[Gekokujo] Caravans and Income

I just started playing Gekokujo (Daimyo Edition, that is) a few days ago, but I haven't played Mount and Blade in years, either.

My memories of playing Native consisted mostly of frustration with my allies' AI and making fucking bank through the silk trade. This is the same old AI I remember, but trade runs don't seem to be worthwhile in Gekokujo. I can't make sense of which city or regions produce what products, and even then, the profits are pretty marginal, not to mention the merchants never seem to have much of an item to sell. Like, oh boy, I could flip hemp for 300, that's great! But oh, wait, they've only got two hemp in stock.

ANYWAY, more to the point: how does one go about maintaining their army in this mod? I'm fluctuating between 50 and 100, mostly comprised of peasants, rather than samurai. My mercenary contract covers about a third of the cost, and God forbid I want to equip my companions a little better. I've somewhat come to accept that I may just be unable to make much money until I've become Lord of a town or two. Most of what I've made so far is from tournaments, which I find even more frustrating to do than I did in Native, so I'd rather not rely on them.

General money-making tips aside, however, one specific question I had was about Caravans. I can usually pull in around 2k-3k from razing a village, but the rep hit for that village is awful and I feel bad. I've hit a few caravans, but they never have much of anything. I come away with trash equipment that I could maybe sell for a few hundred altogether, and then maybe one or two goods to sell as well. So I was wondering, are caravans just kind of shit, or is there a strategy to hitting them for bigger profits? I got to thinking that maybe I need to hit them when they're en route to a city, rather than returning home (or vice versa) but I'm not really sure.

Any suggestions would be much adored, either way, caravan-related or no. I do know all about ransoming lords, obviously, but I've been letting most of them go for the bonus reputation. Except the Imagawa, I captured all but two of their lords and then my dumbass Tokugawa allies wandered off while the Takeda swept in to take the city that I served up to Tokugawa on a platter. Needless to say, I couldn't ransom the Imagawa lords.

Submitted December 25, 2019 at 07:54PM by kiava https://ift.tt/2QkzQrV