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Okay my glory is at 740, Austira, Russia, Sweeden and Prussia has all surrendered once, yet my country is pennyless. I have no idea how to run and make profitable France's economy (sad since they were a powerhouse). Plus I can seem to aford any new troops or improvements. What don't I understand? ....A Economic Primer from Matrix would be great.

Marshal Steve

Are you using a lot of depots to support your troops? If they are resupplying from depots, it is quite expensive. Upgrading banks is a big help too. Each time you upgrade your banks, you increase your money output from that province. I usually upgrade most of my provinces banks on the first turn. (others are for barracks and stuff like that)

Post a screenshot of your economic screen.

Also, look for Ralegh's posts and any info on economy. I was having problems during beta testing and he sorted a lot of it out for me.

Below is some good info from Ralegh about economies. (It is from beta testing but should still mostly hold true)

Ralegh, I hope you don't mind me posting this but I think it will help many people while waiting for the more detailed help.


a) The most important impact on your economy is your feudal level. With a higher feudal level, you get more levies and raise some feudal dues, but less productivity from the population (including taxes) and less income from merchants.
NB: For countries with a high feudal level trying to raise money through merchants is very difficult. Changing your feudal level has a short term impact on national morale (-275 per month for one month per level of change), but may be worth it! It is interesting to try to play with a very high feudal level...

b) The income from a province is based on the population of the province, your feudal level, plus 10% per level of banks. What affects population? Raising a division reduces the population from either that province or one of the provinces bordering it. Excess food production leads to population growth and starvation reduces population. The maximum population of a province is set by the scenario, and can go up or down with the level of roads - I think two levels of roads gives one more max pop. Causing a population boom through massive production of food can have significant long term benefits.

c) Production of goods in a province is based on the province's underlying capability (made visible through the 'best resources' notation), the population working on that resource, and any impact from provincial improvements. Population working on a resource is based on the population of the province times the percentage of labour allocated to that labour category. This means that a high population province without 'iron' as a 'best resource', for example, might produce more iron than a province that has the speciality but a very small population. However, if there isn't much iron to be mined, even a very large population won't produce much.

HOWEVER, note that production is a probability estimate: actual production will vary based on random factors, and on national morale (which factors production by .9 through to 1.1).

The best way to see production is the production report - which reflects actual production from last month, not attempted production for next month. Note that things like waste, presence of enemy units, a probability impact have all effected you plans, so it is a bit different from what you were trying to do.

d) What resources do I want? Generally, this depends on what units you want to build; whether you want to boost national morale (and glory) with luxeries; and your food plan. Generally (unless I am trying for a population boom), I want enough food for perhaps one pop growth. I always want luxeries. The rest varies.

OK - so what does Ralegh do?
Horses and wine are produced by farmers, and I always want both, so any province with a speciality in either gets maximum farming (and I build more farms there). Cotton and textiles are reasonably rare, so provinces specializing in these I usually max in textiles (wool is pretty common). Luxery specialists I usually maximize on luxeries. Then I will allocate a bit to things like iron and timber to build up enough of a pool for any building desires I might have (artillery for example, or building barracks). I will then allocate the remaining provinces to (a) extra food production if I need it from the ones with some level of farms (b) labour production from the ones with factories (c) and provinces still left I will allocate to luxeries (or anything I am very short on).

Every month I will open the production screen to make sure there wont be any starvation or more excess pop caused than I want - periodically (once a game year?) I will scroll through adjusting production for new priorities.

Finally a few notes on trade
Britain gets no wine - none at all - and very little horses. They have great textiles, money, and iron. Other countries have other shortfalls - trade is a way to try to give some of the stuff you make easily to get things that are harder for you to produce.
Beware however: the person who establishes a trade routes pays CASH each month to maintain the route, and the amount depends on the length of the route - it is easily possible to trade yourself into bankruptcy.
Also look out for privateers - they steal resources as they are travelling the trade route. Dispatch your privateers to chase them away.
Trade does seem to improve your relationship with the other power, though, and may sometimes be worth it for that reason alone.

[Rather than trading for resources you want, get them by conquest: before taking a province from an enemy who surrenders to you, use the "Show Production" setting on the map to see the top 4 products made by each of their provinces - and take one which produces things you want.]

ORIGINAL: RooseBolton


Okay my glory is at 740, Austira, Russia, Sweeden and Prussia has all surrendered once, yet my country is pennyless. I have no idea how to run and make profitable France's economy (sad since they were a powerhouse). Plus I can seem to aford any new troops or improvements. What don't I understand? ....A Economic Primer from Matrix would be great.

Marshal Steve

Sounds like you overbuilt military vs your economy in the first place, tried to play like an RTS game heh, you don't have unlimited resources in COG, population cap plays a big factor in your economy as well as your armies. You gotta have someone working the farm to feed all those troups you made.