The sources of your income are shown on the left, as well as the amounts entering your coffers from each source. You may also note what percentage of possible income you are bringing in. An incompetent or unusually competent ruler can really hurt or help you in this area! It’s not cheap to run a country, as you can see from the Expenses section. Everything costs, from Advisors right down to Fleet Maintenance. But at least you can decide how your precious ducats are spent.
If ever you find yourself in need of cash, you may reduce the Maintenance received by your colonies, missionaries, armies or navies. You might also fire your Advisors, although you would need to return to the Government Interface to accomplish that. Be aware, however, that reducing Maintenance can greatly delay any attempts to colonize and convert new lands and people. Even riskier is seriously cutting your military’s funding. This may provide short-term economic benefits, but this policy can leave you in a very precarious position should war come suddenly knocking upon your door. Your underpaid, poorly equipped and badly trained soldiers will need time before their morale is high enough to engage in serious combat, which will mean losses in land as you wait for your war machine to return to full operation. Do not forget to increase their funding quickly if war breaks out. Otherwise, you shouldn’t expect to succeed against the enemy’s well-fed and well-paid soldiers!
In times of need, you can also take loans or, if you are at war, Raise War Taxes to boost your coffers. Of course, War Taxes raise your War Exhaustion as well, so consider carefully before you raise them. The total possible tax base is shown alongside your current war exhaustion. Hovering over the war exhaustion will open a tooltip explaining the additional penalties arising from your exhaustion level.
Hovering over your inflation levels will produce a tooltip explaining why it is going up or down. However, in contrast to previous versions of Europa Universalis, you can no longer simply “slide” you way to lower inflation. Certain ideas can be used to buy it down. Failing that, your only choice is to manage it the best you can, just as real nations have done throughout history.
Finally, loans. You may find that they are far more flexible than they were in previous versions of Europa Universalis. While you still automatically take loans whenever you run out of money, you can also take loans whenever you need, and can repay loans in full as soon as you have the funds.
This allows you the flexibility to run deficits when emergencies strike and take care of those debts quickly when good times return.
Be wary, however. Debts raise your interest levels, and there is a limit to how much debt your country can handle before it collapses into bankruptcy. It is wise to manage your debts responsibly and make deficit spending work for you.
