Someone please tell me what to do.

[j_mo]

How do I increase my income? You start with such a small treasury and income. I've had this game for years and I still don't know what to do. I've played quite a few strategy and 4X games. None have frustrated me like this. I've read quite a bit of the official wiki as well. I just stare at the screen and look at statistics. I'd really like to be able to play.

[grotaclas]

At the beginning of the game, you don't have many ways to increase the income. You can get some advisors and you can send light ships to protect trade and in some situations you can send your merchants to different trade nodes. And you can reduce your costs by reducing army maintenance, mothballing forts and all non-light ships.
What you usually do to increase the income is conquer more provinces. Especially provinces which are centers of trade in your home node and in nodes which lead to your home node and in which you have a merchant. Gold provinces and provinces with high value trade goods are also important. Newly conquered provinces have to be turned into states and fully cored to get most of their benefits.
You can also increase the development of your provinces to increase their income, but that only really matters if your country is very small or if it is a gold province(only the production development matters here).

Later in the game, you can acquire more merchants and build buildings which increase the income.

[Totally Innocent Chatbot]

In the very early game, the main way you're going to be increasing your income is by shutting your army maintenance off in the Economy tab at any point where you're not at war or dealing with rebels. Lowering army maintenance to its lowest possible value is an incredibly powerful tool - I would even argue overpowered - with no long-term consequences, since it only takes a couple months after you turn maintenance back up for your morale to recover. Just don't leave it turned off when there's hostile troops of any kind, or your army will get demolished.

Other than that, the main way you're going to be increasing your income is by expanding into your neighbors and taking their land for yourself - or colonizing for well-situated nations like Castile and Portugal. Later on there's buildings and trade routes to really improve your income, but well you'll need at least some income to be able to afford those buildings to begin with.

Most important thing I can tell you is, do NOT be afraid of going into debt. Loans are not a punishment in EU4, they are a tool that you can use to your great advantage. Going into a pile of debt by going over your army force limit and hiring mercenaries to win a war you would otherwise lose is oftentimes entirely worth it (unless it's a war you won't get any meaningful territorial gains out of), and in the vast majority of cases you will fully recover from it. It may take a bit of practice to discover the threshold between controllable debt and a spiral into bankruptcy, but that's just part of the learning curve.

If you're looking for a simpler experience to ease your way into the game, I highly recommend attempting a campaign as the Ottomans; they start off with plenty of good land, a very strong economy, and prime expansion opportunities in literally every direction.

[j_mo]

Originally posted by Totally Innocent Chatbot:

In the very early game, the main way you're going to be increasing your income is by shutting your army maintenance off in the Economy tab at any point where you're not at war or dealing with rebels. Lowering army maintenance to its lowest possible value is an incredibly powerful tool - I would even argue overpowered - with no long-term consequences, since it only takes a couple months after you turn maintenance back up for your morale to recover. Just don't leave it turned off when there's hostile troops of any kind, or your army will get demolished.

Other than that, the main way you're going to be increasing your income is by expanding into your neighbors and taking their land for yourself - or colonizing for well-situated nations like Castile and Portugal. Later on there's buildings and trade routes to really improve your income, but well you'll need at least some income to be able to afford those buildings to begin with.

Most important thing I can tell you is, do NOT be afraid of going into debt. Loans are not a punishment in EU4, they are a tool that you can use to your great advantage. Going into a pile of debt by going over your army force limit and hiring mercenaries to win a war you would otherwise lose is oftentimes entirely worth it (unless it's a war you won't get any meaningful territorial gains out of), and in the vast majority of cases you will fully recover from it. It may take a bit of practice to discover the threshold between controllable debt and a spiral into bankruptcy, but that's just part of the learning curve.

If you're looking for a simpler experience to ease your way into the game, I highly recommend attempting a campaign as the Ottomans; they start off with plenty of good land, a very strong economy, and prime expansion opportunities in literally every direction.

I tried taking Constantinople as the Ottomans since its one of the early missions...The siege took forever with little progress and meanwhile their allies ran riot everywhere taking my provinces, and were winning most battles. Wallachia has armies nearly as large as mine starting out as the Ottomans.

