1. Hit Pause
2. Hire 2 Merchants
3. Look for Trade Agreements
4. Establish your Merchants as Governors
5. Market Place in your Cities
6. Hire Peasents in your Cities
7. Skills
8. Scribes Office Upgrade (Market Place) + Agriculture + later the Tax Collector Upgrade (Market Place) + churches
9. Clever building combinations
10. Crown Authority + diplomat

As simple as that. First thing you wanna do is to hit that space bar to pause the game. Now you have all the time to do the following adjustments.

In the beginning, gold is the thing you have to care about first. Get 2 merchants and send them on trade routes.

In general, merchants are in allmost all cases your primary source of income.

Go to the politival view and just click a little bit around the world map and ask for trade agreements. Chances are higher with your direct or indirect neighbors.
And if you want to make your search a little easier: select the "Relations"-filter and look for kingdoms that are green or slightly green.

Titel again basically says it all. Don't forget to set your merchants also as governors. If you forget it, the game reminds you but it takes a short time.

Important for merchant-governors:
Number of settlements in a province for money. + number of villages for trade (also very important).

The provine overview can help you find the best city, especially later on when you have a lot of provinces. You can sort by each column.


Pro-tip: Merchant kings are very powerfull in making money. And then make sure your throne successor is a merchant, too. ;-)

In most cases the first building that you wanna build. It gives you money and trade.

And the upgrades give you even more money and trade. They are not too expensive, too.

Pro-tip: build several markets first and do the upgrade then. It saves you some gold this way around ;-)

For aditional info check out point 8 "Upgrades + further buildings"

In the beginning your cities are maxed out on workers (see screenshot).

Directly invest them into peasants. This way new workes can come to your towns + you have a basic military strength. This is also in favor of other kingdom not directly attacking. If you have no army you are easy prey.

Writing - that one is really strong in the beginning.

It gives you a good amount of books. This allows you to aquire new knight skills quicker. Meaning you have a good, scaling skill (and maybe even tradition) here from which your kingdom and all your other knights will profit.

Acquiring books can often be a tiring endeavour. This way you get good book income and the third most important kingdom resource after gold and trade.


Also good skills are:
> Navigation - if used right with a merchant. Make sure he trades with a kingdom with lots of coast for the cost settlements.
> Iron Fist - if you want to send your marshall plundering. Makes you good money off of it.
> Stewardship - money, 10% cheaper buildings + upgrades
> Courtesy - for merchants. Easy making good friends

Soon try to upgrade your markets to: Scribes Office, then Tax Collector - money & books ;-)

Also focus on farming or animal buildings: provide you with a lot of goods. They make you become an interesting trading partner for other kingdoms. Plus each good gives you bonusses as well, if you didn't know. Just mouse-over on them.

Churches are cheap and give books. And piety for increasing crown authority, if you like. Just make sure to use them only where you can spare the building slots.

Now this may be a little more advanced if you wanna step up your gameplay. So let's put in a little perspective on how you get good and effective cities.

Try to make up your mind what you wanna do with a town. In which direction do you want to develop it?
For example:
- if it has a lot of natural ressources: make it an economic town with lots of goods production
- If it has a lot of crop farms: stay within the agriculture section of the buildins (right one)
- it it has no natural ressources: you may wanna put in military buildings here
Generally speaking: look out for the buildings in your province. And take a look at the prerequisits the higher tier buildings have. Then follow these paths =)

Additionally: if you build a military city, it may be good advice to also build housings and their upgrades. They improve your population growth and the population limit in the town. This way you can recruit more troops faster within just one town.

If you have money to spare and piety then you can always click that Crown Authority button once. It is not to expensive the first time. And it early on gives you some minor bonusses for your kingdom. Nothing really major but can be nice to have. A mouse-over will show you the effects.

In the case you are playing on higher or highest difficulty - or if you have a big neighbor - a diplomat may be a good investment, too. Hire one, send him over to the kingdom and let him improve the relations over there. Then get a trade agreement and even a non-aggression pact. This prevents you form being attacked by him.

Costs of 1st improvement. And benefits from 1st improvement and cost of 2nd improvement:

If you wanna view the whole guide as a video - including a little more explanations here and there - these are the videos for it. (I am sorry, they are only available in German, though)