I don't understand
 

Why am I constantly threatened for not spending the budget???

How the f do I spend budget if I'm not a Road Builder???

I don't get it...there's no way to spend the budget if I am Head of the Council, General, or Admiral...is there?

What is the advantage of owning cities...other than closing them up for other families? Do I get any taxes?

Can I stage a coup (turn a mercenary army, a crusade or the army of Venice itself, against Venice, and forcefully place a new Doge without election)? That would be cool.

The General and the Admiral should hire armies, of course. I don't remember about the Head of the Council, I'm not sure if he's also supposed to spend.

There's no advantage to conquering cities besides closing them for other families, and that damages your reputation in Venice (as always, less severely the farther the city is from Venice).

No you can't stage military coups, IIRC. The worst you can do is assassinating the current Doge (or Pope) while you have a voting advantage.

Meh.

Too bad that didn't work that through a little better.

you can slowly take over the world, starting far out and slowly centering on venice. If you manage to capture important trade cities like novgorod (furs) and london (silver) you can make insane profits (noone trades a good it will go up slowly. you the only one to trade there? suck on it, civilians. You the only one to take goods, prices go down.)

later on, you'll have such an insane high income your reputation doesnt matter anymore in the slightest

if you are general or admiral, you get a budget. From the AI it is standard 1000. You'll need to hire mercenairies worth at least about 800 to avoid a penalty, including your own forces. So if your army attacks and a lot of them die, you might need to hire a second army. If you have money to spare, coleoni from venice is great. Guatemale is decent as well. At tangers (i think) and novgorod you can hire fast moving land units(cavalry/horse archers), relatively cheap, ideal for land exploration

road builders need to build roads, duh, but as in a good money making game, you can skim a bit off the top. No need to spend all the 1000, 700 or 800 will do fine.

council head doesnt get a budget, no worries there. Note that if you accuse and hang a senator of a rival, he will consider you an enemy for ever, just for doing your job. Even at harder settings, the worst they will do is some slander and killing senators/cardinals

on senators: gotta get them all
most ai wont spend much on road building, but just enrich themself on the budget
you dont want them on military posts
you dont really want them as council head, but together with road builder its the least harmful post

when playing on harder settings, you need to start recruiting armies ASAP, or your enemies will do it for you

dont become pope. Any cardinal you make will be bought by someone else, crusades are not worth it. Make france or something pope and buy the cardinals yourself. As long as they last 10 years (turns) it was money well spent. If they get assassinated it wasnt a more important senator that got killed, so worth their money

and if you play it right, money wont be the problem, but the fact you can only bribe 2 senators at a time will be.

extremely profitable routes:
london - soffala
silver for gold, ivory and gems
add some metal or wool if silver is in short supply

tunis/cairo - one of those african river cities. katsina?
grain for gold, gems and ivory, depends what each city has, it tends to change from game to game slightly

half of the mediteranian - antioch
some fast large galleys to carry trade goods to antioch and bring relics back. choose kinda carefully as your list of cities grows as the relics will run out

genoa/venice - novgorod
as soon as there is a road

if the traveling time is long, dont hesitate to put several fleets behind eachother, so every turn or every other turn a treasure fleet arrives

in general, dont bother with cogs. While their hold is huge, they are prey to every pirate out there and just take too dam long to get anywhere, not validating the huge cost of the guards needed to protect these whales

galleys are more vulnerable to storms, but if you stick to the coast risk is minimal and you still get there ahead of the cogs

the marine mercenairies may seem useless sometimes, but they are great for pirate hunting

well, thats it for now, sure its not anything noone else said before



i really love this game btw

making a new post not because I had something to add to my previous, but also because I have a question

First to add: you get a huge popularity bonus for overspending your budget. So if you hired all, or nearly all, available mercenairies (mostly so noone else can hire them), even if you, as doge (naturally) set your allowance to 5000, you'll be overspending by 12 or 13 thousand. Two turns after losing 90 popularity by attacking rome, it's back to 95. Even if you don't have quite that much overspending, if you have the largest villa, it will automatically raise your popularity again. As a last remark, closing a city like novgorod from your competition is worth a lot more than whatever you need to spend on repairing your reputation. The only downside is that after the first attack, you're everyones enemy. Destroying pirates and brigands might help with popularity too, not sure.


now my question: I've had some of the AI occassionally offer an pact with me, exchanging maps, opening cities to me (the ai tends to grab one or two before I get my claws in the council), the lot. However, that hasn't happened in ages. Even when I'm having a great start and captured tripoli and florence ahead of the AI AND open them for all traders even while staying in controll, everyone still hates me and You can be sure that if they ever get an army, they will first attack my cities before ever trying one of the closed ones, even if they have access to it. I've tried continuous bribing, but that didn't seem to have any effect. So, any suggestions? I'd like to have one AI not hate me for a change.

The messages "run for doge" "run for pope"... what do they do actually? will it make the AI possibly support me?

Not sure what you mean with "messages". When you get the office of Doge you get the appoint the government of Venice and set the taxes and spending. When you get the Pope you can call crusades. Also in both cases you prevent your rivals from gaining that office, which can be more detrimental than gaining it for yourself is advantageous. The Doge is elected by a majority of senators, and the Pope by the cardinals. Both senators of Venice and posts of cardinals can be bought.

occasionally you get "Coronaro anounces he is running for pope" or something, I assume the is the option you get in the message screen where you can send messages, map info or "anounce running for doge/pope" but what does it actually do?

And does anyone know how to get an AI ally? Somehow they all hate me from the start

It means that family is trying to get elected. If they're your enemies you might be interested in running yourself, if only to prevent them from gaining it instead. Or, connecting to your second question, if you want to befriend that family, have your senators/cardinals vote for them.

There may be other ways And if you want to befriend them don't burn down their warehouses or attack their merchants, close cities to them... Of course

senator voting is anonymous, at least I never know if anyone voted for me and generally, they don't

And YES. I KNOW what running for doge would mean, what I was asking if anyone knew if it had any in-game effect, or if the whole message system is only for multiplayer purposes.