Why is making Money so ABSURDLY slow?

[aquila]

At the moment I just try to play as a small Count, build my way up. It feels more natural than playing as king instantly and having all those confusing decisions to make.

Problem with this however is the laughable small amount of Money one gets.
You start by getting a Doctor and already -50 debt. Everything is so freaking expensive and apart from raiding some settlements for 0,3 Gold I dont see many methods of aquiring more faster.

Bribing someone is up to 80 GOLD, EIGHTY. making this back by taxes takes probably like 10 years.

I get that a lot in this game is about waiting and patience, but jesus. How can I get some gold early as a smaller count?

[Team Triss]

There are some perks in various trees like Steward that allow you to shake money out of the money tree, but focus primarily on building up your holdings. Things like farms give decent taxes; .5 per month might not seem like much but it adds up as you build and upgrade more.

This game is all about long term planning.

[ste]

You can get about 50 from raiding, if you lead the raid party yourself.

I think money is a bit easier than ck2 to come by. Its not long after the start money stops being an issue

[GorishiDan]

If you're stewardship focused, not only you'll get some more income but you'll get some stewardship events where u can get as much 300-500 gold depending on which event it is

If you dont mind mods, there is this one called "currency exchange" where it gives you custom decisions to trade one currency for another, for instance, prestige for gold, gold for piety, there's one decision that gives you gold in exchange of dread cuz you send your soldiers to extort people - i like it. Can feel "cheaty" for some people since its not really a feature of the game but i find it immersive so *shrug*

[Zero, Dark Knight]

Gold income is directly tied to realm size, but there're a few ways around it... regardless of what people say about perks and traits, this is a fundamental truth for only the player.

- if the AI aren't making income they can't pay your demands via hooks. - so how do we make gold via methods relating to non-hooks? I'll focus on this here.

Well I've found to make gold in an optimal fashion, you want to use as many systems as you can with overlapping bonuses.

A good starting method is modifying -your contract to your liege-, if you can, give higher troops, and trade it for council position guaranteed. Demand the role of Steward in his/her council.

If in early (876, maybe even consider trading Forced Partition, (you can always adjust it later when succession laws are unlocked.) as you're stuck to it anyway, basically, for -1 rank taxes paid to liege.)

This would give you +3.0 + +20% taxes from your realm, if you then add in your own steward on Collecting Taxes that's another % modifier and then you can even swap to Steward life style for +10% extra on top of all of those.

A good spouse with +Steward job and Steward with good skill can bring you in random gold via events and of course there're the events where you get to invest in Smithies and Jeweller's for -even more +% gold income.-

You can also get the traits which help you such as Greedy (+15% tax on top of that.)

I hope these tips helped you.

[Tarshaid]

Originally posted by spooky aquila:

Problem with this however is the laughable small amount of Money one gets.
You start by getting a Doctor and already -50 debt. Everything is so freaking expensive and apart from raiding some settlements for 0,3 Gold I dont see many methods of aquiring more faster.

Raiding settlements can also lead to you capturing a bunch of people, and it so happens that the AI will gladly fork over gold as ransom (from 10 to 300 depending on who you capture from whom, and the "golden obligation" steward skill makes it even better). Capturing knights in battle also works. Of course you're going to need to raid people with money, and a useless tribe near you is likely as poor as you are, but there's always a bunch of parameters to consider. Anyway there's likely different ways to answer your question depending on who and when you play, I'd expect subsaharian tribes of 837 to be dirt poor but that's okay.

[stars2heaven]

No one mentioned asking the Pope for money. When you combine everything together, from ransoms, to hooks, to the Pope, money isn't that bad to come by. As a count it's going to suck either way, you should expect that you won't be able to pay for every option available to you. You just have to expand and get through it.

