The combat in M:TW is a lot more realistic than R:TW. I got M first than a friend gave me his old copy of R... and I played that briefly before switching back. I hated the way AI armies swarmed around in very unrealistic ways. I know M:TW isn't the most accurate depiction of combat but it's quite a bit further along than R:TW.

Long post here - be warned!

At risk of sounding like an accountant, does anyone have any insights on how to balance your budget and not run out of money, particularly in the early game? The early game is usually where the "land grab" happens, especially if you have many tempting rebel provinces bordering yours. I thought rather than just asking the question, I'd share my own situation and then ask for opinions on how to best manage this.

I'm playing as the Turks right now and after (foolishly) expanding as quickly as possible to the north, east and south I've now run out of money. The biggest drain on my finances is (not surprisingly) army upkeep - it makes up 51% of my expenses. I've now gotten to the point where I'm maintaining a huge army because I've just taken Constantinople and Nicaea from the Byzantines (who have been eliminated as their Emperor was slain without heirs and their remaining cities of Thessalonica and Corinth have gone rebel, which provide opportunities if I had the money). As its taking a while to convert these cities to my religion (I'm trying to roleplay as the chivalrous Sultan Jalal and so I do not sack cities for cash so they usually have high population when I take them) I have to maintain full armies in these cities, given that I've had crusaders now starting to come through my lands (a crusade has been called on Antioch and they're all coming through the Bosphorus). Where possible all my interior cities are militia-only, and only up to the free upkeep limit, and my castles (Mosul, Caesarea, Tbilisi, Acre, Gaza, Rhodes and Nicosia) are all garrisoned by a single unit (usually Turkish archers or javelinmen).

The bulk of my "ranging armies" used to be Sipahis until I worked out that they cost nearly 3 florins a man so all those Sipahis got the flick and I've replaced them with Turkish HA, which are cheaper at 2.5 florins a man. My infantry has been downgraded from Saracen Militia to Spear Militia (again cheaper at 1.1 florins/man compared to 1.4 florins/man - I know these are fractions but every bit counts). I thought the Azabs would be a cheap source of manpower, but they're bloody expensive (2.1 florins/man) and not even as good as Spear Militia! I got rid of them too. Consequently my military performance has suffered somewhat...

All up I estimate (I got tired of counting manual army stacks) that my army costs me about 20,000 florins, give or take a couple thousand.

I ended up using a calculator and working out unit costs/man/type of unit, and I discovered that my navy is pretty bloody expensive - I wanted to follow British Empire doctrine of having twice as many ships as the next two navies combined, but doing so is massively expensive - each full stack of dhows (740 men) costs me 3000 florins, and a half-stack (10 dhows of 390 men total) costs me 1500. I think I have one full stack and about five or six half-stacks, so I'm estimating the total cost to be about 10,000 florins just for naval fleets (+ or - a couple of thousand). I'm starting to think that navies are overrated.

Then I've got my Eastern Med "patrol line" (basically a line of single dhows equally spaced throughout the Eastern Med to remove the fog and deter pirates, as well as give me early warning of perfidious Egyptian attacks) which costs about 1000, and my Black Sea "patrol line" costs a bit less. Then you add the single dhows that I have near rival ports as surveillance (I have this for the Egyptian ports in the eastern Med as well as Hungarian and Polish ports in the Black Sea and some (not all) Venetian and Sicilian ports around the central Med) as well as single dhows in my harbours for quick transport of troops if required - I reckon I'm paying about 4-5K for that all up.

So let's say my navy costs me 16,000 florins approx. I haven't even taken into account the mix of stacks I have which are part-dhow and part-war galley (war galleys cost 200 for 56 men vs 150 for 37 for dhows), so there could be quite a bit of upside to that number.

Given that my existing income is about 60,000 florins, and 35,000 florins is used up by my military, and another 10,000 goes to wages (I'd give the generals pay cuts but I can't) and another 5,000 to corruption, that leaves me with 10,000 to a ) recruit new troops when needed and b ) to engage in construction of value added buildings to either improve my military capability or help me earn more money. In many cases I've had to halt construction in certain cities as I just haven't got the money (and unlike RL I can't run constant budget deficits). My taxes are all at high (again due to roleplaying a benign Islamic empire, I don't want them at very high). Also, as you queue up buildings I think you still pay the charge for those buildings the year you queue them up, not the year you build them, like in RTW.

I've been trying to get my trade figures up, but given that most of the Catholic world is at war with me because of that bloody Crusade the chances of trading with them are pretty much slim to none. I'm also at war with Egypt (they attacked me) so no trade with them either. I remember raking it in around the Levant and Baghdad area with my merchants when I was playing as Denmark, but as the Turks I'm not making anywhere near as much with the same level of merchants (must be a distance to capital thing).

