Is it normal to get 3-4 gold max per month for a LONG time?

[ApathicAlpaca]

I never played CK-like game before so this MAY be normal but for a really long time after starting (as petty king M. in Ireland), I sit on 2.5-4 gold per month (depending on if I focused into steward or not).
In other words, even forging a claim takes 30 months (!!) easily to pay for. A simple building like hunting ground can take even longer to pay for.

Is this normal? I thought the idea is to manage a realm and not having to chose 'binary' between getting a claim or doing ANYTHING else. I can understand you have to keep a good eye on your gold but only ever being able to pay for ONE thing and one thing only is not motivating.

[Theandal]

Yes. You slowly build yourself up. You play many lifetimes in the game and things don't happen instantly. Play on speed 4 or 5, then drop down to 1 or 2 speed or pause when something is happening
If you want speed. play Vikings, and raid for gold

[Kimlin]

It takes some time to ramp up. I would focus on economic buildings. That .4 and .2 gold per month starts to add up.

When going to war make sure you siege cities and ransom captured courtiers.

There is a mechanic that can make a lot of money. If you take Golden Obligations (first option in the left stewardship tress) you can have your spymaster look for secrets and then black mail then demand payment. You can make 2-400 gold per year this way.

[ApathicAlpaca]

Interesting, I saw that option but thought it's probly balanced around the normal income, so giving you maybe 20-30 gold on use. Looks like you get much more, I will check it out.

[bulbatrs]

if you are catholic you can ask pope for money, costs 250 piety and he gives depending on income with minimum of 100. secrets give gold depending on the title of the victim with 10 gold for a commoner and 50 for vassal, can get more with higher titles. it can give decent money, but you have to search for them with your spymaster and thus he is not doing other things and it's very inconsistent, excellent tool for small domains to make income and snowball, but falls off hard later on.
I would also note that you can claim titles with piety from the same faith with a perk in learning middle tree. it's quite far off, but with a combo of 50% off from martial perk it gives very cheap and easy way to expand.

[ApathicAlpaca]

Yeah ok, so demanding mone for hooks does not work most of the time because '... has no gold!'. Great. So far I used it 3 times for 10, 10 and 50 gold. Too little for the time invested.

Now I got another question.

I wanted to attempt kingdom of Ireland within the lifetime of petty king M (so no split of duchies after his death).
However there's just no way how impossibly expensive wars are both in gold and especially prestige. For example, the big duchy on the left island side (Carchonne?) is impossible to take for me since some Norwegian king now stands behind it with 6000+ army.
With ALL MY ALLIES I might be able to do it but 2/3 are far away and there is no way on earth how you could get enough prestige to call them all to war (in addition to atrocious prestige cost to even start the war in the first place).

So what do I do?
I wait for 10 years until I have enough prestige to go to war with all allies? FOR A SINGLE COUNTY??? (apparently that's the only thing I get, not the duchy title but only ONE county of it. But I battle the full force of duchy + their allies, yeah sure...)

There's probly something I misunderstand or overlook because it should be possible to do it within the first lifetime.

PS: Apparently you can go below zero with prestige. Not sure tbh... For next county of Connacht I have to do the same sh*t again?

[Theandal]

You get prestige from Hosting Feasts and going Hunting. Sway people in your court, like your priest or spymaster and powerful vassals. When Swaying someone of a different culture you sometimes get a event that gives you 75 prestige.

Fabricate claim repeatedly with priest until he gives you Duchy Claim. You don't have to accept a 1 county claim and pay the gold. There is always the option not to spend your money on getting the fabricated claim. Duchy claims are more expensive though and you basically only get them with High skill priest.

Stop thinking about 'This takes long time'. Play speed 4 or 5 when waiting for gold or cooldowns or fabrications.

edit. And it only requires ~ 50% of Ireland to get the King title, you only need 2 duchy titles and then you can create Kingdom title, so don't need to worry about conquering all of Ireland in 1 lifetime.

[Taity]

At the start of the game (especially if your playing as ruler of a small area) your income will be rather small until you start to build up your domain. Depending on how you start, how you plan to grow and expand and other factors will influence your income and ability to make income, but there are a few things that will be a constant regardless.

1) Money from secrets: There are a few ways to do this after you take the 'Golden Obligations' perk.
1a) Spymaster, Using your spymaster to spy on your own court or other courts you can gain a random secret to a random character within that court
1b) Fabricate Hook. After taking the perk from the 'Intrigue' skill tree called "Fabricate Hook" you can fabricate a random (weak or strong, its like a 20% chance to be a strong hook off memory from an earlier topic). Because you can choose the target you can select leaders with good amounts of gold (you can easily earn between 50 gold (at the early game) up to 300+ gold (later in the game) per hook you make this way.

2) Money from Development: Set your 'Steward' to the "Develop County" Scheme and this will increase the development of that county. This is a slow process and the benefits take time but it makes a huge difference in the end. Also Development affects adjacent counties development growth (ie a county with 15 development will influence any adjacent county with lower than 15 development to grow faster)

3) Money from Region Growth: By focusing on the economic buildings in your counties you can really start to add up a huge +gold income per month. The + 0.2, + 0.3, + 0.5 gold bonuses you get for the merely building the appropriate building is massive, and later upgrades net you more bonuses which help out in other area's.

4) Money from Conquest/war: By being warlike (either as a clan or feudal government) you can make gold really quickly in numerous ways.
1) Attack cities and castles that have nice amounts of loot (utilise multiple armies if able, and your commanders (have a siege expert doing your attacks on cities/castles to speed up the process for sieges or a raiding expert if your a clan ruler and raiding.
2) Ransom off your captured victims. Not all prisoners will result in direct gold. However they can be used in many other ways, a hook on a character in someone else's court can pay off down the road in numerous ways, and a hook against the prisoners liege is even better. But dont discount being able to 'recruit' really good courtiers/knights when you capture them in battles/raids/sieges.
2a) If your a clan government, try to have numerous raiding parties if you have the manpower and/or outnumber the enemy (this kinda applies to feudal governments also but clans make better use of it). So long as your attacking force has more units than is defending the castle/city the raid/siege timer will count down. Just make sure you leave behind enough men to account for attrition.

5) Religion. If you have a head of faith you can use your piety in exchange for large amounts of gold. This can be useful to get a quick boost of gold when needed like in the middle of a war.
Furthermore if you fabricate a hook on your head of faith you can always be sure that you will get a decent amount of gold for a hook regardless of if its a strong or weak hook (strong hooks will net you more gold tho)



These are just a few ways you can make/increase your money at any stage of the game