How do I make any money?

[Emperor of Europe]

Hi

I just gave up on a pathetic attempt to lead Denmark to glory in the Grand Campaign. Since the income of Denmark is very low, I grabbed the Hansa COT in Holstein as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately that didn't make much of a difference. Even though I had a monopoly in the COT my yearly income wasn't much more than a 100 Ducats or so. And since I had a monthly deficit of 6-8 Ducats I could either spend my entire yearly income to cover the deficit, or I could go down in a spiral of inflation.

In the end I decided to take out extra loans to increase my infrastructure and take the stability hit of a bankrupcy. But even my brewery didn't make much, and if have yet to see any effect of the Voigts or Marshalls - how much are they supposed to increase taxes?

After the bankrupcy the situation was much the same: my yearly income was 100 Ducats or so, and I still lost 6-7 Ducats a month.

What am I doing wrong here? I seem to be unable to do anything about my yearly income, and to lower my monthly expenses.

Any tips or suggestions?

The poor Emperor

------------------
Uhm... nice province. I
think I'll take it.

 

[Hartmann]

Hey, I managed to have a balanced economy even with Sibir! Loosing 6 Gold per month is too much, of course. In my experience a loss of up til two can be countered by the treasury slider without increasing inflation too much. If not due to loans (interest rates), You simply must have a much too big standing army. You may also consider reducing the spending for the armies to 50% in peace times.

Hartmann

[This message has been edited by Hartmann (edited 20-11-2000).]

 

[Emperor of Europe]

Originally posted by Hartmann:
Hey, I managed to have a balanced economy even with Sibir! Loosing 6 Gold per month is too much, of course. In my experience a loss of up til two can be countered by the treasury slider without increasing inflation too much. If not due to loans (interest rates), You simply must have a much too big standing army. You may also consider reducing the spending for the armies to 50% in peace times.

Hartmann

[This message has been edited by Hartmann (edited 20-11-2000).]

Well the Danish army was pretty small since I had to quell lots of rebellions during the bankrupcy period, and I didn't have the money to increase it.

Now I'm playing France in the Grand Campaign and in 1520 I got a monthly deficit of 10 ducats even though I conquered the COT in Flanders, build 2 breweries and have marshalls in most of my provinces.

I'll try to lower the army expenses, that should help a lot.

Regards,

A troubled Emperor

 

[unmerged(199)]

My tips (for Denmark, but probably apply to most nations):

Lower the spending for your fleet in peace time not your army. Without exception, they are the greatest drain on your treasury, and you really don't need them much - I don't even bother to raise their wages during war, since I can't see any reason why they should be sailing around much anyway (the Danish coastline is far too long to defend adequately with less than 40-50 warships in any case).

I never, ever, lower the spending for the army. Even a huge army costs very little compared to the fleet.

Lowering the wages for the fleet will save you 4-6d a month alone!

Secondly, don't be afraid of taking 0.2 - 0.3% rise in inflation per year - assuming you build up your empire, you can easily recoup this by installing plenty of Governors (Burgermesters) when you get infrastructur 5 (or is it 6?). At 0.3% a year, you'll still have way lower inflation than any of the other nations (in the current game, some of the others have 100% inflation by 1600 - compared to the peak of 33% I reached before I began installing governors).

Loans increase your inflation (and also cost interest) - avoid like the plague unless you are badly in need of the cash.

Research Trade - Infrastructure - Trade - Infrastructure - Trade... well, you get the drift. Each step you research in these boost your tax and trade efficiency by 5%. You start at 20% efficiency (or is it 25%?), so the first level increases your trade or tax revenues by 25%. This is ultra-important.

Finally, if you can, grab the Mexican real-estate with gold mines and colonize it. In general, colonies + trade posts are a huge income producer - especially furs and tobacco give very high returns. This is the point where you might consider going to war with one of the big powers - if you can defeat them in a couple of sea battles, you are likely to steal their maps. Of course, you also need a conquistador - but this seems to be a quite common event.

And (my favorite) annex all of the Hansa. 30k+30k+30k+10k+10k provinces give a sizable amount of taxes, compared to the lowly populated Danish isles (Sjælland only has 10k inhabitants).

 

[Hartmann]

Well, that explains something! I was wondering the whole morning why Emperor of Europe had such high monthly losses. But as I never tried a seafaring nation up til now, I didn´t know about those high ship maintainance costs! The only thing I´m not sure strategy is right, is wether loans increase inflation. I thought they don´t (or only indirectly, because You have to shove the treasury slider to the right to compensate for the increase in monthly losses).

Hartmann

 

[Emperor of Europe]

Originally posted by strategy:
My tips (for Denmark, but probably apply to most nations):
.

Great! Thanks a lot for the help - I guess I'll just have to try again

Regards,

E.

 

[unmerged(199)]

It seems to me that a loan directly boosts your inflation (I'm not 100% sure though).

A note on governors - installing them in all of my European provinces (see the screenshots in the AAR) reduced inflation from about 30% to 10%.

Also, one can't overestimate the worth of those Mexican gold provinces (especially the heavily populated Aztec capital).