Keep running out of money

[Explore]

No, this isn't a rant about the price they're still trying to sell this game at ;) In the standard campaign I get to a point where I have about 12 provinces, and I can use that to support 2 army stacks and 2 navy stacks. Meanwhile, computer players of a similar size seem to be able to support twice as many units.

For instance, the campaign I'm in now, I have 3 sea trade trade deals, 4/6 trading areas with 10 trade ships in each. My settlements all have markets, ninja, or both, and I upgrade all farming to terrace. The nation I am struggling to conquer is about the same size as me with no sea trade, and can support more units. Playing on Hard difficulty.

Finally, I thought it might be something to do with taxes. I have mine set on very high. I looked up previous posts in this forum, and people were saying taxes set at very low is better long term because of growth. When I searched the rest of the internet, I came across a thread in Reddit where someone did the math, and worked out it takes over 200 turns (longer than a campaign) to see a financial benefit from setting taxes at very low vs. very high.

So, I'd appreciate any advice people can give - I'm sure there must be something I am overlooking. TIA.

[markeason]

Where to start?

The main difference in game difficulty setting is economic. This means that the AI clans pay less to recruit units and pay less for their upkeep. They get a boost to their tax income and they incur less in terms of administration charge (the increasing reduction in tax revenue that comes with each province you acquire).

On hard difficulty, this means you have to pay 17% more for both unit purchase and unit upkeep compared to an AI clan. (A word of caution, when you are ready to step up to Very Hard this value becomes 43% more).

The admin charge that they incur is reduced by 30% compared to what you suffer, and they get a +5% boost to their tax income in all provinces compared to you.

Seems unfair? It is to provide a meaningful challenge.

How do you overcome it?

The first thing is to accept that the AI is not as smart as the player. In fact it is dumb. Very dumb.

As a player we can optimise our play in ways that the AI cannot. It just follows the pre-written scripts that allow some variation in behaviour. As an example, take a look at an AI clan agent and/or general. Look where it has its skill points. There is no specialisation, it is almost always a scatter-gun approach with skills that provide little or no benefit in the way the character is being used.

Why do I mention this? Well, the first way to improve your economy is to ensure that you have a metsuke* with skill points in overseeing towns in each of your highest wealth provinces. This means provinces with fertile/very fertile farmland, or a gold mine. You want an upgraded market in these provinces and (for the farmland, keep upgrading the farms to boost the province wealth). It is worth adding a sake den chain in there as well for a bit of added wealth and the ability to recruit a ninja. Give the metsuke retainers that boost over-seeing towns. Each metsuke can provide an increase to the tax rate in the province of about +60%, equivalent to an added income of 1-2,000 koku per metsuke per turn by the late game.

*For the metsuke, if you have a province with a school, upgrade it to a magistrate and you can recruit your metsuke here with 2 levels of experience out of the door. This agent can immediately provide at least a +20% boost to tax in the province when he is in the fort.

Be sure to give your generals the offices. Your highest level general having the one that boosts national tax income (Finance office?) is a good idea.

The next thing to consider is trade. If you are paying more in naval upkeep than you are making from trade, you have to consider whether it is worth holding the trade nodes - other than depriving the resource from AI clans. Personally, I always try to get trade into my game (unless playing the Date / Uesugi / Takeda who are too far removed from the trade nodes). In part for the added income, but also because trade agreements are the keystone of improving diplomatic relationships and avoiding having all the clans declare war on you). Learning how to defeat any fleet with only 3 - 4 bow kobayas (with fire arrows) is a useful skill. This makes the trade nodes incredibly lucrative as you have cheaper vessels and upkeep than the AI, and a great way to level up your generals through naval battles.

Land armies. You may be paying too much for your land armies. As the game difficulty increases, because of the financial constraints, in order to field armies, you will have to make do with ashigaru units longer into the game. I will have them right through to the end and just add a few samurai / monk units as and when the economy allows it.

Tax Rate.
You can run on very high tax rate, but you need to also factor in the cost of maintaining public order, whether by building (castle level for repression; sake den chain / temple chain for happiness) or leaving agents / units to maintain good order. All of which have a cost. To optimise this, it is better to exempt some low wealth provinces from tax
and just taxing the high wealth provinces.