I don't want to continually put off construction of key buildings which will assist development of my empire. So the only options I can see ahead of me are:

1 - brutally reduce troop levels to a manageable level. Where necessary give up cities which cannot be maintained
2 - cut down my navy, give up the "patrol lines", eliminate at least a couple of the half-stacks which will probably save me about 12,000 florins
3 - "shrink" my empire - give up my Byzantine possessions as well as the ones north of and in the Caucasus Mountains (Sarkel, Tbilisi, Yerevan)

I can't see any way by which I can grow my topline, so it's really only reducing expenses which will help me. I don't remember it being this hard to manage money in RTW - there was that initial stage where you had to live like a pauper, but after a while, as you scaled your empire up, you started printing money.

Any advice on how you guys balance your budget and manage your territorial expansion with your fiscal constraints would be much appreciated.

Hmm... maybe it's a particular challenge with Turkey? I've not played them yet but you're doing much the same thing I've done with England (minimize interior city garrisons, maximize trade revenue). I did tend to go the despot route and extirminate populations to avoid huge garrisoning charges... and I tried to keep the number of castles in my empire to a minimum (usually on the frontier other than one highly developed castle in France for building advanced troops). Free garrisons in cities, taxes as high as they'll allow while still allowing some growth (usually "very high" is a problem... makes folks unhappy and kills growth).

I also sent out a lot of merchants early... although they're a PITA because of the constant challenges they face (and for some reason it seemed like every other merchant is super-powerful while mine are 1-3 and get taken out easily).

Just to update - I managed to get my budget under control using these mechanisms:

1. Cut down my navy. I think I managed to save about 10K florins just by doing this. I have one half-stack in the Black Sea, one in the Central Med, and one in the Atlantic. That's it. None of this British Navy bollocks.

2. Interior provinces have JUST militia troops, up to the limit. Interior castles have one defender max. (This did come back to bite me though.)

3. I dumbed down a lot of my army. Where I had expensive troops (eg Sipahis, Ottoman Infantry, etc) I replaced them with a next-level down troop type (eg Sipahis --> Turkomans, Ottomans --> Turkish Archers, etc). I tried to leave "frontline" troops (eg the ones involved in my European expansion) at the top level if possible. (This also came back to bite me.)

4. Focus on population and economic buildings. I stopped making things like ballista makers and focussed my building efforts wholly on economic and population buildings (eg farms, warehouses, etc).

5. Merchant trading costers. I used the fort trick (justified it as a corporate "office") and put one on the ivory resource in Dongala. I now have about 10 merchants each making about 700 florins/turn inside this fort.

As a result I was (until recently) "netting" about 20-30K a turn for discretionary (recruitment & construction), which meant that I could construct many more buildings than I could. I still ended up spending pretty much all my discretionary income per turn as buildings get more expensive as your cities grow. I did manage to build a "war chest" of about 80K florins though.

However, my timing in terms of my cost-cutting strategy was impeccable; my wave of retrenchments, redundancies and sackings came just a few years before the Horde arrived. They came in around Yerevan and Baghdad (like they did in my Danish game). In my Danish game they ambled around for many turns without attacking anything; in this turn they went straight to Mosul, about seven or eight stacks, and sieged it.

This was not good as I'd gutted Mosul of its defenders - it was as far away from my frontline as could be, after all. I'd had about a couple of turns to frantically churn out some javelinmen, naffatuns and Turkish archers to try and man the walls - I think I had about half a stack in total. Unfortunately I went overboard on the missile troops and ran out of time to build any infantry. The Mongols attacked - they had built a couple of rams (good for them, as I destroyed one with my archers and naffatun), broke down my gate, and took my city square while I rained arrows down on them. They didn't even need their second army as their first routed me fairly easily once I had to demount from the walls. The castle succumbed with a whimper to the loss of all defenders.

They didn't hang onto the castle, but sacked it and moved on to Baghdad - a huge city with many defenders. I'd had some forewarning after the Mosul fiasco and had recruited some Janissary Heavy Infantry, Halberd Militia and Spear Militia, as well as a number of Sipahis and Turkomans. So I had a full stack army defending the Round City. Unfortunately I had no missile infantry (I couldn't recruit Janissary Archers yet and could recruit no other missile troops in the city) and my sole missile-recruiting settlement in the area (Mosul) had been sacked, but I did have ballista towers. The Horde attacked after building a couple of rams and a siege tower - two full stacks, the Mongol van led by the Khan himself.

