CIV Illustrated #4: "Hybrid Economy" !

great guide again seriel.

As with kallikrates I didnt quite understand the 4 pop trade route thing.

As for spys stealing gold,it seems to be 1esp per gold for small ammounts,maybe it goes up in the case of thousands of gold.There is possibly a way to make money from an AI civ by buying a tech off it,then stealing the gold back the next turn.

Although Im sure you cant do that on the same turn.IIRC sometimes their gold can mysteriously dissapear the turn after,although ive never pursued it properly I would be very interested to see how that game mechanic works-it sometimes seems that the gold you can steal off them bears no resemblence to the gold you could trade off them.

Indeed, a very good summary on how to increase commerce/gold.
What I'm missing is the possibilities to reduce costs.
Certain civics have no upkeep, an early Forbidden Palace, the Federal Reserve event (-25% inflation), etc.
All save a lot of gold. The costs will grow faster and faster (inflation + civic upkeep + unit upkeep) if you keep on expanding.
One of the major problems before Astronomy when there's enough land to settle, but not enough gold to support it.

Interesting. Missionary failgold is quite new to me, I mean I've heard about it but not yet really used it in real games. I'm wondering what kind of circumstances make it good and how much should it change the game. It skews the balance towards more farms rather than cottages, but requires good happy if you want to do it early. So more hammer/food econ and smaller cities even during peacetime.

Kallikrates said:

I think there should be a patch to kill multiple National wonder and missionary failgold.
If you can't decide where to build a NW you should simply lose the hammers invested in the city that eventually does not build the NW. Period. That one can multiply "fail" to build a NW is possible is absolutely ridiculous... you can't fail with NW because you cannot compete with yourself for the wonder.
It's o.k. for world wonders because otherwise it would be too tough if one lost a wonder a few turns before completion (although I think here there should be a similar penalty similar to the more expensive whipping of wonders).
Sorry, that I keep harping on this stuff, but I can hardly express how stupid I find that this is even (and still after many patches) possible. It seems so obviously wrong to see this as a regular feature, not an exploit.

Otherwise, great guide!

I am not sure what it means "not whip 4 cities"? That there should be 4 cities still quite large so that internal trade routes give more revenue? Or that cities should not be reduces from 8 to 4 pop?
But the # of internal trs depends on how many AI cities one has contact with, doesn't it? If possible, all trs will be foreign, or am I mistaken here? Is there a correction for larger maps? traderoutes would probably be even better on larger maps with more cities and more AIs to trade with.

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FlyingSwan said:

great guide again seriel.

As with kallikrates I didnt quite understand the 4 pop trade route thing.

As for spys stealing gold,it seems to be 1esp per gold for small ammounts,maybe it goes up in the case of thousands of gold.There is possibly a way to make money from an AI civ by buying a tech off it,then stealing the gold back the next turn.

Although Im sure you cant do that on the same turn.IIRC sometimes their gold can mysteriously dissapear the turn after,although ive never pursued it properly I would be very interested to see how that game mechanic works-it sometimes seems that the gold you can steal off them bears no resemblence to the gold you could trade off them.

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It's a simple tactic, where you maximise the output of Traderoutes by letting 4 cities grow as large as possible. This implies that you have Currency, run Free Market and know Corporation, then every city has 4 Traderoutes -> 4 times the same cities.

To have completely foreign TRs is possible in the beginning of a game, but once one has conquered half of the map, one will have mostly internal TRs, therefore Island-cities and non-whipped cities are important.

Tatran said:

Indeed, a very good summary on how to increase commerce/gold.
What I'm missing is the possibilities to reduce costs.
Certain civics have no upkeep, an early Forbidden Palace, the Federal Reserve event (-25% inflation), etc.
All save a lot of gold. The costs will grow faster and faster (inflation + civic upkeep + unit upkeep) if you keep on expanding.
One of the major problems before Astronomy when there's enough land to settle, but not enough gold to support it.

Click to expand...

The Forbidden Palace was already described in the last guide, CIV Illustrated #2: City specialization explained! . The Federal Reserve Event is already described in the Random Event List.

sinimusta said:

Interesting. Missionary failgold is quite new to me, I mean I've heard about it but not yet really used it in real games. I'm wondering what kind of circumstances make it good and how much should it change the game. It skews the balance towards more farms rather than cottages, but requires good happy if you want to do it early. So more hammer/food econ and smaller cities even during peacetime.

