I am a new EU4 player and i always seem to get negative money i really don't know what to do
I hope you can help
Axel
I hope you can help
Axel
Economy
- Thread starter Axel0339b
- Start date
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Some questions.
Do you delete the forts you don't need or mothball them? -> If no, please consider so
Do you pay full maintenance for your armies if you don't need them? -> If yes, lower maintenance in peace time (unless you want to suppress revolt)
Do you assume that, at the beginning of the game, you can afford to pay 3 advisors? -> if yes, it's usually wrong.
Have you send all your merchants to a trade node? -> If no, do it.
That would be my "usual suspects" list for beginners in terms of cash.
Hope it helps
Do you delete the forts you don't need or mothball them? -> If no, please consider so
Do you pay full maintenance for your armies if you don't need them? -> If yes, lower maintenance in peace time (unless you want to suppress revolt)
Do you assume that, at the beginning of the game, you can afford to pay 3 advisors? -> if yes, it's usually wrong.
Have you send all your merchants to a trade node? -> If no, do it.
That would be my "usual suspects" list for beginners in terms of cash.
Hope it helps
First off, welcome!
Balancing the economy is always tricky and can really depend on who you are playing as, but here's a few ideas.
Drop army maintenance and fort maintenance when not at war or facing rebellions. Delete unneccesary forts (for example deep in your land)
Set your merchants to collect trade in nodes where you have a lot of power.
Keep your stability up.
Don't hire advisors you cannot afford, the higher level ones can get really expensive.
Balancing the economy is always tricky and can really depend on who you are playing as, but here's a few ideas.
Drop army maintenance and fort maintenance when not at war or facing rebellions. Delete unneccesary forts (for example deep in your land)
Set your merchants to collect trade in nodes where you have a lot of power.
Keep your stability up.
Don't hire advisors you cannot afford, the higher level ones can get really expensive.
If you are at peace, lower the maintenance of your army and don't go over the force limit. Don't keep mercs during peace either. Mothball your fleets, if you have trade ships(barques/caravels) send them to protect trade on your collection trade node or send them to privateer in venice/english channel/constantinople if you have a port in their ranges. If you have rights of man, use the estates to get cheap top tier advisers, if you don't have access to discounted advisors don't use the expensive ones. For Estates, there are local autonomy modifiers that are kinda hidden, they are listed in the wiki but the game doesn't actually tell you their local bonus. Each province that is actually under control of the Dhimmi/Clergy will have the tax penalty for autonomy ignored, so if its a high tax value province and its newly conquered with lots of autonomy, giving it to the clergy will help you get your money's worth out of it fast. As for Merchants guild/Burghers assign coastal provinces to them to boost your naval force limit, give them trade node modifier provinces to amplify your trade power and value in nodes. For Umera/Nobles give your high manpower provinces to them and then put barracks buildings on them as well to stack manpower modifiers. As for your forts, I typically will just use a capital fort for most of the game till I become an empire. Once I'm an empire or have 2 full trade nodes worth of money coming in, I will start to setup my marches and lines of forts. For buildings, ignore the force limit buildings, courthouses, and both naval buildings. They are all garbage and not worth the money you dump into them. If you have a strong handle on a trade node early, like in the case of Otto at the start of game, you can bypass trade posts and just stick with tax and production buildings in the trade node. Trade posts are probably best left to the trade node modifier provinces or a trade node that is heavily contested. If you are playing an HRE member, don't bother with the trade game till the princes are all gone, the trade will be so badly contested anything you dump into it will take forever to get returns on.
Generally speaking you want to setup your merchants in a long chain. At the start of the game typically you just set them to two trade nodes that feed into your capital node. You automatically collect from your capital trade node. If you set any merchant to collect anywhere, including your capital, you lose trade steering modifiers. There are times where collecting is useful but those scenarios are rare. Generally speaking, you want to setup chains of merchants steering towards your capital. You can also ignore a node if its already having all of its value steered the way you want, examples of this is the Carribean and the Oman/Ethiopia nodes since everyone typically feeds them the same way.
Generally speaking you want to setup your merchants in a long chain. At the start of the game typically you just set them to two trade nodes that feed into your capital node. You automatically collect from your capital trade node. If you set any merchant to collect anywhere, including your capital, you lose trade steering modifiers. There are times where collecting is useful but those scenarios are rare. Generally speaking, you want to setup chains of merchants steering towards your capital. You can also ignore a node if its already having all of its value steered the way you want, examples of this is the Carribean and the Oman/Ethiopia nodes since everyone typically feeds them the same way.
Most stuff has been covered by others, but two more pieces of advice:
Conquests are expensive short term.
First you go to war, which will cost money as you raise maintenance and replace dead soldiers. Then you will face revolts that take even more money (and manpower) to beat down. Even then, the autonomy of the provinces will usually be high, giving a malus to income. If you capture provinces of the wrong culture/religion it's even worse. Eventually, the conquest will pay for itself, but expanding too fast can give short term problems, especially if you don't have experience handling rebels, etc.
Some countries are just dirt poor
As a new player, it's a good idea to start as a major, as you have more wiggle room (not just financially, but that too). It's no guarantee that thing will go smooth, and you should still follow all the other advice in the thread, but at least you will have the raw power to thrive. As a small or poor country, just one bad investment can set you back a decade, which is exciting if you're experienced and looking for a challenge, but just plain silly if you're struggling.
First couple of things.
Your main expenses are:
Army
Forts
Advisers
Navy
Your main incomes are:
Well this is tricky; in general the biggest sources of income are taxation, trade and production, but the amount of each individual income can vary based on context (geographical, political, historical, tech level etc). For example if you are physically located in a place that doesnt have great trade node, your trade income will only get so high no matter what (its basically not worth investing a lot into it, at some points in time at least); if you are located in a great end node (or a node where you can pull in a lot of trade from other nodes) then your trade income might overshadow all other sources of income - combined (Portugal is very capable of that for example).
