I am running in deep red after conquering China and now dominant in my continent.

I have 11 cities, I play as Arabian, Noble, Epic Standard.
The Year is around 1250 AD or something.
I discovered 2 other civs (beside China) on the other continent, and my score is highest.

How to improve my Financials?
Please advice. Screenshots attached.

Thanks a lot in advance.

Unit Costs

Unit Supplies

City Maintenance

Civic Upkeep

Inflation info

That's the thing that happens when you swallow another empire whole... it's a design feature to balance the game against sudden world domination in the early eras without careful planning.

What's your next move? Are you looking for total conquest, or stop, rebuild, and plan from there?

The quickest things you can do to balance your budget is cut your research (which the AI will do for you, automatically) and switch your civics. You are Spiritual (IIRC), so switching civics is your strong suit: use it! Switch to a very low-maintenance set of choices, unless you really need the ones you've got now. For example, if your religion is not spread to the newly-conquered Chinese cities, Organized is doing you no good - at this point you are probably in dire need of courthouses in your new cities more than you are in need of infrastructure "back home."

The next-quickest thing to do is disband units, which I would only suggest if you are taking a very serious breather. It looks like you've got 4 units per city, which is more than enough for a solid defense. This won't save you a lot of gold, but if you target older, un-promoted units (particularly those with less than 10XP) you can save a few coins.

The harder things to do is to build for the longer-term. First, get courthouses and the Forbidden Palace up ASAP to cut down on city maintenance. Concurrently, work on improving your income. Have you got a good cottage industry going? I would guess not... make sure you are cottaging up and ordering your commerce cities to focus on commerce! Now that you have contact with 2 more civs, make sure you get open borders for trade (assuming you can reach them). Build markets, grocers, banks in your top gold-producing cities.

And just deal with the science lag in the meantime... not much you can do about that, just pat yourself on the back for a good conquest and start rebuilding your momentum for whatever comes next!

Make sure you have courthouses up in ALL your cities, especially the formerly Chinese ones. You should also make sure that you have $-enhancing buildings in place at all your high-commerce cities. You can also save a few gold by disbanding any unpromoted obsolete units you might have sitting around.

Since you're Arabia, odds are you've founded at least one religion. If so, make sure you have the shrine for it, all the $-enhancing buildings you can make in that city, and start spreading that religion like crazy.

If all else fails, you can trade resources to other civs for Gold Per Turn, or even set a few cities on Wealth if need be. However, once those courthouses are up and the cities get back up and running again, your finances should recover.

Thanks all for replies.

I think I can disband a few units (worriors, archers ..etc.) as I have swordmen and crossbowmen and Catapults.

I already started building courthouses and banks like crazy.
Maybe need to think of specializing cities ...etc.?

I already have a Shrine that generate lots of gold, but as you see above, it did not help.

-----------------------Now another question :) ------

What is the best victory condition for me to pursue?

Conquest and domination I assume would be hard since it means I need to go to war with the rest of the world (my guess at least 5 civs total, 3 civs uknown yet) and with the ocean between us (they are all in a seperate continent, while I am in a seperate one).

Time victory: I am tired of this. This is the only icvtory condition I have ever won. Not fun, and I want to try something else.

Space Race: Do not know. Maybe doable, but I need to catch up in tech, so it is very risky. What do you think?

Diplomatic: Maybe. My relations with the rest of the world are just starting.
Maybe not a good idea, since I still did not meet the rest of AIs. I only see 2 AIs now that I JUST meet and have open borders with.

What can I do?
What is best?

Thanks a lot in advance.

I reread your posts and see that you actually have EIGHT units per city, which is crazy! If you beeline to Astronomy, you can probably launch quite a few galleons at the next continent and wipe out a few more civs.

I think one reason why you are so deep in the red this late in the game, even after a conquest, is NOT specializing your cities earlier. (I have this problem myself). Start identifying cities you want to specialize and get to it. There are lots of guides in these forums, but generally you want commerce, production, and "GP farms" -- the latter ESP. because you are Philosophical.

Right now I would say you can probably achieve Conquest/Domination, or its little brother, Diplomatic (which, because it's based on population, most of the time is based on conquest). If you shoot for Diplomatic, you probably want to turn off state religion soon, unless you've managed to monopolize them, and even so, it's very hard to spread ONLY the religion you want to spread and bottle the other ones up. Find Civ #3 in rankings and team up with them for the victory (which often involves conquering more cities until your combined pops puts you over the top).

A cultural victory is certainly viable, esp. if you've grabbed most of the religions, but it can also be boring and, if you haven't planned correctly, might be very difficult. See walkerjk's guide to this, although you'll be playing catchup; still, you are playing Noble and can probably pull it off.

How far behind are you in tech? With proper economic rebuilding and GP farming (use your GP's for tech) you can probably catch the other civs quickly. Be sure to arbitrage trades well and swap unique techs among AIs -- you can often find that one civ has a tech the other doesn't, and thereby pick up 2 for the price of 1 by swapping that tech between the 2 (though not as easily as in Civ3).

As for conquest, you do not need to be at war with the rest of the world. Generally you want to pick on the lone wolf and find the civ that no one else likes (Tokugawa and the Aztecs are generally in this category) and declare war. Get their neighbors to join in just to make sure they don't switch to their side, and you will have them wiped in no time (esp. since your army is HUGE).

