Geld
Basics
Geld, also known as gold or money 
Geld is created by the population in your kingdom. How much geld you generate each turn, depends on the population you have, and what buildings you have put on your land (with emphasis on Towns). There is no cap to the maximum amount of geld you can accumulate, but you can't have less than zero geld (no loans!).
- Geld is consumed by many army units and heroes, by buildings, and by going to war (war expense). Your status report breaks down the total upkeep.
- There are also game features that alter your geld generation. When items, heroes or enchantments reduce your geld generation, that is called 'Hidden upkeep'.
- Geld is a pillageable resource.
The formula for base geld-income is:
- Current Pop * (((100 + 10*Town) / Land) ^ 0.5) + 1000
- The above seems to have been changed to: Current Pop * (((100 + 10*Town) / Land) ^ 0.0000005) + 1000 (Blitz, Feb 2009)
- The current formula for geld-income seems to simply be Current Pop + 1000
- When gelding, double the amount given by the formula
- When suffering hidden upkeeps, lower the amount by a certain factor (-10% means factor 0.9)
- It uses the population you have at the end of the turn (confirmed by marty)
- with absolutely no pop, you will still get a tiny 1000 geld, and the next turn you will have the base 50 pop and get already more than 1000 geld.
Game features affecting Geld
- Sage Stone (lesser item), generates 1-2 million of geld (random amount, always price)
- Treasure Chest (lesser item) can generate 300k as one of the random results.
- Treasure Map (lesser item) can generate 500k as one of the random results.
- Official List of Demands (lesser item) can destroy or steal geld
- Letters of the Thieves Guild (lesser item) can steal geld
- Pipes of the Sewer (lesser item) can destroy geld.
- Efreeti Bottle (unique item) can generate 200 million as one of the random results.
- Some Uniques reduce your geld generation (e.g. hidden upkeep)
- Some Uniques increase geld generation
- Selling any item on the Black Market returns geld on sale.
- Nature's Favor
increases geld generation (10% ??) - Weather Summoning increases food production meaning less farms are needed to upkeep same population. Can be used to increase geld, if you not destroy the excess farms.
- Battle Chant
allows Eradication mages (yes, ONLY red mages) to steal geld when successfully winning a siege or regular although winning a siege yields more(??). - Laziness
greatly reduces geld generation (~90%) - (incomplete)
- Fool's Gold - steals a large amount of geld from target mage.
- (incomplete)
- Wish can give you geld or give you Efreeti Bottle which can give you geld.
- Alchemist
- Alchemy increases geld generation by 4% + 4%/level (at the cost of reduced mana generation). - Merchant - Trading increases geld income by 20k + 20k/lvl.
- (incomplete)
- Nature god favour and most favoured increases normal geld generation (by 10% resp. 20%)
- Nature god disfavour and hatred decreases normal geld generation (by 10% resp. 20%)
Gelding
Gelding generates geld based on your "Income": it doubles what your normal income is.
- Gelding early in the game is a common strategy to get the funds required to buy a good hero or wanted off-color/ancient spell.
- Optimizing gelding envolves a gentle balance between % of towns on your land, allowing population growth to be maximal all the time, by providing excess space for population all the time. There is a nice tool that can help you optimize your gelding.
Zero geld
Zero geld (no positive income for some time, no savings left) is the case of fully depleting your geld, complete stacks of geld consuming units may disband themselves (in random order: you may be able to keep supporting some of your smaller stacks). More dangerous (and ultimately deadly) you may start losing buildings (guilds, workshops, barracks and ultimately forts). In the case of forts: you will lose half of your forts each turn you spend without geld (i.e. you will not die of bankruptcy the next turn, but very well could die within a couple of turns if you don’t take appropriate action).
