Show me the money - how do I make more as England early in the game?

[unmerged(36339)]

Playing as England in 1419, I'm wondering how to maximize my money. This is before any of the meaningful infra or trade techs.

I'm tightly capped with troops so I assume I need to seize some provinces with grain.

Is warlike expansion the best for the economy or sitting tight, at peace, under the military cap, generating coin?

What are the next best steps from a strategy point for raising more money? I've added tax collectors everywhere and that's the only tech ability I have right now.

I've also triggered some inadvertent loans and I'm not sure how. No events triggered the unexpected expenses. I keep my slider to the left, losing money of course, but I thought when the account hit zero it just reduced the tech spending accordingly. Am I wrong, did this trigger loans?

As a newbie spoiled by my first games with Spain and France, is this the case for everyone that England is much more of a challenge in 1419 because it begins with war, low stability, and you keep getting repeated stability hits via events? I like it, but just wanted to know how much more challenging England is in comparison. Once I perfect this, what should be my next challenge?

Sorry for so many questions. Any help greatly appreciated.

 

[unmerged(62912)]

I'm also a newbie at the game, but have started playing with England for my first ever game. Whilst there are much more experienced players who can give you better advice, I found that kepping the treasury slider all the way to the left, taking the slight monthly hit and living solely off the census income each year works for me. I didn't take any loans, and built tax collectors everywhere as soon as possible. I also made peace (then put the maintainance sliders for land and naval at 50%) as quickly as possible to allow my economy to recover a little. I then sent out traders to Flanderen to bring in a little extra.
After a decade or so I was in a position powerful enough to support land troops and commenced a war with Ireland - since she's a ripe target and in the early days has no alliances, so no powerful friends to come and help her out. She's pretty easy to defeat, and will net you a large clutch of territory. Then I stationed the soldiers I used for the invasion in those territories, splitting them equally, to put down rebellions.
I then went back to peace, lowered maintainence, upped trade, etc., etc., then a decade later repeated the process with Scotland.

I'm now in 1459, own all of Ireland except Ulster (which belongs to Venice), all of Scotland except Lothian, have several hundred ducats, no inflation, and am dominating the Isle De France and Flanderen markets.

 

[unmerged(32886)]

Playing as England in 1419, I'm wondering how to maximize my money. This is before any of the meaningful infra or trade techs.

Generally, in SP I tech infra and trade continuously (on occassion switching to land/naval) to avoid the ahead of time penalty with techs). But I would avoid minting as of yet since your income isn't very high and it would be a waist of inflation.

I'm tightly capped with troops so I assume I need to seize some provinces with grain.

I'm assuming it's the vanilla map you're playing. I've never bothered with grain provs much since most of the time I can support much more than I need. So skip that I'd say.

Is warlike expansion the best for the economy or sitting tight, at peace, under the military cap, generating coin?

Generally, peace is the best this for the economy but peace doesn't get you provs etc... Keep in mind that you should always avoid being at 0 badboy. Now, for those "gamey" people around here ( ) the loot strategy works excellent but IMO it takes away a lot of the fun. Generally it means that you invade as many provs at the same time, so that when the new month comes you get a lot of loot (once a year). That month (just before the provs start smoking) you should mint. This is a good strategy against France and her allies. However if done right, this can generate a lot of cash in a matter of decades (going after rich provs such as gold provs, CoT's, capitals). To maximize profits, try loot provs all in the same month of the year and prolonge the war as long as possible to keep looting. This can render in the beginning 200d (easily more) of loot.

What are the next best steps from a strategy point for raising more money? I've added tax collectors everywhere and that's the only tech ability I have right now.

After tax collectors, it takes a long long time before you can get other improvements. Just focus on Infra and Trade techs and start trading furiously at tech 3.

I've also triggered some inadvertent loans and I'm not sure how. No events triggered the unexpected expenses. I keep my slider to the left, losing money of course, but I thought when the account hit zero it just reduced the tech spending accordingly. Am I wrong, did this trigger loans?

Loans would mean you've spend more in a month then you got and your treasury was at 0. It's correct what you assumed with the slider. Taking away events, maybe something else happened. Where you in an alliance where the leader of your alliance offered the enemy money in exchange for peace? Or maybe your capital got looted? This also brings your MI (monthly income) down quite a bit. And I assume your troops are below your supportable amount. Can't think of anything else. Maybe other people.