Thanks for advice.

Yes, my army is HUGE (mostly Swordsmen, Catapults and Crossbowmen) and was building it like a mad man. China did not like it when it showed up :)

So looks like the least risky way is to go for domination/conquest.
Do I start war with this Army or should I build a new one with more modern stuff I am afraid I cannot afford a new one :) ). War as soon as possible (after astronomy)?

I am a 'little' behind in tech, as only a couple (Drama and Divine Right ...etc.) I see showing up in the AI.
Maybe other AIs have better tech but still did not meet them.

I attached the game save in case you find a few minutes to take a look at it.
Maybe advice on how/which cities to specialize, plus a quick advice on tech line.

Thanks a lot in advance.

I was put on this situation a while ago with my mongols. After swallowing two empires with my mighty keshiks, I was behind in almost everything: tech, gdp, commerce, etc. I scrapped that game because I wanted to try another civ. But my advise is probably start a war with another civ and get 2-3 cities while destroying their improvements further inside his border. If you're lucky they will scream like pigs and asks for mercy.

So you give them, thus accomplishing two goals: cutting down military expense (due to your units being shred while attacking his cities), and regaining tech lead, plus a couple more cities to boot. Just know when to quit, and go stagnant for a while. At least it's better than just disbanding your armies outright, since it gives no benefit shield-wise AFAIK, unlike civ 3.

As far as I can see from your screenshots you're doing fine. You will probably break even at 60% science. As your 11 cities grow they will make more money while the city maintenance will stay the same, so the balance will improve. The only thing I'd do is to switch from bureaucracy to vassalage. This will cut your unit cost expenses to about 0 (because of more free units on vassalage) and you'll start getting more experience. 50% bonus in the capital with a total of 11 cities isn't that big deal (unless your capital is really huge and all other cities are really small). I wouldn't put building courthouses everywhere as a high priority. You have average of 4 gold per city, so courthouse will only save 2 gold. Better build libraries. If you can put Forbidden Palace in a good spot (perhaps in the center of ex-Chinese lands) it will work well cutting down distance maintenance. If some cities have extreme maintenance cost (10 or more), build courthouses just there.

Why build libraries rather than banks.
In a long run you will usually want to run your taxes no more than 30%. At 30%, the bank gives 15% increase (wrt to base commerce). The library gives you 17.5% increase in commerce yield. That means if you're city has base commerce yield of 60 and you're running 70/30, adding a bank will raise it to 67 and the library will raise it 70.5. You will also have more scientists specialists than merchants, so advantage of libraries will be even larger. Plus they're much cheaper and generate culture.

Thanks all for advice.

Alexti2, you made very good points. Libraries it is :) (I already built many courthouses anyway :) ).
Also I did not know that vassalage cuts unit costs. I will give it a shot.

minke, I see yor point, and that is what I will do next: Attack a civ quickly (after astronomy) to cut down my army size and get a couple of cities.
I will need to choose wisely which civ to attack :)

Thanks all for advices.

One of the things that I do to cover an extreeme finance problem is to start setting cities to produce Wealth. This is a short term solution but it can keep you from lowering your research. Slowly, one by one, as those new Chinese begin to pay for themselves you can change citys back to producing buildings and units.

Recognizing the potential problem is the first step.

With our 12 step program, you too will be on your way to financial success as a World Conqueror!

Wodan

ps you don't have a problem. If you were running your Research at 10%, you would have a "problem". 60-80% is where you should be.

All you really need is to increase your tech buildings, to catch up on science. e.g., Libraries, Monasteries (build them before libraries). You'll be fine.

What victory type? You could achieve just about anything except Culture. Hard to say without seeing a map, and knowing your relations with everybody else.

Wodan

I have a feeling that at 1250 AD, I am late and should be epxecting to have an army of rifelmen, or knights at worst.
Do not you think so?

It feels that I running out of time. (It is Epic speed by the way.)

or is this normal to have just got Catapults at around 1200 AD?

I think whether you're in trouble depends on what type of units you have compared to what type of units the other civs in your game have. It's impractical to simply throw out a date and make a judgement. Every game is different.

Frankly, I would expect you to be behind in tech, since you have just come out of a protracted war, and you spent a thousand years building little except military.

Start building things that improve your research (monasteries, libraries), in 90% of your cities. You'll be fine. Also, disband half of your military.

Alternately, pick another AI and declare war. Even if he has better units, you should have a lot more, and you can swarm him.

Wodan

1. Chop rush court houses in your remote cities;

2. Change to low upkeep civic;

3. Cottages;

4. Spread your own religion + rush a prophet to build holy shrine.

Quick fix is to just simply knock your research down a bit.

It took me up to the 1400 in epic to get muskets... Year doesnt really matter. You only need as technological advance unit as the civs around you.

I loaded the save and I decided to finish the game.
I disbanded some units immediately, set research to liberalism -> astronomy, replaced hereditary rule with representation. Launched space ship in 1904.

What I thought weird were the promotions on your units (I rarely use drill), lots of units with 0 exp (I rarely build units without barracks), Combat I on swordsmen (I'd usually take City Raider). Generally I tend to leave units unpromoted until I know how to use them.