Help needed for economy

[Emperor Sougamoto Magazaki]

I started a coop play with a friend and we had 2 provinces each. We started by building the militia buildings then the houses and then we built the farms and a market. But my economy was at +10 gold maximum which wasnt enought to do anything after apoint. I hired a diplomat and improved my relations with a kingdom but they never accepted any trade offer nor did they help me against rebels when I needed help even thoigh my relations were friendly. Everyone declined trading with me. I bought this game a couple of days ago and it kinda feels overhwhelming. Some advice to improve stability, gold income, food income or a build order and how to trade more would be appreciated.

[Ericus1]

You shouldn't be wasting your opening funds on buildings, and especially not those buildings which are about the most worthless in the game. You want markets, docks, churches, and resource buildings, placed where they pair best with the types of settlements in the province, e.g. lots of coastal towns is where docks should go. You want to dedicate one province to climb the military building line for the advanced units eventually. If you happen to have a province with lots of farms that's a good one to build the agricultural line of buildings, but ONLY if you actually need the food. But all of that should come AFTER you've got your basic economy in place.

You should be hiring knights with your starting funds, primarily merchants (orange) and military (red). Spies (purple) and diplomats (green) are virtually worthless until you get a solid economy going, and even then you could completely ignore them. You need 1 cleric (blue) to pacify and convert provinces as you expand. I typically keep 4 merchants, 4 soldiers, and 1 cleric, with my monarch always trained as a soldier, and grow my slate of knights as my country expands up to the max 9. You need 1 soldier to actually field an army, but I would focus on getting the 4 merchants first based on whatever your starting king is and how much you can expand out your trading cap (the little brown money pouch icon).

And try offering trade agreements with literally everyone and anyone, no matter how far away or small they are. You can definitely find trade partners at game start and get your merchants going ASAP because they will be your primary source of money for most of the game.

Also, provinces that are not governed by a knight only produce 1/10 of their potential output. So you want to always have your best 9 provinces being managed by a knight, paired with whatever best matches their type, i.e. soldiers should manage provinces with lots of castles, merchants those with lots of coastal towns, clerics those with lots of monasteries. It is significantly less valuable to build buildings in ungoverned provinces unless you need a resource that province produces. And by far the biggest thing you should look for when first expanding is province improvements that increase your trading cap, because that will be how you can increase your trading and thus your primary economy.

[Emperor Sougamoto Magazaki]

Thanks a lot for the detailed answer. I managed to get a solid economy going. The only question I have now is, is it possible to gift a conquered castle to a friend in coop? I clicked on audience and offerland to him but it doesnt seem to work. He is playing as candia and I am playing as Morea and I want to gift him Rhodes, which i just conquered. Thanks

[Ericus1]

You should be able to offer land, but I believe you have to stabilize it first, i.e. if it still has the red diagonal bars on it and is in disorder, you're limited in what interactions are available to you. For example, you can't build/destroy buildings.

[Emperor Sougamoto Magazaki]

I tried offering land to him but there was no option to do so even though it was stabilized. No option for any of my towns. He tried requesting land but also didnt work. I tried requesting from him and I could ask for 3 of his castles. Not sure why.

[Varainger]

Originally posted by Emperor Sougamoto Magazaki:

I tried offering land to him but there was no option to do so even though it was stabilized. No option for any of my towns. He tried requesting land but also didnt work. I tried requesting from him and I could ask for 3 of his castles. Not sure why.

You can give your vassals any land you have.
To other independent realms it's only possible wihen the province is NOT your culture and loyal yet.

Not sure if the the option is still available when a province is already your culture, but not yet 100% loyal. This all is refering to Singleplayer. I don't know if there is a difference in MP between players, but i don't think so.

[Ericus1]

That would explain it since Rhodes is Greek, and if you're Athens, you're probably Greek too.

