You want to capture the lords ur at war with and then ransom them directly after u capture them. You also want to target kings cus they go for 20k

So what I would do is solo those viking raiders in the NW of continent(forget their names now) as this would:

• Net me mass amounts of renown
  
• Get me tons of money from loot sales in nearby cities
  
• Get me prisoners to sell

So what you need is to find a jousting lance, carry a bow/arrows and be mounted(faster horse the better). At the start of combat get within range so they start throwing their axes at you and do circles around them, but not just straight circles, you want to continually be arcing back and forth so the pattern might look like a Sin curve along the perimeter of the circle if you can picture that. Why you do this wavy circle is because they gauge where they expect you to be in a second or two based on your current speed and trajectory at the moment they throw it. Circle around until they are out of throwing ammo and personally, I try to range down archers or if you get any pike guys mixed in. Use Blunt joust on all the rest and although this takes awhile sometimes, it is fun/challenging and very rewarding. I've managed to take out groups of 60+, but start with small groups until you get the hang of it and don't forget you can grab more arrows in your chest if you need to.

Do that for awhile and use the money to buy businesses in all factions/cities you can. This way, unless your king goes to war with every faction at once, you will still have income. You should also end up having a sizeable chunk of money to weather any storms you need to.

Didn't realise that you could talk to the Lords manually while they are your prisoners and create the ransom manually, always thought that was an auto random thing.

That has really helped.

Luckily, we made peace with everyone and now got enough money to keep things afloat.

Thanks for that little tip

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Got plenty of renown, was just the money that got really tight for a while, getting those ransoms helped a bunch to get out of trouble.

Also helped that conquered a new Castle with extra income, but lost it before we made peace.

Been using the priests with blunt damage to get me more prisoners, that seems to be boosting my prisoner intake.

Will try that place out in the North West, haven't been much up that way.

I guess back in Warband I used to loot villages of the enemy to make a lot of money, and because in this playthrough i've been a total goodie goodie, I have missed out on that extra income.

Thanks for all your help and advice

Damn having money problems again

levelling up our troops, makes them super expensive to upkeep

even with 2 Towns income, this has become really difficult to maintain

-14,000 approx per week

what to do?

Am I to disband good units? Have weaker garrisons? Weaker Army?

Or grind like a maniac just to keep above water and barely have any extra spending money?

This mod is starting to feel a little unbalanced

Would have to disband units that took me lot of time to acquire and level up. And even my Noldor unique units

Now and then, head to the arena and ask if there are any tourneys going on. Do this especially when you're not at war or have some down time. Don't upgrade everything in your garrisons. Keep good troops at the top, then some mid tier and the rest can be recruits. I think some people just garrison with 900+ recruits, but if you do get attacked, they'll be wiped out, and if you're trying to defend with them you'll have a tough time when your troops are watered down with scrubs. It also feels cheesy deterring attackers with numbers.

If you have too many top tier troops, grab some you don't want, put them in their own group and use them as fodder every battle. I tend to do this periodically.

Babying your best troops is a waste. I've done it. Keeping those Noldor Nobles and Heroines at the bottom of your roster (or worse, in your garrison) is a money sink. Use them.

Troops are cheap. Don't get attached to them. You'll get plenty from prisoner stacks and by putting points into trainer on all of your companions.

I don't think the mod is unbalanced. I think you have to find the balance. That's part of the game.

What would you say is a good amount to have garrisoned in a Town and what tier of unit spread?

I'm having to do 6 Arena wins every week just to keep up. When can't find a Tournament nearby.

And kind of been forced to keep more Lords as Prisoner to ransom and just be constantly in the fronts at war to keep the money coming in. Decided to keep some the Martial lords as prisoners instead of letting them go, is that a bad choice you think?

I can't afford to just chill for a couple of weeks and manage my garrisons, that is how I ended up in trouble. And why I said it doesn't feel balanced. Because I feel obligated to be at war constantly to keep up with high expenses.

Got no idea how i'm going to have enough money to develop my Order troops. Are they supposed to be this bad at beginning? And I'm already seeing them around the place, without me recruiting them. Where they coming from. Is that from that message saying some nobles decided to join you? They are certainly not worth it yet. I can't afford to equip them properly.

I will try that tip of using some those expensive troops as fodder. Except my precious Noldor Troops, my precious

I don't really have a set number of garrisoned troops. I think I usually throw 20 top tier archers and infantry each to start. Then I toss in random odd units. Anything with a low stack count. Anything I'm not really using. Any prisoners I got from the siege.

Probably end up at about 100. After that, tell the steward to get troops for a month. At some point I'll grab a bunch and train them over night. Like when you train your steward, or have to waste some time. I also randomly toss in troops to keep some space in my party. I'm sure people are more picky, but I end up at about 300 or more. I figure a garrison of 3-400 plus my party of 3-400 can hold off just about anything.

