Mount & Blade: Warband

Mount & Blade: Warband

Aut Caesar aut nihil
crushing debt as emperor?
i became emperor, and i made a few thousand denarii for the first like 2 paydays, but then i went tin 200k debt, lost most of my troops, the generals started hating me for the debt, and started getting constant invasions and rebellions which i couldnt quell because i had no money.
how do i avoid this? ive spent many hours on this save and dont want to abandon it.
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Showing 1-4 of 4 comments
Turtler 21 Sep @ 5:04pm 
I feel this is the classic late game M&B trap that's even worse here. By the time you become faction leader you really want to have gotten your economics in order months before, and have hundreds of thousands if not millions in surplus precisely because of the scale up. With this mod and being Emperor that is even worse due to the scale of the Roman state and its conflicts.

Unfortunately the hour is late for that. Just a note for later and to get your productive enterprises in order and some established fiefs to weather it. But there is still hope. Probably.

You're going to run into the classical problem of the Roman State in its absolutist period, namely your military is too bloated to pay for itself, and you have corruption in spades, but you need to be able to fight on multiple fronts and succeed. So you're going to need to do some triage. Which can help since this actually has a beneficial effect.

Firstly: Get your own house in order. Make sure your private military force is sustainable and high quality, and able to fight and win when greatly outnumbered. If you're not right you might have to. Then start identifying military units and downsizing, letting go of weaker units and replacing them with fewer but more capable ones, preferably in your vassals' settlements or your own. Then identify weak enemy war fronts (like say Britannia) and lucrative trade routes, and prepare to start organizing merchant expeditions (yourself if need be) to buy low and sell high, and to knock out weak enemies to consolidate the front. When you are this deep in deficit there's really not much free finance you can have except what you take from the enemy, so fight with calculated aggression and take take take and sell sell sell to help keep water.

Also, identify "Troublesome" or "Undesirable" vassals. The former are mostly those that have personality types we'd call evil and/or dishonorable, Quarrelsome/Bad-Tempered, Sadistic, and Pitiless in particular. Conversely, try to identify "Good", upstanding lords, namely Good-natured and Upstanding. (Also make note of Martial and Cunning ones, because they can be damn trouble later, especially if you go for a paint the map.) This means meeting your lords and characters one by one and getting their personality types, but it is worth it. Why?

Well, you know the Roman strategy of Divide et Impera? Divide and Rule?

If push comes to shove you are going to try and manipulate. Try to weaken the "Bad" lords as much as possible and then push them selectively to rebel, one by one or two by two, or use the game's corruption investigation system to ID and deal with them. Then crush them and distribute their lands to yourself, neutral lords, and good lords. This will help stabilize the Empire in the long run and weed out the undesirable ones, consolidating the Empire under fewer but more trrustworthy vassals. Arguably this might be the most important part of the late game. You might eventually want to deal with the "Neutral" Lords because while not evil, Cunning tends to conspire and start things, while Martial gets irritated from long times at peace (like a late game Pax Romana map conquest) and might decide to start a war with you down the line.

So do this well and you might feel like a master strategist and ruler. Do this poorly and well.... we know what happened to Nero.
BUSHIDO 7 Oct @ 3:24am 
Starting as Emperor is way more harder of the 3 Starts if you don't capture more castle or town right away for yourself, Maintenance of the Empire costs a lot than the tax and starter income of Being an Emperor and I already did the census the Hiring of staff to assist me on tax inefficiency, so I suggest rising to the ranks as a beggar ( what I did the 1st time I played this mod many years ago) or as a general for the troops and money (if you don't want to grind too much at the start.... capping many castle for yourself is a must because right after being an emperor my income is around 100,000+ to 400,000+ (with the money you lend) so yeah its easy to just start as General or even a beggar for extra challenge of rising the rank for the freelancer mod
nah i started as a beggar looks like i just didnt have enough workshops to start with
BUSHIDO 8 Oct @ 8:46am 
Originally posted by Joos Wiskojo:
nah i started as a beggar looks like i just didnt have enough workshops to start with

my last playthrough I didint buy a single workshop from towns, just buying lands from villagers and fully buying all the workshops also visit the minor factions with single settle ment like the one near Carthage interesting short quest with award of 100,000
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