So depending on your exact context, you should analyze what you have at your disposal and plan how to maximize it. If you have provinces with high base tax (or provinces where you can develop high base tax easily, such as farmlands) then you should build temples there as they give you +40%, so for every base tax you get, you basically get 40% more. Similarly if you have a valuable trade good, where you will build a manufactory, also plan to build a workshop. Stack bonuses that go well together (local tax modifier scales very well with base tax for example).
Now here are some things to consider:
When you start the game, generally (depending on size and context as i said earlier) you wont be making a lot of money. You have a couple of things you can do to improve your economy, but in 1444. only a few are at your disposal. You can develop provinces - which cost you monarch points - and if you do that, you will probably lag behind in technologies and ideas (every few dip/adm tech levels you will get +10% trade/production efficiency, and there are many ideas that give similar boons all over the idea tree). If you lag on technologies, you will also unlock buildings later, and some buildings can literally be game changers (temples and manufactories very much so). And aside from that you can play with advisers - either hire basic advisers of higher level OR use estates to generate 50% cheaper advisers. But as you can guess, if you go for advisers, you wont have enough money to go on early rapid expansion or save up for expensive buildings.
So to summarize:
In 1444. you cant afford everything. If you spread income everywhere equally, you wont be good at anything, and it might take a lot of time to benefit from that approach. Therefor it is in my opinion the best strategy to choose to focus on one thing, and then invest your resources toward that and keep going until you meet your objective. If you go on insane conquest spree literally from day one, it is not very likely that you will be able to maintain high level advisers, because military carries large costs with it (specially while at war when you cant turn the maintenance down). Without advisers, youre not getting maximal monarch points income, and thus you will have less mana to develop provinces. The more you conquer, the more it is likely you will also start lagging behind on ADM tech (as you need a lot of ADM points to core what you conquer). On the other side, if you stay peaceful, keep the maintenance low, and ally someone big (to make sure no one comes for you) you will be able to hire advisers (or save up money) or shift your resources in other ways to maximize the return on investment (build temples in all good provinces for example etc) - but this strategy of building up a powerful base before you start warring also comes at a price - you wont have conquered a lot (or anything at all) for as long as you stay peaceful.
In the end:
In the end i advise you to treat every game as a unique example, as politics and geography make things very different. As Moscovy, for example, i often simple conquer Novgorod and other minors, and then completely chill out for 50 years until i build up economy and ideas, and then simply go on a rampage conquering everything. It is as viable as conquering steppe people from day one imo. There is no "one size fits all" solutions. Try different things, see what works for you.
Your main expenses are:
Army
Forts
Advisers
Navy
Your main incomes are:
Well this is tricky; in general the biggest sources of income are taxation, trade and production, but the amount of each individual income can vary based on context (geographical, political, historical, tech level etc). For example if you are physically located in a place that doesnt have great trade node, your trade income will only get so high no matter what (its basically not worth investing a lot into it, at some points in time at least); if you are located in a great end node (or a node where you can pull in a lot of trade from other nodes) then your trade income might overshadow all other sources of income - combined (Portugal is very capable of that for example).
So depending on your exact context, you should analyze what you have at your disposal and plan how to maximize it. If you have provinces with high base tax (or provinces where you can develop high base tax easily, such as farmlands) then you should build temples there as they give you +40%, so for every base tax you get, you basically get 40% more. Similarly if you have a valuable trade good, where you will build a manufactory, also plan to build a workshop. Stack bonuses that go well together (local tax modifier scales very well with base tax for example).
Now here are some things to consider:
When you start the game, generally (depending on size and context as i said earlier) you wont be making a lot of money. You have a couple of things you can do to improve your economy, but in 1444. only a few are at your disposal. You can develop provinces - which cost you monarch points - and if you do that, you will probably lag behind in technologies and ideas (every few dip/adm tech levels you will get +10% trade/production efficiency, and there are many ideas that give similar boons all over the idea tree). If you lag on technologies, you will also unlock buildings later, and some buildings can literally be game changers (temples and manufactories very much so). And aside from that you can play with advisers - either hire basic advisers of higher level OR use estates to generate 50% cheaper advisers. But as you can guess, if you go for advisers, you wont have enough money to go on early rapid expansion or save up for expensive buildings.
So to summarize:
In 1444. you cant afford everything. If you spread income everywhere equally, you wont be good at anything, and it might take a lot of time to benefit from that approach. Therefor it is in my opinion the best strategy to choose to focus on one thing, and then invest your resources toward that and keep going until you meet your objective. If you go on insane conquest spree literally from day one, it is not very likely that you will be able to maintain high level advisers, because military carries large costs with it (specially while at war when you cant turn the maintenance down). Without advisers, youre not getting maximal monarch points income, and thus you will have less mana to develop provinces. The more you conquer, the more it is likely you will also start lagging behind on ADM tech (as you need a lot of ADM points to core what you conquer). On the other side, if you stay peaceful, keep the maintenance low, and ally someone big (to make sure no one comes for you) you will be able to hire advisers (or save up money) or shift your resources in other ways to maximize the return on investment (build temples in all good provinces for example etc) - but this strategy of building up a powerful base before you start warring also comes at a price - you wont have conquered a lot (or anything at all) for as long as you stay peaceful.
In the end:
In the end i advise you to treat every game as a unique example, as politics and geography make things very different. As Moscovy, for example, i often simple conquer Novgorod and other minors, and then completely chill out for 50 years until i build up economy and ideas, and then simply go on a rampage conquering everything. It is as viable as conquering steppe people from day one imo. There is no "one size fits all" solutions. Try different things, see what works for you.