In the game I always seem to run science rates at 100% regardless of the cost. I see no incentive to stockpile gold. The only things it is useful for are diplomacy (I rarely use it there) and uprading units (Just as easy to build more units.

I think gold needs to have more importance in the game, but I'm not very imaginative so I can't really think of anything?

What are you're ideas?

I think espionage will make gold more important.

I'm thinking of rolling three changes into my IsoMod that would make gold more important.

First, the "money" technologies will add in the ability to earn some interest on a stockpile of gold. Each technology will grant a boost to the max interest per turn, with a rate tweaked to encourage you to have a stockpile of about 0.5 to 2.0 of a current technology in cash at any time. This eases trade, because the AI will have a stockpile of cash to buy/sell with.

Second, a cute transformation of the economy so that you have to spend cash to fund science and culture. Boost incoming commerce by 2, then charge 1 gold for every science and culture point produced. "Instant tech", such as from a great person, and instant culture does not have this cost. (buildings that generate culture will produce X culture X commerce, so building culture won't bankrupt you...)

The value of gold itself is then halved as far as the game and AI is concerned -- rushing with gold costs twice as much, maps are worth twice as much, and technologies are worth twice as much.

Third, make culture useful for more than just borders. Every 10 culture per turn produces 1 hammer per turn when building city improvements, and every 30 culture per turn produces 1 hammer when building units. Note that the culture produced costs you gold -- so this can be viewed as a form of slow cash-rushing. ;)

Would that make gold useful enough?

I agree. I would like to see a support cost for each unit. (regardless of civic).After all the soldiers have to be paid.

You have some pretty interesting ideas there, Yakk. I'd definatly give that mod a whirl.

Are there any other modifications in your mod, Yakk?

Obliterate,

What level are you playing on?

I sent the last note before I wanted to. I found when I raised the level of play, balancing my budget become more more challenging

Obliterate,

What level are you playing on?

Prince.

What are the incentives to accumilate gold though?

Perhaps another incentive would be that gold can be another modifer for the end game score

Perhaps another incentive would be that gold can be another modifer for the end game score

Nah that's boring... Personally I don't play the game caring about what the score will be.

obliterate, though I agree with you that gold isn't relative enough, you are forgetting its most important (arguably) use - rush buying units. Consider it exploitive if you will, but gold rushing is more efficient than using hammers to build things once your cities have the 3 production-modifying buildings (forges, factories, plants). Remember though to let the item build for one turn first though so you're not paying the penalty rate.

I think there should be some sort of benefit to having a lot of gold sit in your treasury. I'm no economist so I'm not very imaginative here either, but perhaps you could earn interest on the stored gold. Similar to how Wall Street used to work in Civ3. In that game you'd get up to 50 gold per turn just for having 1000 gold in your treasury. Perhaps give Wall Street this ability in Civ4 again, or make a non-UB stock exchange building that allows you to earn interest on your gold. The interest should still be capped somehow to prevent a massive run-away by a wealth player.

Anyway, now that I think about it more, I don't see really why having gold stockpiled should have any incentive. After all keeping all the wealth from the people isn't very useful. For example, lowering taxes and inreasing the culture slider I assume reflects spending more on entertainment etc. for the populace.

The problem I see with giving gold more purposes, like say being able to buy health for a certain amount of GPT would be that it would introduce more micromanagement.