On Hard difficulty, there is no real need to change the tax rate from Normal. It will provide you more than enough to be competitive with the AI.

You will also come across advice to switch the tax rate between very high and normal on alternate turns to maximise income while avoiding the risk of rebellion. They will also advise selling military access to your neighbours. You can do this if that's your thing but I do not advocate it. They are unnecessary 'cheats' to overcome the principal advantage the AI gets with increased game difficulty and if you resort to using them, you are kidding yourself that you are playing at that difficulty. All imo.


There's probably a few things I have not covered. For instance, if you are running a high tax rate, it may be better to vassalise low wealth provinces (or let them rebel) as they are not going to be contributing much to your economy. As a vassal they will provide you a trade partner that is potentially more valuable than the province would contribute in tax income.

Hopefully there's some ideas in there that will take you forward.

[BastardSword]

The economy in Shogun 2 looks simple but it's actually quite complex, but you can still learn what to do pretty easily.

- I only play on Hard and I always keep taxes at normal unless I'm really running out of money. I always make plenty of money with taxes at normal.

- knowing what provinces are best is key. The best provinces are any that have fertile or very fertile lands, gold mine provinces, and the ninja provinces if you build a smuggling network. This map will help you find the best provinces. There are a LOT of garbage provinces with few benefits.

This map shows you what provinces have special resources and the best farms:

http://wicked-chibi.ninja/region/regions_online_shogun.html

- upgrading farms is important but it's more of a long term goal. Early on I will prioritize fertile and very fertile farms, and maybe average farms. Before Realm Divide I will unlock Chonindo and fully upgrade all my farms, it's not really necessary before RD but it really helps after RD when you lose a lot of trade income.

- for general economy stuff, I would put a market in every province except for blacksmith provinces. In my best provinces (like Omi, Kii, Higo etc) I will upgrade the market for more income and growth. I avoid upgrading castles except for blacksmith provinces, it's better to keep raising my food number which gives global growth. I only really use sake dens for their public order bonus, their income is very paltry. If I take a province from the AI that has open slots then I'll build a market, sake den and a temple, but I'll never upgrade a castle just to put in a sake den or temple.

- as for trade, warhorses aren't very valuable but they are always in demand. If you have a warhorse province then you're more likely to get trade agreements with other clans.

- metsukes give you big tax bonuses but only if you focus on giving them town management skills. Put them in your richest provinces. Don't be tempted to use them to kill enemy agents unless you have no other option, you need to keep them alive and ranking up and not risk them getting killed. Use ninjas and monks to kill/convert enemy agents to keep your metsukes out of harm's way.

- for your military, learning how to get the most out of ashigaru is definitely a gamechanger. Samurai are effective mainly because of their high morale, but they are expensive and have over double the upkeep of ashigaru. Yari ashigaru in spear wall formation are about as effective as any melee samurai unit. If you have a general at rank 3 or above you shouldn't have issues with ashigaru routing. Bow ashigaru do their job quite well especially when defending a castle but hold their own if used properly in an open field battle. At low rank they don't get many kills, but I get bow expertise for +10 accuracy and try to get fletcher upgrades for them, and then they do better. The best thing they can do is snipe an enemy general that is running around behind his melee units, do that and you can easily win a battle by causing chain routing. Also I'd advise getting max armor for yari ashigaru as they start with low armor.

I always use this army composition and it does well for me at a good cost, and lets me afford more armies than if I only used samurai units:

- 1 general
- 6 bow ashigaru (replace with bow samurai later in game)
- 7 yari ashigaru with max armor
- 3 katana cavalry (often replaced with 3 yari ashigaru in early/mid game before I get a good cav province)
- 3 katana samurai

[YaFilthy]

i use to run 6 bows to but i drop to 4 sometimes 3 because 2 feels a little weak. i play only legendary and arrows are not as effective vs samurai units which the ai will spit out constantly. Also i noticed some clan you get attack so fast in the first few moves it worthless to build arrows right away because they dont get good until maxxed level. I like the idea of cav since you can kinda cheese kill the enemy generals but on legendary you cannot pause so micromanagement is much harder and the AI likes to focus your generals. This team comp is fairly strong but if you lose to many of your maxxed out ashigaru units because of Auto battle it can be a problem fighting the AI samurai stacks that show up relatively fast.

