First of all, yes, your companion parties make you money. A
ton of it if you're at war and they're strong enough to be fighting and raiding. Second, unless your cities have prosperity in the mid to high thousands
don't even bother with workshops. Prosperity as well as price of goods necessary for production have an enormous impact on the profits of your workshops. If you want to help give a boost to your workshops manually you can find somewhere with a better price on needed goods and resell it to your town, lowering the price of goods and increasing your profit margins. To manually increase prosperity make sure to do quests for all Notables in your villages and towns. To start with stick to
upgraded caravans for passive income.
Next, unless your fiefs are on the front lines keep your garrisons
lean. The price of troops in a garrison adds up very quickly and unless it's at risk of being attacked you're just flushing money down the drain. If they
are on the front lines it's more effective to keep them lean anyway and then siege whatever is close to it. This will draw enemy attention away from your fiefs to come protect their own with the added benefit that when you win the siege you've just put a buffer between the front lines and your fiefs. My strategy for war is a constant push forward, never stopping until I physically have to, and then I make peace when they're battered and broken. Assemble an army (
especially including your companions!) and just march forward. A protip that I've found a lot of people don't know is that you can add cohesion to an army through the manage army UI:
Use this button to spend influence to increase army cohesion, keeping everyone together longer. Companion parties
cost zero influence to form an army with or add cohesion to. Take advantage of this. When you defeat someone in battle take ALL of their troops, even if it takes you over capacity. Speak to the people in your army, ask to see their troops, and give them the ones you don't need. If one of your commanders is desperately low on troops send them home and call for someone else to replace them. Never stop pushing forward, force them to be constantly on defense.
If combat isn't really your thing, don't worry, there are some options here for you too. First, if you're desperate to have someone defend your fiefs, form an army by where you want defended. When they all show up... disband the army. That will get you a bunch of friendly lords or companions that are all now in the vicinity of your fiefs and will probably wander around close by because they prefer to get troops of their own faction.
If you want to siege but combat isn't your thing,
starve them out. People need food to function. If you siege a city the caravans and villager parties can't get into the city to trade. As the amount of available food dwindles the soldiers start to starve and die, meaning you can easily stroll in and slaughter the remaining forces. Just make sure to bring enough food for yourself (
and your army, they will never bring enough food for themselves!) and keep topping up your army cohesion as needed. Feeding your army should also increase your influence, making it easier to boost cohesion and call in more reinforcements.
Anyway, I just wanted to drop some quick tips for ways I've found to keep the passive income flowing in stable 1.5.1. Thanks for reading and I hope you have a great rest of your day!