As a newbie spoiled by my first games with Spain and France, is this the case for everyone that England is much more of a challenge in 1419 because it begins with war, low stability, and you keep getting repeated stability hits via events? I like it, but just wanted to know how much more challenging England is in comparison. Once I perfect this, what should be my next challenge?

England isn't really that difficult once you get the hang of it. Just go after France/Scotland and try to take as much as possible in loot and provs (again, bare in mind the badboy ). Preferable in defensive wars. No need to annex Eire/Scotland this soon.

Sorry for so many questions. Any help greatly appreciated.

Hope this helps. Prob other people will (or have already) also post in this thread to help you.

 

[unmerged(4344)]

I'm tightly capped with troops so I assume I need to seize some provinces with grain.

Not really. Grain does get a little extra, but pretty much any province of your religion will help. Ideally you also want state culture, and high population for support limits. As England, you want French provinces. Don't worry about grain. (Anyway France has a lot of it.)

Is warlike expansion the best for the economy or sitting tight, at peace, under the military cap, generating coin?

If you choose your wars correctly and fight them well, war is better. This is definitely true when your BB is up to half of its max; from there up you start to get DoWs against you. Assuming you can handle them, though, it's fine.

You don't want to break the BB cap (on very hard) unless you know what you are doing. So, if you're up against it, war is a bad idea.

Note also that synchronized looting is a super powerful way of raising gold; even if you don't mint it, you get a considerable amount of income from it. So it is another way in which war can pay, even without gaining territory.

Finally, note that AIs get lots of free gold, just for being at war. This keeps them kind of dangerous to you, but it is also very exploitable. DoW a small AI (ideally one which you can DoW for cheap in BB terms). Then siege it down, and wait. Eventually most AIs will offer up to $300 for peace. Some can offer more -- I took $525 off the Timurids yesterday after having sync looted them for 10 years. Tom exploited this aspect of the AI in his immortal Xhosa WC. A permanent CB against a minor can be a precious thing.

I've also triggered some inadvertent loans and I'm not sure how. No events triggered the unexpected expenses. I keep my slider to the left, losing money of course, but I thought when the account hit zero it just reduced the tech spending accordingly. Am I wrong, did this trigger loans?

If your spending is more than your monthly income, you get a loan. In general this won't be the case, though, unless you have an army larger than you can support.

As a newbie spoiled by my first games with Spain and France, is this the case for everyone that England is much more of a challenge in 1419 because it begins with war, low stability, and you keep getting repeated stability hits via events? I like it, but just wanted to know how much more challenging England is in comparison. Once I perfect this, what should be my next challenge?

I don't recall England being particularly stab-hit. I think you've just gotten unlucky within the normal variance of random events.

It does begin at war, but that's a blessing (a defensive war!) once you know how to exploit it. You get such killer leaders.

I think England is a bit harder than France or Spain, though. So your progression is good. But you are almost out of the easy powers. China is easy, until you hit the nasty events. Then the Ottomans. They are considerably harder than the other great powers until you know what to do, but their position and leaders are superb. I've not played Sweden, but they have great kings and leaders; downside is winter up there makes ops hard.

Then there is Byzantium and Novgorod, which are both practically impossible for a newbie. Try Muscovy instead for a Russia game. It's still hard at the start, but once you become Russia you are set.

 

[unmerged(33767)]

Would jus like to side comment about Sweden, playing them now and my god, they are REALLY poor (ACGEEP). So they are definately not easy.

 

[unmerged(36339)]

Thanks for all of the wonderful responses. Need help understanding the points about looting and doing this all at once. I can't find anything in the wiki or the manual on what that strategy is all about or how you loot or how it works.

Are you talking about attacking and waiting on the peace offer with money and not taking any territory?

And, to answer several questions, I was over the support limit so is that what forced the loans? I had treasury slider all the way to the left and when the balance hit zero, normally you would stay at zero, no loan would be taken and tech spending would automatically reduce to hold at zero, right?

In my case, by being over the support limit, is this what threw off the premise above. Or is my understanding totally wrong?