I've been playing since I posted and I'm probably at the same point you are. I have Laria and Marleons. 11 companions, and business in every city.. More troops than I can think about using, and I'm losing 15k per week, but it isn't a problem. In a few days time I captured 6 or 7 lords including Ulric, captured K'juda, probably made at least 15k in loot alone. Didn't bother looking for tournaments.

It really helps to spend early game as a mercenary to build up a stash of at least 300000, but I don't think it's anything you can't work your way out of. You just have to cut down on troops a bit. Put points into prisoner management if you haven't,. You should have 9-10. Not sure it's worth it to hunt tournaments constantly. Lords and prisoners can be more profitable. Throw in tournaments when they're close by. I don't usually even look for them. Just do them when you find them, or look when there's nothing better to do.

Yes, order troops are expensive, that why it's good to spend time as a merc before you become a vassal. You can even faction hop from month to month with no penalty while building relations with various lords. Your troops are mostly paid for as a merc, not a vassal. It's not mandatory to be a merc, but it helps.

Every city with a KO will randomly generate patrols of KO troops. You probably just missed the message. If it's a CKO, they'll die in a day or two. You could go hunt down whoever captured them and get some free CKO troops, but it's not a good idea. They're expensive and useless until they get gear and training. A CKO knight is at least 91 denars, but about as good as a farmer in the beginning. It'll take months to get them geared.

I know how you feel about Noldor troops. Last game I had them low in the roster and they almost never saw action. I had a plan at some point to get a load of them, but that never happened. In the end they were just expensive.

Thanks, yeah managed to get out of the hole, really need to save up more bank as a buffer, like you said, maybe 100k baseline for me would give me a few weeks peace to manage stuff without war.

I've always found income a problem, even in native. Leadership doesn't give enough bonus, villages and castles don't give enough. PoP seemed to fix this by uping the income you get to allow sustainable armies, but then doubled army sizes (GGRRRRR). It might be part of the game play to not allow large sustainable highly trained armies, after all they aren't IRL, and soldiers often went without pay. However NPCs don't follow the economy structure so it's only a limitation for the player it seems, as they can have no fiefs but maintain the same army strength so is a very very annoying limitation.

To solve this, in times of peace I hunt down the Valskeery Raiders, as they drop lots of fairly valuable loot, so you can quite quickly build up your gold reserve. when fighting wars I think you have to accept you're going to loose gold.

Normally I just raid villages of enemies i'm at war with, but in this playthrough, I was roleplaying as a good honourable guy, so income was a little harder. But then you can just grind Tournaments and Arena wins to make good money in PoP. So that helps. Until eventually you ask as Vassal to get Towns, I was conquering and asking for towns and refusing villages and castles, that took care of my income issue very nicely and set me up as a very Powerful and loyal Field Marshall. Which was the goal for me from the outset.

Also I didn't do as much slave trade as I did in Vikings, In Vikings I made a great deal of money from selling slaves and ships.

I've never really had issues with income in PoP. If you're not banking up on money in the early game you might have to forego upgrading your troops sometimes in order to not become overstretched.

Even though villages and castles are more worthwhile than in Native I usually don't bother with them.

Yeah, you can't really amass forces the way the NPCs do, but that's an issue in Native too, since the devs couldn't figure out a way to make the AI deal with economy (I guess all the good programmers get sucked up by the banking sector outside of the Europe/America as well). It should balance out either way, since unless you're up against horse archers you should be able to use some tactics in order to make the battles swing your way. Not to mention that companions are amazingly powerful in PoP.

One source of coin in the late game that hasn't been mentioned yet is ransoming unique spawns for a large pouch of diamonds. If you talk to a guildmaster you get to exchange it for 100k. Wolfbode the Slayer (Mystmountain Tribe, in the north) is probably the easiest unique spawn to defeat.

For garrisons, until you have conquered the whole map, I feel this is the best type of garrison...

FOR TOWNS
- 1,000 recruits of any type: Do NOT train garrison!
- 250 top tier infantry. I go for about 200 with shields such as Huscarls, and 50 with halberds or glaives
- 250 second-from-top tier ranged units. They are A LOT less expensive than the top tier, and will still damage even the toughest soldier. They don't need the tankiness, you have the infantry for that.

You can get this for less than 5,000 a week and virtually nobody will attack you. *IF* they do, you can take your sweet time coming to defend.

FOR CASTLES:
- 700 recruits of any type: Do NOT train garrison!
- 150 top tier infantry. I go for about 100 with shields such as Huscarls, and 50 with halberds or glaives
- 150 second-from-top tier ranged units.

You can get this for less than 3,000 a week and same as above, virtually nobody will attack you.

Of course if you have only one fief, they'll attack it anyway, there's no way around it.

Once you have conquered the map, you can get rid of most of the garrison, especially in the castles. The towns can still get sacked by Major Spawn Armies.

