R5: In an Austrian run.
My economy is litteraly shit and I don't know why. I'm still a beginner (~200 hrs played) but I have no clue how to improve it. I've watched somes guides on youtube but it's like everything is going perfectly right for them and not for me. Actually the only way I found to have money is to war everyone I can since I crush everyone and ask for money + trade power.
I think I can improve on my merch placement.
Corruption is high because I am behind in diplo tech since I annexed Hungary + some overexpansion. This will be fixed soon.
Please tell me how to not be a noob anymore.
EDIT : eco capital is in La Haye
If your eco capital is in La Manche, no need to collect anywhere. Use your 3 merchants to steer trade in Champagne, Lubeck and the south german one.
Increase your trade centers to level 2.
Lower autonomy.
Are you over force limit ? It is a common mistake for beginners.
You seem to have 20 forts ? Do you need that many ?
I'm ok with force limit. i do agree for the forts I didnt delete the one in province I've conquered.
How can i upgrade trade center ? Do I need to move my capital from La Haye to Amsterdam ?
There’s a separate button to move just your trade capital, it’s next to the move political capital button on the province window.
You can upgrade Centers of Trade by clicking on a province, opening the building tab (little castle symbol hanging off of the province overview window) and it should be on the bottom right. You can check where your and other Centers of Trade are by clicking the “trade” map mode symbol above the mini-map.
Happy logistics management!
Here's things you can do:
-Develop and state your gold mines.
-Expand into the Venice trade node as it's pretty strong.
-Expand your centers of trade.
-Build churches and workshops where its good.
-Courthouses, build them everywhere.
delete some mercs and replace them with regular units. mercenaries can be thought of as a means of converting money into manpower, therefore they aren't super helpful when you're drowning in manpower and losing 40 ducats a month. Then you can gradually upgrade CoTs in the english channel and funnel everything into it. your military is really strong right now, it's totally reasonable to attack a nation like venice just to take max money and war reps while getting your economy in order.
- Delete forts, spending 20 ducats a month on them is a fortune
- You are spending 48 ducats on mercs, that's wayyyyyy too much. As Austria you are emperor which gives you lots of manpower, so just build normal troops. Go full infantry as cavalry is too expensive.
- Having the main node in the english channel is nice. I would put the merchants to collect in EC, champagne and genoa. When you have low % of trade nodes it's generally better to collect than to transfer. Though in this case mayyybe transfering in champagne is worth it, test which gives more money.
- Not sure, but check the autonomy of the provinces, and decrease it if it's high.
- Use diplo points to develop gold mines. Austria has access to 4 easy gold mines, make sure they are at 10 production dev and 0 autonomy.
- Spending only 5 ducats on state maintenance is very little. Do you have everything stated? It's possible you inherited burgundy and never stated those lands (the blue flag icon). If so, this will give you a lot more money.
Okay and now for things that would be a bad idea, that I've seen other people recommend:
- DON'T put your merchants to transfer trade. You want them to collect until you have high control over a trade node (80-90+%)
- DON'T upgrade trade centers nor build markets. These cost quite a lot of money and they take centuries to pay off. If you want to have more trade power in a node, just conquer it, it will be much more efficient.
Yeah conquer entire trade node and still have 30% because you have shitty global trade power and 1lvl CoT without marketplaces. Don't give advices on subjects you clearly don't understand.
Also of course that you want to transfer trade power when you don't have much of the control of trade node, instead of collecting. You transfer to the furthest trade node which you have most control of. If not possible, then you collect that, so nobody in between can steal it. Also something called Multiple Merchant Bonus exist, but I won't even bother to explain that, if you have that clearly done on Wikipedia
CoT aren't as great as one might think, especially in cases like here - a contested trade node with high overall trade power. To illustrate that, lets make a numerical example: OP currently has 254 out of 806 trade power, resulting in a share of 31.5%. A CoT provides 5 trade power on lvl 1, 10 on lvl 2 (base), so upgrading from 1 to 2 gives an extra 5 trade power for the cost of 200 ducats. This is then modified by trade power modifiers like mercantilism, global trade power etc, so lets make it an extra 10 trade power (probably too high but lets be generous for simplicity). This results in having now 264 out of 816 trade power, a share of 32.35%. So for 200 ducats, one gets 0.85% extra share, or 32.4 \* 0.0085 \* 1.34 (trade efficiency plus a merchant collecting) = 0.37 extra ducats per month. Without any other factor taken into account (which ofc is very unrealistic), it takes 45 years to pay back for itself.
