Help me become a rich mofo! :)

[Mahi]

Hi. I've been lurking around in here for some tips but I still can't figure out the best way to get a massive gold income. I know trapping around rivers and such improvements are some of the method but how do you get like 100-200 GPT, assuming that I only need to have a defending army for about 10 cities...

[Mozzington]

Sell excess luxuries to the AI for between 240 - 300 gold.

Sell open borders to the AI for 50 gold.

[The Pilgrim]

Puppets + trading posts + markets.

When you have many puppets destroy all the farms and replace them with trading posts. Also prioritize commerce related technologies like Currency, Banking and Economy so that puppets can build all relevant buildings sooner. When you have many cities of your own the larger they get the more income they bring from trading routes. Make sure to connect all of them to the capital and build markets as well.

[therottweiler]

Your choice in CIVS can help your economy as well. China has a nice +2 gold library and Arabia gets a bonus to trade routes.
Conquering and puppeting cities helps as well as they are automagically Gold Focused.

[vexing]

play on deity,
build up a highly promoted army,
destroy all of an AIs army and get an insane peace deal.

[The Pilgrim]

Originally Posted by vexing

play on deity,
build up a highly promoted army,
destroy all of an AIs army and get an insane peace deal.

Play as Askia, choose all opponents to be Egypt.

[prince_caspian]

Well my newbie advice is if you want money and you're into defending cities you should take SPs like oligarchy, military caste, professional army, free speech, etc. They save you quite a lot of GPT over time.

[blasto]

Cheat.

[durian]

Wait until your cities grow bigger before building trade routes, and build markets as soon as you can. Sell you excess luxuries for gold, extra luxuries are useless! I also sell my extra resources that I don't need (Just make sure you're selling it to someone who can't/won't hurt you)

[DaveMcW]

Originally Posted by durian

(Just make sure you're selling it to someone who can't/won't hurt you)

Sell to your enemies! Then they get -50% when they declare war on you.

[durian]

Originally Posted by DaveMcW

Sell to your enemies! Then they get -50% when they declare war on you.

That's ingenious, I never thought about that! But then, that would only affect some of their troops, since they always seem to have a lot more strategic resources and a much bigger army than I do...

[FeiLing]

Depends. Sometimes you can dmg a -50% unit instead of killing it and then proceed to dmg the others too as long as they still have the -50% penalty.

[The Pilgrim]

Originally Posted by durian

That's ingenious, I never thought about that! But then, that would only affect some of their troops, since they always seem to have a lot more strategic resources and a much bigger army than I do...

That's why scouting is important. Know your rival's lands. If you see he's sitting on 10 horses that just weren't connected yet don't sell him yours. But if you see he has none...

[TheHanzou]

I think focusing on income is not all that viable. Trading posts got nerfed way to much.

giving 2 Gold right from the start really was overpowered and such, especially with ICs strategies.

But those arent exactly viable anymore, they should just give trading posts +1gold earlier again. Unfortunately Currency is too early, so theres not much choice unless they move currency back..

[Civsassin]

I find the key to getting the gold output the OP was referring to is a decent sized puppet empire - 5 to 10 puppets. They automatically have a gold focus, so they will prioritize gold producing buildings. I also prioritize the colossus if I have a city that is ripe for it.

[warlordtheft]

In the early game (BC to 0 AD) you'll have the most trouble. Keys to a good economy:

1.Have a large capitol.
2.Have a well designed road net work. Basically make sure that you don't build any uneccesary roads and reuse your road network as much as possible. THe same goes for railroads.
3. Build Machu Pichu.
4. Puppets help.
5. You can sell luxuries too.
6. Make a beeline for markets.

In the later stages of the game, prioritize the building of economy buildings. Also, buy production related buildings rather than econ ones. Using gold to creat gold is sometimes counterproductive.

[Rpger29]

Check out your maintenance costs. Depending on what difficulty level you are playing on (especially if you recently moved up a level), you might be experiencing harmful levels of unit or building maintenance.

Streamline things as much as possible. Avoid duplicate buildings that have maint costs, and have only exactly as much military as necessary for defense or conquering.

The others have all given the standard good advice.

It is not uncommon to be able to earn 500gpt (non-GA) on Prince/Marathon/Small by the end of the Industrial Age.

Also, Golden Ages are your friend. Look to maximize their length and frequency.

[snarzberry]

You should always prefer to sell resources, both kinds, to the civs you think most likely to attack you. You get the resources back for a re-sale if they do, and as dave pointed out with regards to strategic resources this can hurt their army.

High gpt comes from conquering. Puppets + trading posts and peace deals.

[Ajuga]

I like to take the social policy (I believe it's in tradition) that removes the upkeep on garrisoned soldiers. When having a wide empire it can save you a lot of money. Of course when under attack you have to sacrifice this but I find it well worth the effort if I'm not going for domination.

[The Pilgrim]

Originally Posted by Ajuga

I like to take the social policy (I believe it's in tradition) that removes the upkeep on garrisoned soldiers. When having a wide empire it can save you a lot of money. Of course when under attack you have to sacrifice this but I find it well worth the effort if I'm not going for domination.

It's only good in combo with Military Caste or if you choose more policies from Tradition, something I cannot see a reason to do with wide empire. Otherwise wasting two policies on garrisoning couple of units in borderline cities and save 5gpt is not optimal.