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
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