, check your tolerance sliders. They may have moved on you. You most likely still have many Orthodox provinces and low tolerance of those provinces' religion can kill your income from those provinces.