My team comp is

2 or 1 General
Defending base i like 2 generals 1 for each side. When in the field 2 allows for rally up-time cycle. 1 General is good for fielding auto-resolve because it gives higher troop count.

4 Bow Ashigaru
While i really do like the bow Samurai as a unit they cost double then Ashigaru. There only problem is they are not very good until they near maxxed ranked. You can sub to 4 Bow Samurai but you'll take the ECO Hit. You could drop to 3 or even 2 though. 2 is easier to micro manage your really using arrows for the -moral from arrows barrage there actually pretty bad at killing early game and there buffs come mid to late game.

2 Katana Samurai
These are my Damage dealers usually ill be controlling these guys by hand to make a hole or flank from behind.

1 Yari Samurai
Rapid Advance when you need it usually they sits on my generals in the field fights. You could go to 3 here for covering archers but i just use the Yari Ashigaru

11 Yari Ashigaru
So good so good Buff them with all possible buffs, moral, armor, and they will always kill the AI Yari Ashigaru spam first.

Optional
1 Yari Cav for hunting Enemy General... Although on legendary a lot of the time the ai general hides & moves fairly well in the field fights, kinda useless for Attacking siege stack which turns into a field fight anyway, but during defense siege the AI general just sits out in the field until all the units are dead.. It make sense to use it for Defense siege stack.



As Far as Economy Tips

Look for Very Fertile Farms, Gold Mine, Material +Income Territories, Smuggle
Make Markets & Matsuke on your bases
Upgrade Farms
Trade nodes land or sea
There is a few stat Items & skills that -% Upkeep cost always take those it makes a huge difference

Make sure you don't take over land that has a negative -food stat because it doesn't make money you can see how profitable a territory is reading the stats. Example: AI builds a huge castle but never upgraded the farm or maybe you destroyed it earlier.

[Explore]

Thank you so much for all the tips! I started a new campaign, and it's night and day; at the same point in the game I had 100k in the bank.

I reckon the biggest single difference was Matsuke, because previously I was only using them to help quell rebellions. It's not very clear they help with economy at all, because if you place one inside a town it doesn't show income increasing. You've actually got to go inside the town info screen to see where the difference is, but it's still strange that number isn't added to the total. Maybe it's added the following turn.

Thanks again - it's nice to see that there are still plenty of people playing this game who are happy to take time out of their day to lend a hand.

[BastardSword]

When you first put a metsuke into a town, it won't change the reported income until the next turn, unless you turn taxes off then on again for that province. Then it will report it correctly.

[shaidontforget]

Looks like you've already got a lot of input already. But I can tell you my mental health increased greatly once I stopped expecting there to be a logical correlation between how much money the AI can possibly make and how many armies they can spawn lol. For me I tried making money through trade routes with trade ships to fund a large army of 3-4 stacks. but that only worked so long as i wasn't at war with multiple clans...which is rare on hard mode. And you can't really have a large enough navy to protect trade and a large enough army to expand at once until you're in late game stage.

So I focused on gaining territory very quickly when I could and then making use of choke points to repel retaliation. Then the tax builds up over time. Speaking of tax. Provinces only rebel after being upset for 2 turns, so ever now and then raise all your taxes to ultra high for a big injection of cash to put towards instruction buildings. That will raise your floor tax in a few turns and suddenly you'll have a sustainable financial situation.

[Smoothhoof]

Tax flipping kills growth. In a long game, it's growth that pays your way.

[markeason]

Originally posted by shaidontforget:

Speaking of tax. Provinces only rebel after being upset for 2 turns, so ever now and then raise all your taxes to ultra high for a big injection of cash to put towards instruction buildings. That will raise your floor tax in a few turns and suddenly you'll have a sustainable financial situation.

You can do that of course.

But since the principal change with game difficulty is economic, (cheaper unit recruitment/upkeep for the AI on higher difficulty), then flipping the tax rate is akin to playing on a lower difficulty.

Same goes for selling military access that the AI has not requested.

They are exploits used to overcome the game difficulty. You might as well play the game a couple of levels lower and save yourself the trouble.