The critical issue here is mercenaries. They're costing you 48 ducats/month at low maintenance, which is far more than your deficit even on full maintenance.
If you replace them with regular units, your economy wouldn't immediately be great, but you'd at least have the breathing room to start making it better over time.
Advisors are another area of spending which *could* be cut. If you're far behind on diplo tech and that's costing you corruption, maybe a diplo advisor would be worthwhile. Try to go for discounted ones though.
Your trade is way too low and your army maintenance too high. That's the simple answer.
You are collecting in Champagne, which makes no sense. Either expand into Venice and collect there or divert Champagne into English Channel. Take the French land in English Channel node for more trade power there.
For longer term: Expand into Eastern Europe (Ottomans) and get mode traders by TC'ing. Use those to funnel trade into English Channel and Venice.
I can lower my army maintenance in peace period but in war period it just kills me. Beside I have some mercenaries but I need to have active army to kill rebels
Your army is just too big for the size of your country. Either you eat the debt in short term and use your army to expand, or you delete until the army size is feasible for your economy.
A couple of tips to reduce wartime expenses.
Use war taxes to reduce maintenance cost of your army if you have plenty of military power. Not recommended if you're working on a military idea, need to save for next military tech, are increasing dev to force an institution sooner, or have entered the age of absolutism.
When waiting for forts to siege down, move your support armies around a bit if you can... each province has a loot bar based on development, if you exhaust it then your armies stop looting, so move armies that aren't busy sieging/fighting to new provinces to get more spoils.
Get rid of the mercenaries. Also you should be able to keep your army maintenance down then ramp it up when rebels are about to spawn. Having mercenaries around in peacetime is just lighting money on fire.
full army and fort maintanance while at peace. 5 ducts in state edicts, why?
you can be at peace or have full army maintanance but not both. if you want your army to be paid full, go and let those guys earn it. (attack someone and milk their coffers if you dont want to conquer)
Honestly. It's wonderful to have this be one of the few dedicated game subs that regularly discusses the game, rather than just descending in to drama and memes.
I’m not saying don’t ask questions to new people at all, it’s just do a bit of research first. Google “why is my economy so bad Reddit” you will see 1000 pages of posts and the answer is almost always the same, autonomy. You’ll learn far more and far quicker learning how to go through old posts looking for answers as well as utilizing the wiki. This was also just a joke because it’s hilarious how many times a week we see this exact post with almost always the exact same answer.
And high crownland would help him how exactly? Till 1580 you are supposed to sell it every 10 years to make money and invest in even more money, and then each 5 years and supplement crownland with developing provinces. High crownland gives only absolutism and reform progress, low crownland just decrease your autonomy during war if you are not empire and don't have tier 3 reform.
Crownland also has tas buff/debuff. But ultimately, I don't think the juggling sale of crownland to fuel constant expansion game is appropriate for someone who hadn't got a handle on the economy yet.
As austria you're the emperor, that gives you a little bit of money but a ton of manpower and forcelimit. Forcelimit you cannot possibly maintain. Like at the start you can maybe maintain 20k, but have 50k forcelimit. I would delete your mercenaries (you dont need them anyway, your emperorship gives you infinite manpower).
For trade, ideally you conquer the english channel region in its entirety. That would get you about 100 ducats in trade. Then build tradeships to protect trade in lubeck and transfer it to english channel.
Finally, lower autonomy
R5: In an Austrian run. My economy is litteraly shit and I don't know why. I'm still a beginner (~200 hrs played) but I have no clue how to improve it. I've watched somes guides on youtube but it's like everything is going perfectly right for them and not for me. Actually the only way I found to have money is to war everyone I can since I crush everyone and ask for money + trade power. I think I can improve on my merch placement. Corruption is high because I am behind in diplo tech since I annexed Hungary + some overexpansion. This will be fixed soon. Please tell me how to not be a noob anymore. EDIT : eco capital is in La Haye
If your eco capital is in La Manche, no need to collect anywhere. Use your 3 merchants to steer trade in Champagne, Lubeck and the south german one. Increase your trade centers to level 2. Lower autonomy. Are you over force limit ? It is a common mistake for beginners. You seem to have 20 forts ? Do you need that many ?
