Economies need to be managed for the turn after the coming one.
Expenses can't be reduced for the coming turn. Any troops or characters lost or retired still require maintenance, so they need to be managed in advance. For example, if you have a total upkeep of 40,000 gold, and your results suggest that next turn you will only have 10,000 gold, you have to do something about it this turn. If necessary, ask another player in your team to send you gold.
Fortifications and harbours are paid for before they are removed or reduced during a turn.
Gold transfers from allies arrive at the end of the turn, so must also be completed a turn in advance.
These are the highest rates with an (average) stable loyalty or likely to result in a small loyalty gain.
A character with 50 command rank has a fair chance of raising taxes to 60%. A character with 40 command rank may succeed.
When taxes go up, population centres suffer an initial loyalty reduction. Those that drop to 15% or below may degrade, so raise your taxes early so that camps you then place do not suffer this loyalty reduction.
Your projected income equals tax revenue plus your population centre’s gold production from mines.
Gold production from mines is only affected by seasons: it is unaffected by tax rates or upgrades in population size. So doubling your taxes won’t double your gold income from population centre mines.
You can sell products to cover your expenses, but remember that any population centre under siege won’t sell its products, or provide tax revenue.
Camps are a source of revenue, through products and gold mine revenue.
The total number of population centres is limited, so once your emissaries are strong enough, start building camps.
You’ll know the limit has been reached when your emissaries who fail to create a camp are no longer told that “continued efforts may succeed.”
Camps with loyalty of 15 or less have a chance of being lost, and loyalty can change slightly each turn.
Since the loyalty of new camps is equal to half the emissary skill of the character who creates them, it makes sense to create camps with characters who have an emissary skill in the high 30s or greater.
If your emissaries do not have sufficient emissary skill, use the 520 – InfYour order to increase their skill level.
Upgrade your camps to villages once the population centre limit has been reached.
Camps produce no tax revenue (though they may mine gold), but villages do. Upgrading to a village provides the same additional income as any other upgrade (975 at 39% taxes or 1500 at 60%), and they are the least expensive to do.
Villages also continue to produce well.
Camp to village upgrades only succeed when the population centre loyalty plus the character’s emissary rank is around 75 or greater.
Issue Nation Sell to Caravan orders (order 325) at your capital each turn.
The market will accept, very approximately, about 20,000 gold’s worth of product from each player in a turn. Make sure you sell as close to this amount as possible each turn.