making money

[happykingmaker]

hey guys,
i own 2 cities and 2 castles. im losing thousands denars. what am i supposed to make more income? winning tournaments doesn't help much. is there another way to make more money?

[~ Fabulous ~]

limit your garrison to only t1-t2 units

[StraberryMilk]

fight battles sell the loot and prisoners, also doing trading is good too

[Wolfsblut]

i've had the same problem. the economics are bad. a city barely makes enough money to pay for a garrison strong enough to discourage attacks. i saved 1.5 million before starting a kingdom to be able to afford tribute, my army and garrisons.
if you have any parties lead by companions or family members check their costs. sometimes the set limit does not work and parties spend a few 1.000 a day for troops...
buy workshops and caravans unless you are at war and expect to lose them quickly.
you can put companions or family member in your cities & castles. some will lower the cost of your garrison units.

[Barick]

By the time you have two castles and towns you should not have any trouble with income.

Workshops give 200-350 on average if you buy the decent ones, earning over 1000 a day with them is pretty much a given depending on your clan level.

Castles should easily pay for themselves and some. Limit the amount of money you spend on them so you make a slight profit. If you need more troops to defend them focus on the + militia building, the food building and the garrison cost reduction building. You can also use Governors whom decrease garrison costs further and give even more militia.

Towns work the same as castles but you make even more money and can support more troops. A good governor is far more important for your towns as they can support more of a garrison, more militia and far more profits. Some of the governor perks are pretty useful like the ones that give 30 gold each time a group of villagers visit the town or 20 for each trader. Make sure to also capture all the nearby castles so more villages feed the town with goods. Unless I plan on also owning the castles that connect to the town I try to aim for towns with 3 villages connected to them for the extra income. Empire towns, and those closer to the middle of the map tend to be better with trade. The towns in middle of nowhere tend to do worse in my experience.

With castles and towns, don't forget the villages connected to them also give you money, make sure they are not raided.

I have not tested out caravans in my current games, but I'm sure they bring in a small profit too.

The profits you earn though war is pretty insane, unless you get wiped. In my current game I'm only a t3 clan, and became the leader of my faction two days after I joined... I just have two lords join my army and then ran around killing enemy's I could pick off and I would use my ally armies as bait and then join the battle. Each battle would earn me 20-50k, sometimes more from selling off the loot and ransoming the troops, I place the lords in prisons. Sadly you do need to recruit new troops when the troops you have die off.

Trade during down times without war is worth doing (I tend to just wait around or kill bandits, more babies are nice and I like letting time pass.). Once you have some capital to spend it's pretty easy earning good amounts of gold.

If you have more than one party they really increase your costs, limit what they will spend on their party. They can earn you a profit if left alone but overall they tend to cost more than they earn. It's best to use them for war and not expect a profit, unless you have them join your own army.

If you are not in constant wars limit your own party. You have no need of 200+ troops in your party if you are not at war. Even then if you care more about profits a smaller force would be better so you can move faster on the map (unless you use the east settings for more map speed.). I personally also don't max out all of my troops unless they are cav. If I have 100 infantry in my party as an example I would have maybe 30 at t5, 30 t4 and the rest at t3. This greatly cuts down on costs while still having a tough force that is not as hard to replace. I find the game a bit more fun when the battles are a little more risky too, t5/6 only armies are boring.

Overall the only time I have issues with money is really early game and when I become a t2 clan and get wiped as a merc early on.

[Maximus]

have you just made peace with any factions? you could be paying tribute to them.

[Mish101]

Ugh this is probably nonviable or takes a long a time but another factor is....governors. A governor with over 300 stewardship i think boosts the castes/cities income by a bit. Another 2 factors if you look at the what determines income is the cities/castles loyalty and prosperity. A city/castle with super low loyalty will pay 0. But as their prosperity stat and loyalty go up so does their income...but its very slow even with governors but it does scale...i don't know what or if there is a cap...probably is.

[[BRE] Ralf]

Forge two handed swords. With a few companions to help you get the materials you can create equipments that each one sell for 5k~15k. It's pretty easy and there is several guides in the internet that can help you.