 

[unmerged(18712)]

Being over the supply limit tremedously increases your army maintenance costs. You can see that in the financial overview tab.
When the counter hits zero indeed it reduces the tech spending (if the tech spending at all is bigger than the sum of maintenance of course). You may want to go into the options menu while playing and look through the event options. If you set a window to show up when you take loan manually (it can happen even if you don't notice it) by somehow it will immedietly pop up. That helps alot in seeing the couse of your problem.


Edit: As far as I know autosaves doesn't save the event popup options so they revert back to original when loading up an autosave game.

 

[unmerged(4344)]

Yes, being over your support can force a loan quite easily. If you're just a little over, it's unlikely except with a very small nation (i.e. single-province). But if you're a lot over, it can happen.

Go to your spending sliders when you are not at zero treasury, and you can see how much your monthly income is. (Put one of them to 100%, then mouse over it for the tooltip.) If your per-month military support spending is more than that, then you'll be forced into a load when $ hits 0.

On synced looting, The Real Deal explained it nicely in this post:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=246845
Unfortunately, he has been banned, apparently for saying doubleplus unCorrect things about homosexuals; and he has replaced the helpful pictures that used to be in that thread with his defense. But you can still read it profitably, keeping in mind that the pictures used to be relevant.

Maybe we need a synced looting FAQ. Hmm.

As for "attacking and waiting on the peace offer with money", that's a completely separate thing. It's just the normal war/peace system. Although I guess you could call it looting in a broad sense (use of force to get money), it's not looting in the EU2 game rules sense.

 

[kolmy]

Generally, in SP I tech infra and trade continuously (on occassion switching to land/naval)

What's the advantages of infra techs after the 6 level?

 

[Dspencer]

What's the advantages of infra techs after the 6 level?

the higher your infra/trade the more money you get from provinces. Go to your financial display screen, and near the top you'll see your income, and then a percentage. Roughly speaking, the actual income you get goes up about 10% every tech level. Plus, for trade techs 5or6 and 10 i think you get extra merchants...not positive though.

 

[unmerged(56576)]

Just don't worry about troops if you choose to stay in Continental England. Build your navy, disband some uncessary troops and promote bailiffs. Conquer Eire, Scotland and sit and wait until the XVI century. England has a rather solid economy and I can get a good income without minting.

 

[unmerged(36339)]

Yes, being over your support can force a loan quite easily. If you're just a little over, it's unlikely except with a very small nation (i.e. single-province). But if you're a lot over, it can happen.

Go to your spending sliders when you are not at zero treasury, and you can see how much your monthly income is. (Put one of them to 100%, then mouse over it for the tooltip.) If your per-month military support spending is more than that, then you'll be forced into a load when $ hits 0.

On synced looting, The Real Deal explained it nicely in this post:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=246845
Unfortunately, he has been banned, apparently for saying doubleplus unCorrect things about homosexuals; and he has replaced the helpful pictures that used to be in that thread with his defense. But you can still read it profitably, keeping in mind that the pictures used to be relevant.

Maybe we need a synced looting FAQ. Hmm.

As for "attacking and waiting on the peace offer with money", that's a completely separate thing. It's just the normal war/peace system. Although I guess you could call it looting in a broad sense (use of force to get money), it's not looting in the EU2 game rules sense.

The link about synched looting is not clear or understandable to me. More help please. Sorry.

 

[unmerged(36339)]

Just don't worry about troops if you choose to stay in Continental England. Build your navy, disband some uncessary troops and promote bailiffs. Conquer Eire, Scotland and sit and wait until the XVI century. England has a rather solid economy and I can get a good income without minting.

It's amazing how different each game is by switching nations. Without knowing it, I guess I'm started to figure out this game. I could see that troops were putting me way over the support limits and causing financial problems. That should have answered my own question that I needed a much smaller force. And, that consequence would have shown me not to be too aggressive in the early years.

Exactly as you advised: Focus on Navy. Sit tight with the troops. Build the economy.

This forum is outstanding and many thanks again.

 

[th3freakie]

If you don't want to be gamey, you can just role-play a period of peacefull development by building tax-colectors, reducing the army size and gathered money to build some manofactories.