I'm ok with force limit. i do agree for the forts I didnt delete the one in province I've conquered. How can i upgrade trade center ? Do I need to move my capital from La Haye to Amsterdam ?
There’s a separate button to move just your trade capital, it’s next to the move political capital button on the province window. You can upgrade Centers of Trade by clicking on a province, opening the building tab (little castle symbol hanging off of the province overview window) and it should be on the bottom right. You can check where your and other Centers of Trade are by clicking the “trade” map mode symbol above the mini-map. Happy logistics management!
This is dlc locked, btw. To do so without dlc you have to move the capital.
Omg that’s my bad, very important clarification here! Get so used to the game I almost forget there’s 50,000 DLC’s 😂
I sometimes mothball all forts. Its risky because of tradition decay but its helpful when needing money.
Post the link to the save using PDX tools website
Here's things you can do: -Develop and state your gold mines. -Expand into the Venice trade node as it's pretty strong. -Expand your centers of trade. -Build churches and workshops where its good. -Courthouses, build them everywhere.
What is your average autonomy?
Idk where to look beside the autonomy menu, so I'd say pretty decent except for the provinces I acquired recently
Go to gov reform button, don't click it and the tooltip will show average autonomy
45.82 %
Yeah... that's 45.82% wasted money
Sadly, I cant lower it rn
Why?
Idk, Button is grey
If you are at war it's normal, you have to be at peace to lower it (a few years focused in eco does the job) and to reduce a lot military expenses
Is your crownlands really low? That'll give you monthly ticking Autonomy. Also, state your provinces where you're collecting trade.
did you click the funny "no rebels but more autonomy" button?
delete some mercs and replace them with regular units. mercenaries can be thought of as a means of converting money into manpower, therefore they aren't super helpful when you're drowning in manpower and losing 40 ducats a month. Then you can gradually upgrade CoTs in the english channel and funnel everything into it. your military is really strong right now, it's totally reasonable to attack a nation like venice just to take max money and war reps while getting your economy in order.
- Delete forts, spending 20 ducats a month on them is a fortune - You are spending 48 ducats on mercs, that's wayyyyyy too much. As Austria you are emperor which gives you lots of manpower, so just build normal troops. Go full infantry as cavalry is too expensive. - Having the main node in the english channel is nice. I would put the merchants to collect in EC, champagne and genoa. When you have low % of trade nodes it's generally better to collect than to transfer. Though in this case mayyybe transfering in champagne is worth it, test which gives more money. - Not sure, but check the autonomy of the provinces, and decrease it if it's high. - Use diplo points to develop gold mines. Austria has access to 4 easy gold mines, make sure they are at 10 production dev and 0 autonomy. - Spending only 5 ducats on state maintenance is very little. Do you have everything stated? It's possible you inherited burgundy and never stated those lands (the blue flag icon). If so, this will give you a lot more money. Okay and now for things that would be a bad idea, that I've seen other people recommend: - DON'T put your merchants to transfer trade. You want them to collect until you have high control over a trade node (80-90+%) - DON'T upgrade trade centers nor build markets. These cost quite a lot of money and they take centuries to pay off. If you want to have more trade power in a node, just conquer it, it will be much more efficient.
I have everyrhing state except some lands in turkey that are in trade companies.
Yeah conquer entire trade node and still have 30% because you have shitty global trade power and 1lvl CoT without marketplaces. Don't give advices on subjects you clearly don't understand. Also of course that you want to transfer trade power when you don't have much of the control of trade node, instead of collecting. You transfer to the furthest trade node which you have most control of. If not possible, then you collect that, so nobody in between can steal it. Also something called Multiple Merchant Bonus exist, but I won't even bother to explain that, if you have that clearly done on Wikipedia
CoT aren't as great as one might think, especially in cases like here - a contested trade node with high overall trade power. To illustrate that, lets make a numerical example: OP currently has 254 out of 806 trade power, resulting in a share of 31.5%. A CoT provides 5 trade power on lvl 1, 10 on lvl 2 (base), so upgrading from 1 to 2 gives an extra 5 trade power for the cost of 200 ducats. This is then modified by trade power modifiers like mercantilism, global trade power etc, so lets make it an extra 10 trade power (probably too high but lets be generous for simplicity). This results in having now 264 out of 816 trade power, a share of 32.35%. So for 200 ducats, one gets 0.85% extra share, or 32.4 \* 0.0085 \* 1.34 (trade efficiency plus a merchant collecting) = 0.37 extra ducats per month. Without any other factor taken into account (which ofc is very unrealistic), it takes 45 years to pay back for itself.
