As for the FP needing money - Wood, North and Eothraim are
always popular...but what about Cardolan? After the starting
army holocaust, they "should" be recruiting 1400 + HI a turn,
and sending them off on 2-3-4 turn marches. This gets
expensive! They hire for free and name 40 commanders - naked
HI is what they DO.
RD: Hiring armies at zero cost is a HUGE economy. Nontheless I confess the last time I played Cardolan, I needed gold transfusions.
As for the FP sending money - why not have the Dwarves up
taxes to 100% and ship out 20k a turn? Haven't heard a really
good argument against it yet. If the Fire King is influencing
away the Dwarven towns in the White Mountains as a result of
the loyalty drop - well...it's too late anyway, don't blame
the taxes...
RD: Having played Dwarves twice recently, I can say that raising taxes to 100% or even 80% is a really bad idea. Sure, you generate loadsa gold for the first few turns and can afford to be generous to your allies. But every camp you create or post goes pop! within a couple of turns, and you can easily lose starting pops (even if fortified) to DS emis/dragons.
If as Dwarves you go down the road of high taxation, you find that when the camp limit is reached, you haven't gained any pops, and may well have lost some. With minimum pops and market prices at rock bottom, your economy is struggling even before you try to hire those new hi (with bonus training!) armies you want.
Far better to go for a sustainable 60% tax rate, put down (and keep!) as many camps as you can with non-battling army commanders as well as emis, and visit Mirrormere every 3rd turn.
SG and Noldo are always good for money, then
Arthedain and sometimes Cardolan (IF Rhudaur goes free early).
Northern Gondor, frankly, can spend it's money on troops and
characters - and hey, why not buy timber on turn 1 and
improve the fortifications on Minas Ithil? Either way, they
should be too busy to ship money around.
(as an aside, if your Eothraim hasn't bothered to raise taxes
and is buying steel with money begged from allies, they had
better damn well be burning 1/2 of Mordor to the ground...
mine is, so I send them 30g's and wish them well...)
Regards,
Brad the Rhudaur
RD: Of course Eot, like all other FP, should raise taxes to 60%. But BUYING steel should be anathema to FP! Surely you realise that this pushes steel prices up? This benefits the DS economy far more than FP. Forgive me if you already know this, but the starting DS pops are mostly in rough/mountain terrain, producing metals: mithril, steel, bronze. Every time FP buy one of these products, you help the DS economy.
Far better for FP to send in their troops stark naked (as at least one Germanic tribe did against the Romans) than to help the DS economy, which will be struggling if you've done the rest of your economic job right.
Also, Noldo, Arthedain and Dwarves should have camped every mountain hex in the Blue mountains, and the Gondors the White mountains, so FP should have enough bronze/steel to equip priority armies without recourse to the market. Well that's my advice anyway - ignore it if you wish!
Richard.
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