Tips on making money?

[Miss Vela]

So I've been stuck in this cycle of having the greedy trait, going stewardship/wealth lifestyle focus and still not having enough gold to go around. The highest I've ever gotten was around +5 per month. I saw on reddit that you can banish wealthy prisoners that are within your realm to get their gold, but I'm not sure if it still works, I haven't tried it yet. Any tips on swimming in gold?

[Tao]

I'm not too sure of that myself. One way I managed to make a ton of money was just by attacking and taking prisoners. It expands my empire, creates new vassals that I can tax, and gives me prisoners that I can ransom. I don't know if that is the best way to get rich though.

[CrUsHeR]

Well the "Golden Obligations" perk seems quite mandatory.

Then send your spymaster to find secrets, at your own court and at foreign courts as well (the latter takes longer per search cycle). Blackmail everyone for their naughty secrets and demand payment.
Characters with a strong hook can also be milked every couple of years for the same secret, and you could even find multiple secrets on the same character.

For some quick on-demand money you can also get the perk to extort your subjects, though this is nowhere near as good as the Golden Obligations.


You also can join wars of other people, as long as your raised troops don't cost more money than you get back in ransom, favors and sieged holdings. Here you also want to ransom most prisoners for a favor, rather than gold (e.g. a courtier would only give 10g ransom, but the hook is worth 50-300g depending on your progress).
This has the side effect of also boosting your prestige / fame / piety / devotion depending on the type of conflict, which then allows you to pay for your own wars. Most importantly, unlocking higher ranking CB types, like holy war for a duchy rather than just a county.


And then invest your money into new buildings and ultimately holdings.

[Twelvefield]

War is bad for your economy. Avoid that. Use other means to gain power, like Golden Obligation. If your Spymaster can't find hooks, you can fabricate them.

Eventually you will have to fight wars, if you do: make them short. If your army is sizeable, you can split it and send home the parts you do not need. Hopefully you can fight and still keep a positive balance.

The early Stewardship perks give you better taxes, combine that with fabricating hooks and Golden Obligation.

The more vassals you have, the more money they will kick up to you. You can alter their contracts to make them pay more. A lot of people take the extra levies. Levies are just meat shields. If you take gold, you both get money and make our vassals too poor to afford mercenaries or large standing armies. That keeps them in check. Of course, use hooks rather than incur tyranny.

Expand slowly but surely. Expand too fast and you'll have to spend on wars you don't want and on putting out fires everywhere. It's better to be poor and stable than less poor and on the brink of civil war.

Increasing Crown Authority should also help. The less potshots your vassals take against you, the less you have to spend on wars against them. A well-placed bribe can be cheaper than a war.

[Commander Boreale?]

There are a few more perks in the money tree worth grabbing. "It is MY realm" gives you a decision to extort your vassals or guests or peasant and can get you some quick cash. There's another one further down that lets you sell titles (basically trade prestige for gold). Use these to get some initial coin, then reinvest that in gold producing buildings.

[VayneVerso]

I've gotten golden obligations before, but if often seemed like I was mostly getting secrets on broke guests. Aren't most courtiers and such basically penniless and you essentially have to get secrets on the landed characters? Didn't seem as good as people made it out to be, but I have to admit, I didn't explore it too deeply. Seems like I always have just or honest characters that hate blackmailing people, too.

[Twelvefield]

Just, Honest characters generally don't do well with making big money. This fails to surprise me, I don't know about you.

Yes, landed characters tend to be wealthier than non-landed ones. Fabricate hooks rather than search for them. That way you can actively target the one-percenters.

[Breadsmith]

Be a nice-pious Catholic, then ask the Pope for a small loan.

[Avataristche]

Have a big stable personal domain and build economic buildings. Ideally you want to center it on a special building location, like a holy site of your faith or a mine. You might wanna google "ck3 special buildings locations" or something.

[chomisek]

I always grant one of my counties to the best steward my courtier can marry(usually genius Kopke). I grant him city and then make him lord mayor, it's even better when you have both city and barony in the county, so when you land him you hopefully unlock architect tree, put him on council, develop county and you can build stone quarries in like 2 months, other buildings 5-7 months. He gives you load of taxes from city and quite a lot levies from barony(contributing almost same amount of levies like my best feudal vassal) despite being lord mayor.

[KrasniiKot]

All great tips above. I generally go the Schemer route at first, get kidnapping and then make money ransoming. This game is deathly boring in trying to make money at the start. I must admit I just let it run and click on "event" questions and just let it run while I play other games. The lack of gold is crippling and kind of ruins it, IMO. (Yes, you can raid... for 12 gold a pop, which is almost what I lose in taxes by having my army raiding.)