This guide is intended to walk you through a strategy that I've been using for the game. Looking at the limited information out there, I see the other guides very much suggesting and recommending to start as a Magnate for the starting gold bonus. I do not believe that the magnate is the best choice and wanted to provide an alternative strategy for the community.

I've got about 20 hours of game play under my belt and whilst I don't understand a lot of the mechanics around price fluctuations etc. I do not feel that is too necessary and I'm sure you will have success dropping that magnate.

On my first ultra hard play through as I hit turn 50, I was as good as first on the bank ratings which is very similar to the results I have had in a couple of medium play throughs.

I'm going to assume you have a game or two under your belt and have a general idea of how this game works.

To start out, make sure that you start as a Conqueror. Why? Well you get a whopping 25% discount on the cost of opening new countries. So whilst the Magnate get 25k gold extra upfront, the Conqueror gets a 7k discount on the first starting country and then 25% for everyone after that. And we are going to be opening a LOT of countries. I had opened around 50 by turn 150, assuming they were all single region countries (and they were not) then you are looking at a discount of around 350k at least. It's not to be sniffed at!

I think that Conqueror is perhaps the only ideology worth taking. Perhaps the additional fear or influence would work too. But if I'm honest, beyond keeping the countries happy I see little need for influence. Guard is slightly more useful, certainly getting a cash bonus in the early game.


Getting Going

So as I'm sure you know you'll want to recruit experts to start, make sure you skip the tutorial and try to get 7+ in the correct stat.

You will also want a starting country. Choose any single region country, perhaps the higher the scores for the industry and stuff helps, I'm not sure how much but still go for somewhere like Sukothai with a good infrastructure. Brittany is another one I like to choose because it's smack between England and France


The Money is in Investments

The Conqueror makes their money through investing and particularly through investing in wars. From the limited time I've played, particularly within the early game, I find that business loans are not worth the effort. In fact, I think that by taking the loans out too early, it actually hinders you.

The game is all about liquidity of your cash, and if it's tied up in a low interest loan (when I say low interest, I mean compared to flipping a property as you will see below) then you're not making the most of your cash.

There's also another important aspect of not having money tied up in property, and that's war. If you enter a war in a region you have property in. Once again, it's dead money. It's sat there doing nothing and you're not even getting those resources from the building because of the war.

We instead, are going to look to hold onto properties for only 1 turn at the start. There may be occasions where you want to hold them for more than a turn, perhaps a good house for a little gold boost, and that's ok. However, be careful, especially starting out that you don't get bit by war.

Finally, having all that gold on hand means that you can take full advantage of war investments.


Bank Loans

I mentioned that business loans are not worth it. However bank loans can be. Again, be careful with these, they do not pay anywhere near as well as flipping properties. Although the chance of a bank going bust is really high and the benefits from liquidating that bank are well worth it. That said, starting out (and by that I mean until you have too much money to use each turn) then I'd be looking for loans that are short in length. A loan for 1 turn is well worth a punt, as is a 2 turn perhaps. The higher the number of turns, the more you will have to weigh up whether you want to go that long without that cash. Once you get a number of bank loans going though, you will not notice it, gold will be coming in left, right and centre.


Science

Starting out I would suggest that you make 'The Big Game' your first target. We are going to want to raise that investment limit as soon as possible. Other things I would prioritise are things like, additional investment opportunities, generate work, fear, influence, reduce costs. You know what to do.


Properties

The key thing here is not to hold onto them, we will initially make our money by buying and selling the properties. Even buying and selling on the same turn gives a good profit (much better than a loan).

So we will buy, and perhaps sell straight away if we just want to get a little more cash to fund something else. Or more likely than not, hold for a turn and then sell at the start of the next. Be aware you run a high risk of property lockdown in your first region, when the inevitable war comes.

It doesn't really matter which property you buy. We are looking for profit from flipping here, so just the most valuable property is the best. That said, it sometimes is worth getting that sawmill, coal mine, villa or iron mine for a turn. Particularly starting out, as you will need a weapon stockpile.


Talking about weapons

I would void selling these and try to ensure you always keep a little stock. You never know, especially early game when you will get attacked and not be able to invest enough in the war to win. Weapons can be your lifeblood here, and I'm sure you'll need them at some point. That said, don't be too afraid to risk selling them all early game, especially if you can get a better profit on another war investment or something.


Upgrading Buildings

You will want to upgrade to tier 3 for all depts. and your armoury as soon as possible. Although be careful not to do this too quickly and eat into your capital too much. The investment upgrades should be prioritised, then guards, armoury and diplomats. Just be careful not to go too crazy here and eat into your funds too much.

You should also be looking to upgrade your staff as quickly as possible, particularly the investment dept. The better the dept. the more you can invest, the more you invest, the more you profit.


Investing in Regions

There's 2 ways of doing this. The first I guess is to upgrade them as soon as they are available. The issue with that is that it's very much hit and miss as to whether the region you upgrade will be part of a future war. I would much rather hold off on investment until a war in that country happens. At that point I will upgrade the affected region if possible. That way, I know that the investment will be put to immediate use.


General Tips

Your guards can be really useful starting out in the early game. Using their fear to purchase luxuries to sell can provide a nice gold boost around turn 30 or so.

Don't forget that you can purchase materials on the exchange. If you really need more weapons to win a war and don't have the materials, you could perhaps buy them.

And you should also try to make sure you always have a little fallback. i.e. some work available, weapons, materials or fear to turn to luxuries.