The first Mongol army deployed before my gates in full battle array. It was comprised heavily of cavalry, with heavy horse archers, horse archers and lancers on the wings and missile infrantry in the vanguard. They took their rams and their siege tower forward towards Baghdad's walls. I managed to destroy the siege tower with my ballista towers, forcing the Mongols to come through the gates, where I had all my infantry. I routed the first army (led by the Khan, no less) by placing all my Janissaries in front of the gates, supported by halberd militia and my horsemen clustered around. I had my weaker spear infantry manning the walls so that the towers rained death on the Mongols as they clustered before the gates. The Khan shamed himself by turning tail and fleeing like a frightened goat after his horsemen had destroyed themselves on the halberds of my infantry but I took some pretty heavy losses as well, particularly the priceless Janissaries. As a result when the second full stack wave of the Horde came the infantry defending the gates were composed largely of conscripted spear militia, of questionable temperament. I hoped that the presence of pockets of battle-hardened Janissaries and halberd militia would stiffen the backbone of my defensive line, but routing the Khan's first army had come at a high price.

Unfortunately for me it was too high. The morale of my militia troops was found wanting in the crunch - I looked like I was holding my own against all odds and was still holding the line just behind the gate (my Turkomen and Sipahis had run out of arrows and were throwing their bodies (and that of their horses) into the line to repel the invaders from the east, when one moronic spear militia unit decided to rout even though they still had 63 men in the unit! (And it was ultimately fruitless as all they did was rout to the square where they were cut down by the Mongol heavy cavalry that poured through the gap - I'd have killed them myself if the game would have let me.) This created the hole which the Horde desperately needed, and I just couldn't contain them after that - they overcame me in a battle of attrition. My last soldier (a Janissary, believe it or not) died trying to fight the last 5 Mongol Horse Archers that had taken the city square. I'd never seen so many bodies piled up behind the gates. If that bloody spear unit hadn't routed at that particular time (and they were cut down running away anyway, may they burn in Hell), I'm sure I would have won! They were down to FIVE men. :mad:

As a consequence, the humiliation of losing Mosul and Baghdad in quick succession has galvanised the Sultan to decisive action. I've now thrown my budget out the window, executed all the accountants and beancounters who contributed to this fiasco, and have been raising armies in my heartland with total disregard for cost (Janissaries and Hashashim from Antioch and Damascus, Sipahis from Aleppo, Ottoman Infantry and Javelinmen from Caesarea and Acre, Sipahi Lancers from Gaza, and Saracens from Adana and Edessa. I've had to put a temporary halt to my efforts to destroy the Portuguese to get rid of these Mongol pests.

Bloody Mongols. [img]graemlins/madhell.gif[/img]

[ 03-14-2007, 05:27 AM: Message edited by: Memnoch ]

A relatively historical outcome, the Mongols did upset two Turkish empires IIRC (the Mongols hurt the Seljuks, and their Timurid successors mauled the Ottomans quite badly 200 years later) [img]tongue.gif[/img]

I've found that conversion to cities is the best way to boost the economy, the only problem is that it is irreversible... One or two castles per region is normally enough. I also rely on militia for bulk infantry, and depending on the faction (long range missiles are nice) I might use militia units for missile troops as well.

Especially coastal provinces have a lot to gain financically from being cities.

Btw, I hate the micro-management involded in managing merchants. Not my cup of tea at all, and the process of actually selecting something by clicking on a 3D interface is not really optimal either.

This is why I decided to keep it simple - I built a fort on top of the ivory resource at Dongala and each time a merchant is available to recruit I recruit him at Dongala and put him in the fort. I have about 12 merchants there now, all generating about 700 florins/turn from the same resource - and none of them are at the remotest risk of acquisition from others.

that fort idea is awesome... merchants are a major PITA otherwise. I've seen other nation's merchants march halfway accross the map just to knock out my merchant on his spices (having walked past a half dozen unexploited spice resources to get to me).

I justified it by calling it a "trading coster" - it's the next evolution in capitalism. Get the merchies to work together, and give them an office to work out of, supported by the long arm of the law. Bit like the East India Trading Company...

Great posts in this thread Memnoch. I've had this game for months, and haven't had the slightest inclination to play it until now. I just may do that...

(I got it knowing that an inevitable Total Realism mod would come out, and I loved RTR)

OK, I found out the following: I think you need to a ) get the "the world is round" message as well as b ) build the buildings that will allow you to train carracks. I think it's about 1400, assuming my info is correct. </font>[/QUOTE]Okay, i got the message some time ago, and i'm already deploying Caracks in my war against the Spaniards, but still no signs of the new world. I tried sailing to the edge of the map, but that's not possible, have you figured out what exactly triggers this thing?