[ShadowFox]

Originally posted by Emperor Sougamoto Magazaki:

I started a coop play with a friend and we had 2 provinces each. We started by building the militia buildings then the houses and then we built the farms and a market. But my economy was at +10 gold maximum which wasnt enought to do anything after apoint. I hired a diplomat and improved my relations with a kingdom but they never accepted any trade offer nor did they help me against rebels when I needed help even thoigh my relations were friendly. Everyone declined trading with me. I bought this game a couple of days ago and it kinda feels overhwhelming. Some advice to improve stability, gold income, food income or a build order and how to trade more would be appreciated.

As soon as the game starts hire 2 merchants (or at least 1) and set up trade routes. First building should be market/docks or whatever the first building of the most you have IE 4 castles build a barracks 4 shrines build a church. This will set you up in a great situation. You can save money on the diplomat by using non aggro and trade agreements for early friendship, if they don't like you then you can try joining on their side when they are fighting someone weak (and you get to raid for easy cash!) I would suggest while learning the game to start in ireland or perhaps scotland as they are kind of isolated so less crazy junk to deal with

[Mr Chill Chill]

You only need one merchant, two at most. This isn't KOH1, where having a bunch of merchants made sense. The newer game introduced trading points (brown bags), that allow you to literally just find one good trading partner and stick with them, upgrading the level of trade as you increase your trading points. Early on, depending on your game settings and the stats of your leader, you may have difficulty find a trade partner. Usually, however, if you click on the political map at the beginning of each game, you'll see that you already have a trade partner or two. You can either begin trade with them, or find someone else. The really good trade partners are the ones that have lots of coastal settlements. Combine that with the navigation trait (maxed out) and there's your easy wealth. Oh and as for merchants themselves, try raising up a line of king merchants for added coin, as a good king with the right traits can rake in 300+ coin easily. No need for a second merchant, as your king's imperial trade is plenty, combined with all of the trade goods that you profit from.

Food.... Now I don't know why anyone in their right mind would say that you don't need all the food that you can get, but food is VERY IMPORTANT. In fact its just as important as manpower, if not more so. The more food you have, the less chance you have of a shortage, and the best part? If you give your commanders the logistics trait, and turn that into a kingdom tradition, you have two additional logistics slots for that commander, giving you the ability to add a significant amount of manpower to that army's size, as well additional food and supplies and siege equipment. Turning the logistics trait into a tradition also means a significant boost in farm output throughout the kingdom. Maxing out the logistics slots for manpower can give you a 60% boost in each army, while going with infantry, archery, and cavalry tactics as both commander traits and kingdom traditions adds something like 25% manpower. Then you have levies, which increase manpower also. If it sounds like the army is getting bigger by the minute, its because it is.

Early on, you'll find books and piety relatively difficult to come by. The first kingdom tradition you can take to help with that is the writing tradition. This gives a boost to both books and piety. Adding not one but two clerics will help increase the rate, and offer more chances to go on missions to increase both books and piety. You can never have enough books and piety, as you're constantly upgrading all of your knights traits with books. Piety is needed to easily convert a town without force.

On the top left of the screen underneath the kingdom stability bar, you have the various classes of people your kingdom has. Keeping the nobles, army, church, and peasantry happy can seem like a daunting task, but it really isn't. I find that I'm always ticking off the church, so I rarely bother with missions to increase their happiness, but all of the other three I want as high as possible, while simply keeping the clergy above zero. The army is relatively easy to please, as upgrades to buildings, victories, etc keep them happy. Just don't run a shortage of food! The nobles and peasantry are just as important to please, and you can keep them at the highest level easily. Whenever the queen gives birth, you can hold a feast and that amounts to something like +2 nobles, and +3 peasants happiness. Often the queen gives birth to twins, so you can double that. Keeping the peasants happy means more food, and more food means what? That's right...... larger armies! If you find that your various classes need a boost, a good diplomat can help increase these levels, though its a slower pace and typically a waste of coin.

[Emperor Sougamoto Magazaki]

thanks