Community Feature: Gold!

2K Greg

2K Greg

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Joined
May 24, 2010
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370
Ask and you shall receive:
http://www.civilization5.com/#/community/feature_gold

It's all about how gold is earned and spent in Civ V. I'd be happy to answer questions about gold.

Spoiler :
Gold

Gold! Gold can be used to buy you many a-thing in Civilization V. It may be true that money can&#8217;t buy you love, but it can purchase a nuclear submarine armed with nuclear missiles, and that&#8217;s not too shabby.

Fans of past games in the series will notice that gold plays a larger role in Civilization V, especially in the early game.

Spending Gold
I think spending gold is more fun than earning it, so let&#8217;s talk about what gold can get you first:
  • You can extend your civilization&#8217;s territory by purchasing individual tiles. The cost of each tile will vary based on a variety of factors, such as how rough the terrain is and whether it&#8217;s across a river.
  • Units and buildings both have &#8220;maintenance costs&#8221; that must be paid every turn. These maintenance costs are dependent upon the difficulty level at which you&#8217;re playing.
  • You can spend gold to purchase units, buildings, or Wonders in a city. Once you purchase an item, it will be immediately constructed in the city, and the amount deducted from your treasury. Note that &#8220;projects&#8221; such as the Utopia or Manhattan Projects cannot be purchased.
  • You can &#8220;upgrade&#8221; obsolete units, turning them into newer, more powerful models (For example, once you learn Iron Working, you can upgrade any Warrior units you possess into Swordsmen.) Each upgrade costs some gold &#8211; the more powerful the upgrade, the more expensive it will be.
  • Each tile of road that you construct requires maintenance, much like units and buildings do.
  • If you want to improve your relationship with a city-state, one way to do so is to give it some gold. Increasing amounts of gold may be given for larger boosts to friendship.
  • And finally, you can exchange gold with other civilizations for any number of reasons &#8211; trading it for resources, for example, to get the other civ to make peace with you, or to bribe the civ to attack a third. Gold is extremely useful in negotiations.

Earning Gold
Of course, you must first earn some gold before you can spend it. There are a multitude of ways to earn gold:
  • These tiles provide gold when you citizens work them: Coasts, Oceans, Rivers, Natural Wonders, and Oases.
  • All luxury resources (especially gold!) provide gold when worked.
  • Constructing a trading post improvement in a tile increases its gold output.
  • Many buildings &#8211; markets, banks, etc. &#8211; increase a city&#8217;s output of gold, especially if you assign merchant specialists to them.
  • Some Wonders provide or increase a city&#8217;s output of gold. Machu Picchu and the Colossus are prime examples.
  • If a city is connected by a road and/or harbor to your capital city, that city has a &#8220;trade route&#8221; with the capital. Each trade route is worth a certain amount of gold each turn, determined by the size of the two cities.
  • You&#8217;ll earn gold each time you disperse a Barbarian Encampment.
  • An ancient ruin may provide gold when it is explored.
  • A city-state may give you gold when you first meet.
  • Pillaging enemy improvements will give you a modest amount of gold.
  • You may gain a bunch of gold when you capture a city from another civilization or city-state.
  • A Great Merchant can perform a &#8220;trade mission&#8221; in a city-state. The Merchant is expended and you get lots of gold.
 
Very little new information here. I wonder if it has already been confirmed that each civilization build their own Manhattan Project. If not, this should confirm it.
 
Thanks, Greg.

I noticed in a tooltip in one of the videos that Decommissioning a unit appears to refund some gold. Do you know if this is correct?

edit: and Lillefix's question about what happens when you have negative income and your balance tries to go below zero.
 
Love how the gold system is looking. And boo on the maintenance haters.

One small question, though. Will there be an inflation mechanic like in Civ IV?

Thanks Greg. We appreciate every update.
 
Interesting to know that Roads do require maintenance. Plus it seems like each city can only have one trade route - with it's own capital. Does that mean there will be no foreign trade? Can a capital have a trade route? Maybe (Greg forgot to mention...) a capital can trade with a foreign capital...
It's also interesting that every resource produces gold. It also seems like rushing production with gold is in from the beginning of the game...does that mean pop-rushing is out?

The biggest change, in my opinion, is that everything requires maintenance. I imagine (hope?) that it will be more transparent than it was in Civ 4 - there should be a screen that shows all of your income and outflow, broken down by type. I could start at the global level, and then each type would be expandable until you could see a list of all hexes that produce gold, all buildings, all units, or whatever.
 
Looks like it's mostly the same as in Civ4. The big news is really what we kind of new from before(but nice with a confirmation feature).
- The separation of :gold: and :science: (removal of :commerce: and the slider)
- You can buy tiles
- The addition of city states
- Rushbuy always available. We had universal suffrage in Civ4, but always having rushbuying as an alternative does change it a bit.
 
Lillefix said:
So what happens when you run out of gold?
Click to expand...