 

[unmerged(36339)]

Here's my progress so far. I tried two different saves and strategies. To whittle down my significantly over-capped troops, I decided to attack like crazy and thin them out that way. Grabbed all of Scotland but went bankrupt in the process because the loans just kept piling up by being over the cap.

So, the second strategy was to disband all of my troops down to the cap, stay peaceful, pay off the loans, get the economy rolling.

With defenses down to the cap, France DOW'd me and Scotland joined in. Getting a royal pounding on all fronts.

This is such an excellent dilemma to have to balance. I can see where England must be very careful about engaging in land battles, but the naval prospects are huge (kind of sounds like history, doesn't it?)

Sounds like I better count on expansion through colonies. I'm sure I can find a new world, like a New England, and not have any worries with rebellious, taxpaying citizens :rofl:

 

[unmerged(36339)]

How wise and possible would it have been for me to spend money improving relations with Scotland and France?

 

[unmerged(4344)]

For that case, not particularly wise nor very possible. Buying favor generally takes a fair amount of cash; there's a lot of variance but I would guess that letters might average +10 relations, +30 for a personal gift, and +90 for a state gift. Something like that. So bribing them up wouldn't be cheap.

Meanwhile, your relations will go down for several reasons. The main one is that nations with CB on each other automatically lose relations by maybe a point a month; I think RM stops this but not sure. Since you hold parts of France's core, he's got CB on you. You've got a perm CB on Scotland (and Ireland) just for them existing. So, you're going to have a real problem keeping relations up.

You could do it, of course, with enough money. But if you're trying to take out loans and whatnot, I don't think you have the money. It's really not that important. Take out Scotland. Either take France, if you've got the military skill and power, or pull out of France entirely and give it back to France. They won't have a CB on you once you're gone, and in any case you can easily stop them from coming across the Channel so they can't really threaten you.

 

[th3freakie]

How wise and possible would it have been for me to spend money improving relations with Scotland and France?

Not worth it really.

Why are you having troubles with France at all by the way? If you don't have any more provinces in continental europe they should in theory just ignore you.

As for the scots, just wait until they're without an alliance, atack them and vassalise. That should give you a safe frontier plusa boost to yearly income.

 

[unmerged(36339)]

Haven't done anything other than the starting positions of 1419. When exploring the two options, attacking to reduce my over-the-cap troops, I went broke.

When disbanding the troops to under the cap, France and Scotland immediately came poring in and DOW in my weakened condition.

 

[unmerged(4344)]

On looting, I suppose I should write something for real. We really need pictures, because the game isn't very overt about showing it. But anyway...

Whenever you have an army in an enemy province at a month's end, and the province is currently unlooted, then you loot that province. You can tell a looted province by its little city-icon on the map: when it's looted, the icon is "smoking". Once looted, the province stays looted for the next 12 months, and you can loot again on the 13th month.

Note that it doesn't matter whether your armies are moving, or not. Or even whether they are fleeing. Just that they are there. So it is quite possible to loot even against a superior foe, by entering the province and then immediately running away. This costs you warscore, of course. But if you intend to eventually take control of all of his provinces, that doesn't matter.

When you loot, you gain, as generic monthly income, the base tax value of the looted province times two. (You can see the BTV by clicking on the province and mousing over its income "Province Income" display; the tooltip shows the income breakdown.)

The loot value, to my knowledge, is modified only by your country-specific parts of the Province Modifier: your Stability, War taxes, and State Religion. It is not modified by any province-specific thing, i.e. culture or religion match to your country.

If you mint in the month which you get loot, then it is turned into gold, no different than any other minting. Except, of course, that the stream of income that normal minting works on, is coming in smoothly over the year. There's no month that's better or worse for it. Whereas, with looting, if you work at it, you can synchronize your looting so that all of the provinces which you are looting have their loot-month happen together. Then you mint just in that month, and get the entire year's income as gold for just 0.1 inflation!

Note that the owner of a province in peacetime gets its base tax value twice, once as gold in the yearly census tax, then again spread through the year as monthly income. Since he gets it in 12 months, he gets slightly more tax income from the province as you do looting. (He also gets production income, so, especially later in the game it is much more lucrative on net to own rather than loot.) But if he needs gold, he would have to mint all year to get as much as you can minting 1/12 of the year!