[Go0lden_Archer]

1. Raiding. Look for where you go when raiding. Some places arent as profitable as others. Also if you're a viking you can sail around the globe for raids. So go raid monasteries or... Send out a raiding party into Constantinople and become rich lol

2. First perk from stewardship left tree that allows you to exchange hooks for gold. Take it, always. Any little ♥♥♥♥ that you can ransom you can exchange for a hook if they (or whomever pays you) have gold. And then snatch up to 300 gold from them for that hook. And if you have strong hook on someone it can be a repeatable.
On king+ levels it gets riducuouls if your religion forbids fornication and adultery. Amount of cuckolds in this game is crazy and you can put them all in jail to release with hooks lol

3. Abducting kings/emperors. For kings iirc you get 300 for emperors 500. You can abduct dukes for 200 also iirc.

4. Taxes and waiting for couple thousand years xD

[Lovecraft's Cat]

Note, you shouldn't hire a court physician or knights if you have money problems. Just marry off your courtiers. Works for councilors too.

[Xef]

Originally posted by Go0lden_Archer:

1. Raiding. Look for where you go when raiding. Some places arent as profitable as others. Also if you're a viking you can sail around the globe for raids. So go raid monasteries or... Send out a raiding party into Constantinople and become rich lol

2. First perk from stewardship left tree that allows you to exchange hooks for gold. Take it, always. Any little ♥♥♥♥ that you can ransom you can exchange for a hook if they (or whomever pays you) have gold. And then snatch up to 300 gold from them for that hook. And if you have strong hook on someone it can be a repeatable.
On king+ levels it gets riducuouls if your religion forbids fornication and adultery. Amount of cuckolds in this game is crazy and you can put them all in jail to release with hooks lol

3. Abducting kings/emperors. For kings iirc you get 300 for emperors 500. You can abduct dukes for 200 also iirc.

4. Taxes and waiting for couple thousand years xD

Abducting's been nerfed, you got pretty horrid chances to capture foreign rulers now.

If you want to use abduction for gold here's something you can do:
1) Make a child
2) While your child is your courtier offer him/her/it/whatever as a ward for a theocratic emperor's or king's realm priest who happens to be filthy rich
3) He will become your guest making him an easy abduction target, so abduct him
4) Banish him and take his gold (I've had these fellas have over 50k gold, they'd probably have even more towards the end of the game if they remain untouched)

Edit: I forgot that to banish people for gold they need to be your courtier instead of a guest. So instead of offering a ward you'll have to get them to become your courtier instead, probably easiest to fabricate a hook on them. Once they're your courtiers you can then abduct them to imprison them without tyranny and banish them for their gold.

[GorishiDan]

Originally posted by Xef:

Abducting's been nerfed, you got pretty horrid chances to capture foreign rulers now.

Regardless of their title i might add. Me as an emperor tried to abduct some poor baron from another realm and i saw a -50 modifier cuz he's a ruler and it makes since, abducting an all mighty baron with the power of an empire behind ya is ofc extremely difficult

[someblk]

Originally posted by stars2heaven:

No one mentioned asking the Pope for money. When you combine everything together, from ransoms, to hooks, to the Pope, money isn't that bad to come by. As a count it's going to suck either way, you should expect that you won't be able to pay for every option available to you. You just have to expand and get through it.

Just a small 'exploit' to add to this tip. When you reach a certain amount of cash, you get a large negative modifier to his likelihood to accept because 'you are already wealthy'. However, you can begin construction on new buildings to reduce your wealth and remove the modifier, then request the cash, and after you get it just cancel the buildings.

[acehawk]

Another vote for stewardship focus for Golden Hooks and Extort Subjects, both are massive moneymakers that can produce years worth of income in a fraction of the time and effort. I start with stewardship focus for almost every ruler until I'm an emperor.

The middle tree is also really nice, lets you get really large personal domains and helps with building tall.

Finally, if you have a liege get a hook on him by any means necessary and modify your contract to include Council Rights, then force yourself to be his steward, it gives you +2 gold income per month if he's a king, 3 if he's an emperor! (along with some other perks)

[Admod, the Equivocal]

Originally posted by spooky aquila:

Why is making Money so ABSURDLY slow?

Compared to what exactly?