Tips for military strength and gold making

[Chicken]

I’m about 75~ years into my first playthrough and I have successfully conquered all of Ireland and maybe 2/3 of Scotland. Despite that, my levies are only around 3-4 thousand, and I’m not making enough money monthly to support tons of regiments of real troops. For context, I usually make around 3 gold a month and peaked at 10 for a few months, but that was some years ago now.

I’ve spent most of my playthrough on military conquest, but at this point England will be in my sights soon and I don’t have the manpower OR the gold to give them a good run according to their manpower. I’ve also used quite a bit of prestige (?) calling powerful allies I’ve married to war, but that probably won’t be enough.

What should I be doing in the background of my run to acquire gold and troops? I’ve developed very little of my settlements at home because the hundreds of gold for .2 gold increase hasn’t seemed worth it. Can anyone give me some tips?

[Theandal]

Playing as tutorial Ireland?

Use Steward to Improve Development of your capital counties and the main counties you personally own. Increasing development gives you more levies and more taxes from the county. Build money generating buildings. Every county inside your main duchy should have 1 money generating building and 1 military building. Focus on the money buildings first.

If you want you could abandon Insular faith and convert to a good catholic boy and the pope will open his piggybank to you and when he likes you, you can get free gold every few years.

edit. Oh forget the abandoning insularism, I forgot that they can ask for gold too.

[Kimlin]

This still boils down to feudal or tribal.

Feudal - build economic buildings in your holdings. Farms and trade ports are good. For easy money take the golden obligations perk in the stewardship life style and then set your spy master to find secrets in England or France. Once you find a secret black mail the person.

Tribal - raid. Raid for gold and raid for prestige. Prestige is your main currency and the higher your level of fame the more taxes and levies your vassals provide.

Both- Build your Men at Arms. 1 siege weapon and then max archers or heavy infantry.
Use your female courtiers to matrilineal marry for the highest prowess knights.
Ally with France, Brittany or the Norse Kingdoms, HRE if 1066.

[ShepherdOfCats]

Development is underrated. If you have a good steward (around 20) go for the development task. The AI is terrible at using the development task. It's pretty much up to you to do it for them because if they use it at all it will only be for a short while, but focus on your capital first. If your capital development slows because you're near the cap (until further tech is unlocked), try to focus on counties with temporary modifiers that increase development (cattle herd, for example).

It doesn't seem worth it to increase development at first, but later it can really make a difference. If you stay with insular christianity they have some holy sites in/near ireland where you can build a temple once you go fuedal. Extra 2 gold per month for the holder of the holding. That's enough to pay for a few unraised MAA. A highly developed holding with a holy site temple is a decent money-maker.

England is going to be ahead of you in development if you're starting as ireland or scotland. It doesn't mean you're necessarily doing anything wrong, just that way by design, but it isn't impossible to catch up to the AI's development.

[Mommy's Good Boy]

Originally posted by Chicken:

What should I be doing in the background of my run to acquire gold and troops? I’ve developed very little of my settlements at home because the hundreds of gold for .2 gold increase hasn’t seemed worth it. Can anyone give me some tips?

If you're feudal:

Marry someone with high stewardship skill, and set them to "manage domain" in your council. This will boost your stewardship skill, which will increase the amount of gold you earn.

Set your steward to increase development in your capital, and build as many economy buildings as possible. If you don't have a steward with good stewardship skill, you can set your spymaster to find secrets in any court until you get a hook on someone with high stewardship. You can then use this hook to invite them to your court and set them as your steward.

[Lord of ice and fire]

Originally posted by ShepherdOfCats:

Development is underrated.

I aggree. development is for a long-term view, and people often make choices for a short-term view.

[The_Mad_Pooper]

Just leave your steward on development of capital for the entire game (developement improves taxes, levies and pop, at the expense of cultural and religious conversion costs). Also you need to take back some of the fiefs in your main duchy title from your own barons. Make claims(yes ,on your own people) and take that back if you can afford the tyranny. Your own development will contribute most of your army in the early games so you need to focus on getting those economic buildings rolling to support levy buildings is. If you need to unlock them, go the bottom left of your screen and click the culture tab(the candle) and get those innovations on the most beneficial things. I recommend going for the economic buildings, then military building, men at arms regs, domain limit and the battlements. Build your own fiefs up, your subjects shouldn't need much help. towns and temples will develop on there own once you build them. Remember "there are no friends, only foes and subjects."