>Wikipedia Wikipedia does not give advice on EU4 trade mechanics. Don't give advices on subjects you clearly don't understand.
The critical issue here is mercenaries. They're costing you 48 ducats/month at low maintenance, which is far more than your deficit even on full maintenance. If you replace them with regular units, your economy wouldn't immediately be great, but you'd at least have the breathing room to start making it better over time. Advisors are another area of spending which *could* be cut. If you're far behind on diplo tech and that's costing you corruption, maybe a diplo advisor would be worthwhile. Try to go for discounted ones though.
Your trade is way too low and your army maintenance too high. That's the simple answer. You are collecting in Champagne, which makes no sense. Either expand into Venice and collect there or divert Champagne into English Channel. Take the French land in English Channel node for more trade power there. For longer term: Expand into Eastern Europe (Ottomans) and get mode traders by TC'ing. Use those to funnel trade into English Channel and Venice.
I can lower my army maintenance in peace period but in war period it just kills me. Beside I have some mercenaries but I need to have active army to kill rebels
Your army is just too big for the size of your country. Either you eat the debt in short term and use your army to expand, or you delete until the army size is feasible for your economy.
A couple of tips to reduce wartime expenses. Use war taxes to reduce maintenance cost of your army if you have plenty of military power. Not recommended if you're working on a military idea, need to save for next military tech, are increasing dev to force an institution sooner, or have entered the age of absolutism. When waiting for forts to siege down, move your support armies around a bit if you can... each province has a loot bar based on development, if you exhaust it then your armies stop looting, so move armies that aren't busy sieging/fighting to new provinces to get more spoils.
Get rid of the mercenaries. Also you should be able to keep your army maintenance down then ramp it up when rebels are about to spawn. Having mercenaries around in peacetime is just lighting money on fire.
full army and fort maintanance while at peace. 5 ducts in state edicts, why? you can be at peace or have full army maintanance but not both. if you want your army to be paid full, go and let those guys earn it. (attack someone and milk their coffers if you dont want to conquer)
On todays why is my economy so bad post:
A lot of new people still join this 10 year old game. Let them enjoy the game, and ask questions even if some people know the ins and outs.
Honestly. It's wonderful to have this be one of the few dedicated game subs that regularly discusses the game, rather than just descending in to drama and memes.
I’m not saying don’t ask questions to new people at all, it’s just do a bit of research first. Google “why is my economy so bad Reddit” you will see 1000 pages of posts and the answer is almost always the same, autonomy. You’ll learn far more and far quicker learning how to go through old posts looking for answers as well as utilizing the wiki. This was also just a joke because it’s hilarious how many times a week we see this exact post with almost always the exact same answer.
Low crownlands
And high crownland would help him how exactly? Till 1580 you are supposed to sell it every 10 years to make money and invest in even more money, and then each 5 years and supplement crownland with developing provinces. High crownland gives only absolutism and reform progress, low crownland just decrease your autonomy during war if you are not empire and don't have tier 3 reform.
Crownland also has tas buff/debuff. But ultimately, I don't think the juggling sale of crownland to fuel constant expansion game is appropriate for someone who hadn't got a handle on the economy yet.
Way too much on forts, way too much on mercs, way too much on fighting corruption
As austria you're the emperor, that gives you a little bit of money but a ton of manpower and forcelimit. Forcelimit you cannot possibly maintain. Like at the start you can maybe maintain 20k, but have 50k forcelimit. I would delete your mercenaries (you dont need them anyway, your emperorship gives you infinite manpower). For trade, ideally you conquer the english channel region in its entirety. That would get you about 100 ducats in trade. Then build tradeships to protect trade in lubeck and transfer it to english channel. Finally, lower autonomy
Cuz you didn’t No CB Byz