[Malvastor]

Originally posted by j_mo:

Originally posted by Totally Innocent Chatbot:

In the very early game, the main way you're going to be increasing your income is by shutting your army maintenance off in the Economy tab at any point where you're not at war or dealing with rebels. Lowering army maintenance to its lowest possible value is an incredibly powerful tool - I would even argue overpowered - with no long-term consequences, since it only takes a couple months after you turn maintenance back up for your morale to recover. Just don't leave it turned off when there's hostile troops of any kind, or your army will get demolished.

Other than that, the main way you're going to be increasing your income is by expanding into your neighbors and taking their land for yourself - or colonizing for well-situated nations like Castile and Portugal. Later on there's buildings and trade routes to really improve your income, but well you'll need at least some income to be able to afford those buildings to begin with.

Most important thing I can tell you is, do NOT be afraid of going into debt. Loans are not a punishment in EU4, they are a tool that you can use to your great advantage. Going into a pile of debt by going over your army force limit and hiring mercenaries to win a war you would otherwise lose is oftentimes entirely worth it (unless it's a war you won't get any meaningful territorial gains out of), and in the vast majority of cases you will fully recover from it. It may take a bit of practice to discover the threshold between controllable debt and a spiral into bankruptcy, but that's just part of the learning curve.

If you're looking for a simpler experience to ease your way into the game, I highly recommend attempting a campaign as the Ottomans; they start off with plenty of good land, a very strong economy, and prime expansion opportunities in literally every direction.

I tried taking Constantinople as the Ottomans since its one of the early missions...The siege took forever with little progress and meanwhile their allies ran riot everywhere taking my provinces, and were winning most battles. Wallachia has armies nearly as large as mine starting out as the Ottomans.

Don't sit all your armies on Constantinople. Park the minimum necessary to progress the siege, or even just 1-2 regiments to prevent them spawning any new units there. Then use the rest of your army to crush their allies' armies and occupy/siege down their cities.

I can't remember the exact starting numbers, but you should dwarf Wallachia at game start. They may be recruiting a bunch of armies during the war if you're having trouble with their numbers. Either way, before you declare war increase your own armies. Take out a loan or two if you need to; you'll make the money back easily from the war.

[MasterYi]

Originally posted by j_mo:

I tried taking Constantinople as the Ottomans since its one of the early missions...The siege took forever with little progress and meanwhile their allies ran riot everywhere taking my provinces, and were winning most battles. Wallachia has armies nearly as large as mine starting out as the Ottomans.

You should be stack wiping their smaller armies first and then siege Constantinople.

Stackwiping a nation’s entire army then just stand on their capital (no need to siege down or even have enough troops to progress the siege) will be enough to put them on Medium attitude and allow for a white peace.
Do this against Byzantium’s allies, no need to break alliances either since Byzantium will be fully annexed. Short 5 year truce.

Wallachia being a 6 provinces minor should no way have the same amount of troops as the ottomans.
You probably didn’t build to force limit and they hired the Free Company, which you should do too since they are cheaper than regular troops. Merc manpower pool too.

[Exarch_Alpha]

First time I´ve heard someone having trouble as the ottos. Weird.

[faef]

Something else that might help, other than what has been mentioned is taking another country's money and reparations. When fighting another country, in certain cases it might be worth it to separate peace them for money and reparations.
But taking loans to fuel rapid expansion is also fine, since your loan cap and amount grow as you expand.

[Malvastor]

Originally posted by Snokrooms:

Something else that might help, other than what has been mentioned is taking another country's money and reparations. When fighting another country, in certain cases it might be worth it to separate peace them for money and reparations.
But taking loans to fuel rapid expansion is also fine, since your loan cap and amount grow as you expand.

I'd say it's always worth it unless 1. you're taking land or vassalization from the separate peace instead or 2. you're outnumbered and just really need them out of the fight as soon as possible.

But in general money and reparations cost no diplo points or AE, and early on are crucial to supplying funding and/or paying off the loans you took to prepare for the war.

[eoozy]

When you start the game, make sure you have your merchants transferring trade power in other trade nodes, click the trade map mode and check which trade nodes connect to your home node (your capital) then put those merchants in the trade nodes that you have the highest percentage in while also checking that the arrows connect to the trade region where your capital is.
Wont make the income too high at the beginning though, also build marketplaces for more trade power = more income.