Don't tie up your money in wars. There's no point investing 200k at the start of the war when there's 5 turns to go. That 200k could perhaps double in that time if you used it well. Always join the wars with 1 turn to go.

Starting out you are going to be buying properties, look for the most expensive, purchase it and then sell it on the next turn. The goal is to get to around 50k - 60k to start out, which is perhaps 15 turns??

Anyway, you'll want that 50k + as we will be looking to invest in a new country (around 20k) and then pump the rest of our money into the war (32k). You will find that your money shouldn't take too much of a hit doing this and there's not a lot of wars to start, so you'll soon be up around 100k and flying. Anyway, once you have your first war then your turns will look like this.

I have a number of countries at this point so I'm getting wars started against me. I have also upgraded all my depts and key buildings to at least tier 3. You will not be able to do the regional investment that I use until you upgrade the investment dept to 3. Until then, you will have to invest the default 32k. So my example will start with my resolving a war against me and using some of the tools you will not get until tier 3 upgrades.


The first step of the turn it to sell all your property and luxuries. We want all that gold in our hands. If I was starting out, I would simply be buying the most expensive property I can once more and then selling on the next turn until I can get involved in the wars. Don't forget to sell those luxuries too.




I have waited until there's only 1 turn left for the battle prior to joining the fight. Take a note of the country (Ramazan) and region (Northern Aleppo) then head into the Regional Investment screen.


Find your country and then open it up. Unfortunately in this instance, I cannot invest in this country as it is on cooldown. You will be unable to invest when you start a game also, your investment dept. needs to be tier 3 to do this.


Well 32k is still 32k, and with the war bonus then it's still the best way to invest 32k. So lets go and join that war and invest every penny you can, without accidentally bankrupting yourself of course.


If you were astute, you'll notice that I invested 27,238. That got me a property which was worth 28,700 but if you look at the value to my portfolio that's' a 34k+ property and a 7k profit. Assuming we win the war, although that's in no doubt now.

Even if we would have purchased that country license we would only be down around 12k or so, however we have a new license. 12k is about the same cost of a revolution too, the bonus of not doing this via revolution is that you haven't locked down your starting region for 5 turns too.

So starting out, be careful not to run your funds down too much. But I would open a country asap for to unlock the tier 2 upgrades, and if you make 'Our People' your second target in the science tree then you'll be investing in the regions real quick and making a much bigger profit. If you then also use the fear your guards have been generating to buy and sell luxuries. You are ready to start playing with the big boys.

So I've just defended an attack but now I still have bunch of gold that is burning a hole in my extremely large mattress. So let's now go looking for war, we can do this by opening the war screen and selecting the current tab.


We are looking for wars that have 1 turn remaining and are within small preferably, single region countries for now. There's 2 candidates there, although Russia and Lithuania are two large countries. So they are off the list. Better instead to go and check out those other 2 countries.


Bingo, Georgia only has 1 region, you can also tell it's the country at war with the crossed swords on its icon. Let's open that up and go to purchase a license.


You can do some diplomacy, I'll be honest, I'm not sure what it does beyond raise their opinion of you and unlocks diplomatic actions within that country. On a side note, I've played with locking down banks in regions with diplomacy after providing loans with some success. I'm not sure how that works but you might want to play with that later on.

Anyway, now we've got the license let's go and invest in that region. Why? Well we want to be able to pump as much gold into this war as possible.


There it is, and it's obviously available because we only just bought that license! Let's invest as much as we can.


Now that's done, time to go and put our gold into the war.


With a much nicer profit this time!


Now I'm still have some investments I can make so I'm going to do a quick property flip.


That's a nice 46k profit and I'm back up to enough for another war.


You may have noticed Fez in the list earlier. I'm going join that war too real quick.


It's worth noting that when you purchase these properties, assuming you win the war (why wouldn't you?) you also get the resources for that turn too. I didn't capture the screenshot but I got a sawmill or something from Fez. Here's my empty Armoury.


Ok, so that's my war games over for this turn. I've got 565k invested back into the wars and 151k in change.

So what to do with that 151k now? Well I could put that money into business loans, but if you are still with me then I'm not going to do that because it's the worst way to make money in the game.

I can't flip any more investments (I only have a single opportunity at the moment). So the next option is bank loans.


These are opened at tier 3 for your credit dept. You may notice that I've only upgraded that dept to tier 3, there's no need to go any higher yet as the improvements there only affect the business loans. I will only start doing those in the next 10 - 20 turns, once I've upgraded completely and have extra gold to burn at the end of my turns.


There's a perfect one, two turns, good amount and just a little under my remaining funds. Unfortunately I wouldn't have enough to cover my running costs if I issue the full amount. Not to worry though, I have some rainy day funds.


Sell some weapons and I'm good to go.


I also had some fear in reserve which I could have used on the magnate orders, but I will hang onto that in case I need it again later.


All there is to do is to issue the bank loan and finish the turn.


And that's my turn over. 35k left in the bank, almost 570k in property and a 140k bank loan due to mature in 2 turns. Fingers crossed, they go under though!

First I'll sell all that property I purchased on the last turn.


And here's all that wood from the sawmill that I purchased in Fez too.


So that's the turn done. Started out with 720k, finished with 612k in the bank, a bank loan of around 140k and 2 new country licenses. I make that around a profit of 70k in the last turn, not bad at all if you ask me. Although the best thing is the new country licenses, which that there's 2 more chances of having a war declared on a country you are operating in!

_________________________________


Well I hope that this was useful and is simple enough to follow. Any comments, questions, feedback or anything is welcome in the comments.