Whoops; I thought I had included that in the article. If you are out of gold, and your income is negative, it comes out of your research. Basically for every 1 gold deficit you have, you lose 1 research point.

AriochIV said:
Thanks, Greg.

I noticed in a tooltip in one of the videos that Decommissioning a unit appears to refund some gold. Do you know if this is correct?
Click to expand...

I had not realized this, but I just checked and it turns out that that is correct!

Afforess said:
Can we Deficit spend like real countries?
Click to expand...

No. If you don't have the gold in your treasury to buy something, then you can't buy it. There is no way to take a "loan."
 
Vraslosken said:
Very little new information here. I wonder if it has already been confirmed that each civilization build their own Manhattan Project. If not, this should confirm it.
Click to expand...

I saw 3 new bits of information:
1) All resources now provide gold when worked. Presumably 1 each for food resources, although it could still make riverside Wheat a rather attractive hex for example.
2) Machu Picchu is a World Wonder.
3) The Great Merchant trade mission still exists, and we could assume similar abilities for other Great People (Academy for Scientist, rush building for Engineer in Civ4) still exist as well.
 
Vraslosken said:
Very little new information here. I wonder if it has already been confirmed that each civilization build their own Manhattan Project. If not, this should confirm it.
Click to expand...

What am I missing? Where does it confirm that each civ must build their own Manhattan Project? It only says that you can't gold rush projects. Two civs could still build Utopia or Manhattan at the same time, but if one finishes Manhattan first everyone could still have access to nukes, and in the case of Utopia, game over!
 
Thanks Greg, keepem coming we need info to talk about!

The feature seems pretty complete on ways to earn gold, you mention pillaging even, what about naval blockade missions are they out?

It just seems with the new combat and all, that naval blockades ala civ4ish would be fun.

Can great merchants trade mission only work on city-states and not on main-civs? The wording from the feature makes it seem this way.

It was rumored at a time that you could trade tiles but it doesn't appear to be in game based on the diploscreens we have seen.

Is there anything else you can trade gold for in diplo other than resources, cities, peace, bribe to attack/peace,research pacts,maps?
 
2K Greg said:
Whoops; I thought I had included that in the article. If you are out of gold, and your income is negative, it comes out of your research. Basically for every 1 gold deficit you have, you lose 1 research point.
Click to expand...

Clever. That very streamlined and straightforward. And yeah, I remember you said explicitly that you were going to include this in the update:).

Tylerryan79 said:
What am I missing? Where does it confirm that each civ must build their own Manhattan Project? It only says that you can't gold rush projects. Two civs could still build Utopia or Manhattan at the same time, but if one finishes Manhattan first everyone could still have access to nukes, and in the case of Utopia, game over!
Click to expand...

He writes manhattan projects in the update. Indicating there are more than one. Of course it may be a slip.
 
Hey guys there was a factual mistake in the article. I fixed it in the spoilered version and I'm getting it fixed on the website:

All luxury resources provide gold when worked. Other resources do not necessarily yield gold.
 
Greg, so if we are in the red it is then deducted from our science, 1 to 1, does this mean units don't disband? So the science can pay the bills? Does your happiness get affected by your running out of money and going into science? What happens if you run out of science?

Thanks Lillefix, I didn't pick that up, lol I thought I was loosing it there for a second :). Greg can you confirm or deny this is a typo, or that this time around everyone must build the Manhattan Project to build nukes? Also we can build subs prestocked with nukes, and no longer have to build them seperate?
 
2K Greg said:
Whoops; I thought I had included that in the article. If you are out of gold, and your income is negative, it comes out of your research. Basically for every 1 gold deficit you have, you lose 1 research point.
Click to expand...

I assume research has a floor of 0 per turn; you can't LOSE research, can you? :mischief:

2K Greg said:
No. If you don't have the gold in your treasury to buy something, then you can't buy it. There is no way to take a "loan."
Click to expand...

Maybe we should require all politicians to play a game of civilization! :lol:
 
kurtkage said:
Thanks Greg, keepem coming we need info to talk about!

The feature seems pretty complete on ways to earn gold, you mention pillaging even, what about naval blockade missions are they out?
Click to expand...

A naval unit within two tiles of a port city will blockade its harbor, which cuts off its trade route. It's a lot easier to cut off trade routes in Civ 5 than it was in previous games because of the fact that far fewer roads will be built.
 
2K Greg said:
All luxury resources provide gold when worked. Other resources do not necessarily yield gold.
Click to expand...
Are all non-Stragic resource considered Luxury resources? Is Wheat, for example, a luxury resource? Or are there still Food resources?

2K Greg said:
A Great Merchant can perform a &#8220;trade mission&#8221; in a city-state. The Merchant is expended and you get lots of gold.
Click to expand...
Only city-states? Or any city?
 
Greg can you reassure us that civ5 is not going to be dumbed down to casual-gamer proportions?
 
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