Also like others have mentioned, expanding is an easy way to get more income as well, you just gotta core it first, also make sure whenever you're not at war and rebels arent rising up that your army maintenance is all the way down, so you get more money to spend on buildings for example.

Oh yeah and check how much money some trade nodes are making and expand into those regions to get more of their trade power to get a better economy.

[Totally Innocent Chatbot]

Originally posted by j_mo:

I tried taking Constantinople as the Ottomans since its one of the early missions...The siege took forever with little progress and meanwhile their allies ran riot everywhere taking my provinces, and were winning most battles. Wallachia has armies nearly as large as mine starting out as the Ottomans.

So, a few things here...

First off, make sure you're actually building up more troops until you hit your army force limit. Don't just sit with whatever armies the game gave you on day 1 and assume it'll be enough, because it never will.

Second, make sure any army you're going to send into combat has a general on it. With no general, you're going to be taking twice as many losses while also inflicting fewer casualties, which sounds like it might explain why you were losing battles so consistently.

Focus on building infantry primarily. Cavalry are technically a little better in the early game, but they are also two-and-a-half times as expensive, so most of the time they're not even worth bothering with. You also suffer massive penalties if your army ever has more than 50% of its numbers as cavalry. Keep any cavalry you started off with, but don't build any more. Your "ideal" army size in 1444 should be 20k, with no more than 4k cavalry per stack. The Ottomans should have the force limit and economy at game start to support approximately 2 stacks like this, even working their way towards a third after you've won a couple wars.

Wallachia absolutely does not have armies as large as the Ottomans starting out, I have no idea where this is coming from. You should easily have three times as much as them before you even start building up more troops. As has been said above, you only need to devote one stack of 9k-10k to sit on Constantinople and siege it down - the rest should be hunting down his allies' armies and slaughtering them before they can reinforce or occupy all your largely unprotected European land.

If Albania is in the war, they are a country you actually need to watch out for. While their army size is tiny, they start off with the single most powerful general in the game in 1444. Focus on taking out their army as soon as possible if they end up joining the war - having a god general doesn't mean much when it's just their 2k stack, but if they link up with a larger force from their other allies then it can be a serious threat.

I won't bore you with all the details of how combat width works within this comment. But, as a general rule of thumb, do not send in all of your troops into a single battle at the same time. There is a limit to the maximum number of troops that can fight within a battle at any given time - in 1444, this limit is 20 for everybody other than low-tech tribal nations, and it is increased over time by researching new Military Technologies. Any troops beyond the combat width will just sit in the back row or reserves, losing morale but not actually contributing anything to the battle (except for artillery, which works differently, but you don't have that unlocked yet). You'll want to send in only the current combat width's worth of troops to the battle at first - even if the enemy has a larger number present. Then, order some additional troops to march in so that they arrive a few days after the battle starts, then a few more troops a few days after that. Reinforcing in bite-sized chunks, rather than dumping all your troops into battle from day 1 (which is known as "overstacking"), will help you win battles a lot more consistently even against superior numbers. As before, just make sure that the army you send into battle first has a general on it - the stacks you send as reinforcements typically don't need one.

[Njorl]

There is a Burgher policy "Indebted to the Burghers" that gives you five loans at 1% interest. It's good to fund your first war that way.

In war, blitz vulnerable enemy armies fast and sit on all of their provinces to prevent recruiting AND to loot the wealth of the province. Leaving a single regiment on a fortified province won't progress the siege, but it will prevent them from recruiting.

Defeat the enemy's allies first, and make a separate peace with them where they give you money and war reparations.

When you're besieging those stubborn forts, make sure you don't have cavalry in the army unless you really need it there. It costs more to replace cavalry attrition than infantry attrition. Also, while you're doing it, make sure you're also looting captured provinces.

[Rooter]

A lot of good advice here OP, but it will take time to learn the game, so dont stress.
Just try to learn bits at a time and make mini achievements for yourself, which could be as simple as making .5 a ducat extra from fiddling with trade and development.
Thats how I started to be honest.
Hope you enjoy the game.