As a side-project I started up a small domain north of Heskerhampton as a challenge due to no worthwhile minerals to mine in it's vicinity, and wanted to try and make it profitable so decided to try and make it entirely hunters + leather. A few days later I learn about the leather + saddle crisis on the market and that most players are speccing into hunters + leather. It would be more efficient to start this up in an existing domain, but the timing on this must be a sign from the heavens to keep up Heskingham.
The leather/saddle crisis is real and anyone who can't make their own is bottlenecking his knights. The problem with leather/saddles however is Tannin. You gather such a small amount of it from very specific tree types, it's no wonder leather is market is dead.
I've become quite lazy with idling settlers lately in my larger domains since I now have so many. Instead of keeping up constant production I pretty much produce what I need to have a surplus of income and make a ton of houses in one go when I start to near the limit. To the casual observer my big 3 domains must look relatively inactive. Anyone else experiencing the same? Or you being efficient and managing to keep everyone working 24/7?
Most of my efforts go to my main domain, efficiently managing units and so on. The main domain has a fuckload of different economy branches (silver smelting, fishes, tools, weapons and armor, hunting, breeding, iron ore, leather etc etc), probably the reason for my wealth, alongside my other big domain. Lots of maintenance because of it, though.
My other three domains receive less attention:
- the other big one is very low maintenance, because it is purely iron smelting, so I only need to make sure I have enough wood and iron ore to continue generating cash. Got about 3 big groups of housebuilders there and 3 groups for walls+castle. Plan to stop growing after a certain housing is reached. Also military, currently 41 pikemen and 12 crossbowmen there.
- the smaller one needed more attention since it is newer and needed growing, but when it reaches a certain stage (soon) it should be self sustainable and I will stop developing it, putting all of its units into money generators. It's primary purpose is to feed my main domain with silver ore.
- the newest one is a colony way down south on the new continent. Has gold and bananas. Not quite sure what to do with it yet.
It does still take quite a lot of time to manage them all.
We must be starting to reach a good number of troops as a kingdom,
It'll take some time before saddles from Heskingham can start being imported to Heskeyshire for the knight production, but aside from knights I have 200+ halbs/pikes/crossbows at the moment. Out of that number only 5 halbs have been produced in my main domain, I intend to only make knights and siege here so there's still a lot of untapped military potential in my lands. And Vermilion's recently started military production too.
Large battles between kingdoms must be huge (unless they are always spread out and about ravaging each other's domains and fighting 100s of simultaneous mini-battles). Even 200 units feels like a lot, but it's tiny compared to the larger lords.
In total we have about 11.000 soldiers in Terres Hautes (1100 units). So pretty good, but I'd like to see more, especially from us. I noticed you do have quite a sizeable army though, Heskey ;)
Most of my money goes into Knight training. I'd like to reach a number where people would check my domain and go "oh I can't fuck with this guy", ala Hawkwood.