I have a total of more than 450 men garrisoned in my 1 castle and the hidden hideout. Almost 150 of those are custom knighthood order troops and the rest are top tier troop tree men. It costs me about 11k a week and I still make almost 10k a week by just sitting on my ass. I have no idea what kind of massive army you have to pay 14k wages.
Sure, I do have 8 points in leadership, but it sounds like you must have a lot of very expensive mercenaries.
What I tend to do at the start of the game is go around asking lords for tasks until I can become a mercenary captain for a faction. They will pay you based on the combat strength of your army. If you only use troop tree men, you will get more money than the maintenance of your army.
Then I buy dyeworks in as many cities as I can.
I usually don't become a lord until I want to start training custom knights. And at that point, I will have a few 100k.
It is kind of the same story in native. If the first thing you do is train a bunch of Swadian Knights, you are going to have problems with money.

Before becoming a lord: Definitely become a mercenary for a particular kingdom you prefer— depending on the quality of your troops, the payment can either cover all your costs and some more, or(Which only happens when you get high-tier mercenary units) will leave you still in negative, but will provide relief for some time.

The one thing to watch out for in your armies are definitely mercenary and (probably) mounted units. Former are good for emergency situations, but their quality aren't just up to par with most units and their cost are abysmal. It is better to have 50 fresh recruits than 50 mercenary infantry in most cases. After all, true high-quality units like CKO troops or half-special units like Omen Seekers will have their costs covered by the mercenary contract because of their good performance. Latter also have high cost, but if you have a mercenary contract they will be covered. Some still aren't worth the price, so be wary of that.

But this alone won't be enough. There are several more things you can do.

First is to buy enterprises in most towns. There is at lest one lord who begins with a negative relation of you in each faction, and so in each faction you can only make three(or four) enterprises unless you take that particular lord's opinion of you over 0. For the enterprise selection, considering you are a mercenary and you gain some loot(And that you took the various loots from Valonbray and Rane chests—which also has a extra qualis gem) it should be easy to open two or three not much into the game.

Dyeworks are the best choice in general. They cost 10k to start, but unlike others that have between 4-12k it is the most stable in price. A wool weavery that gives 700 a week can drop to 100 in three weeks, but in dyeworks most of the time your profit will remain around 500 to 700 coins. Making around five or six of them can cover a hundred+ men army of good quality units by themselves, and with the mercenary contract you can fill your coffers with wealth in no time. Keep in mind that if you make enterprises in the land of the enemies of your faction, they will be unable to generate money as long as you are at war with them. When peace comes again, they will work as usual and provide revenue. So my suggestion is to first establish enterprises in your faction's cities, then one that they have the less conflict and so on an so forth.

Another is to get several companions: Sara The Fox, a companion who has 4 looting skill at a starting point with very high agility. It is easy to level her up as well, so pouring points into agility and then into looting can increase the size and quality of your loot post-battles. Especially when fighting against noldor or jatu, this can help you get better things. Leslie is another companion with moderate charisma and trade, and being a low-level she is easy to level up as well. Her trade skill can help you sell and buy at better prices, so having her with Sara and hunting some jatu will massively help in covering immediate need of money.

What I don't recommend: Raiding/Looting villages. While they might bring a little more money to the table, the loss of honor is not worth it. Honor is a important part of your character, especially when you become a lord and create or join a knighthood order. I don't really like that the mod forces you to be good, since the consequences are a little too high, but it is what it is so be aware of that.

When you are a lord:

Keep mercenaries away, again! No mercenary units unless in emergency! Even if they cost half the money in garrison, it doesn't matter! If you have done what I mentioned above and got yourself a decent wealth that can support you, the rest is just optimizing your fiefs and units. If you have high trainer-skill, or any of your companions have, you can have the castle/town recruit from the surrounding villages to boost the numbers every month.

If they aren't enough, by doing a few simple quests for villages that are inland and can't get raided often, you can get higher amount of recruits from them. Every time you raise relation, the recruit amount seems to replenish as well, so take advantage of that. Then every once in a while, you can come into the castle and train them yourself quickly, and when it is near payday you can deposit all your troops to the garrison to lower the wages by half(Cheesy but well, it works!)

Then if you have a town, it is a good idea to clear out the surroundings from bandits, and even better if you have a village near. Having more visitors means prosperity, and prosperity helps with raising tariffs by encouraging more caravans to visit. Production of the nearby villages are also a boon, so if you also own a village near your town/castle you can send out a military patrol and load them with soldiers of your own to keep peace all around. It will bring more income.

Improving towns and castles and villages are also a definite and a necessary step to increase income. So be sure to have some more reserve money and a high engineer skill companion to train your steward so that he can make them cheaper and quicker. And for a cheap price of 20k(Jk it is expensive) you can improve a town's prosperity by 20(or ten, I don't remember much) Doing it every once in a while when you have a surplus money will turn your town to opulent in no time.

That is all I can remember at the moment, so yeah.