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Missionary and Exec-Failgold is good, when wanting to reach Education as fast as possible, or, if the AIs had no more money, so somewhere in the industrial era so that one can reach nukes. Basically in every situation, where one has good happiness, just like the "too much overflow-method" can be great to pull through to Maths or Alpha.

It's definitely game-changing, because it allows to raise thousands of and that instant, or in a few turns, and once one has Kremlin, it's efficiency is so incredible, that it's hard to find other sources that are so powerful.

For the gold stealing, it might be a nice use of a Great Spy to steal the fail gold of an Ai.

It doesn't need a very complicated set-up. Just enough Spy point to see what he is building in advance and send a Great Spy + Spy or two in a caravel and carry the EP point dump and steal away. Could even cripple him further or steal a tech or two at the same time.

The thread has now 5 stars, so I wanted to thank everybody who voted it that highly . Don't stop voting though, there are always people who rate everything with 1 star, and you (the readers) must simply voten often enough, so that the 1-star-people have no chance .

Thx again

Excellent work ! Another great job!

I have a great problem with economy . Several games crashed (economically) soon after the first war. I have to learn how to get a good economy and maintain my army (and still continue increasing it) till next upgrade (or next war) ...

I'm reading your guides, but it is still a lot of information, and I don't have the time for all of it - besides reading I have to play, trying to put into practice the ideas.

You have my vote with 5 Stars! Keep it up !

@ Falabello:

Try the "too much OF method" . When you whip a Warrior, that's already 20 , but when you add 5 Forests, then it's 210 , and that without building Wealth or anything . I use that method really often until Currency, sometimes already to only get Maths .

Very cool!!!

Todelotti said:

Very cool!!!

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Thx .

Kallikrates said:

I think there should be a patch to kill multiple National wonder and missionary failgold.
If you can't decide where to build a NW you should simply lose the hammers invested in the city that eventually does not build the NW. Period. That one can multiply "fail" to build a NW is possible is absolutely ridiculous... you can't fail with NW because you cannot compete with yourself for the wonder.
It's o.k. for world wonders because otherwise it would be too tough if one lost a wonder a few turns before completion (although I think here there should be a similar penalty similar to the more expensive whipping of wonders).
Sorry, that I keep harping on this stuff, but I can hardly express how stupid I find that this is even (and still after many patches) possible. It seems so obviously wrong to see this as a regular feature, not an exploit.

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I agree - its a horrendous exploit. No freaken way you should be able to build same wonder in multiple cities at once. And fail gold should be no more than 1/4 of hammers spent, and no IND/Resource bonus counted in. Fail gold was put in as compensation for "loosing a wonder to AI" and should be a MINOR compensation, not a source of major income.

It would be great to see a begging section added. Begging yields can be tremendous. I know Neilmeister has a formula that came from code diving that he used in SGOTMs that helps determine begging thresholds.

elitetroops said:

Anyway, I don't know the cost of these missions and how steal treasury / compares to / when stealing techs. I'm assuming stealing techs is usually better, if they have something to steal, because you can get additional value by trading it around. Unless you really really need gold to push research forward at that point. Or maybe if you don't have enough EP to steal techs and don't want to invest any more EP towards that AI.

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Seraiel said:

Gold stealing missions are expensive, that much I know. In my current round 2-3 civs got a GM, and they need something like 2500 for robbing their treasures. Maybe something for very late game, when multipliers are in effect, earlier gathering that some only to get money seems quite unattractive, as one would need to run 100% Espionage-Slider, and that means no research, so stealing via espionage would need at least something like 1 = 2 or so.

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The way things were set up in my game, it happened to be a really good deal. Have looked through countless screenshots from that game now, but unfortunately I don't have any of the costs or amounts stolen. The formula is roughly something like (Total gold * CityPopulation) / TotalPopulation. Mansa had about 6500, only four cities, and 2 of those were tiny newly settled ones. IIRC, I could steal 40-60% of his total gold with each mission, and it was relatively cheap too, due to trade route bonus, religious holy city bonus (I conquered his Holy city ), and of course -50% for stationing the spy first.

From what I recall it wasn't quite 2 per 1 but it wasn't far off either; it was definitely more than 1:1 ratio. Considering there was no other way to get to that gold because Mansa didn't want to part with a single coin (apparently because I sold him Drama for 1100, on Marathon settings), stealing practically the whole mountain he had was a great deal. Techs I could get from him anyway, and he didn't have any to steal anyhow.

Of course, usually circumstances won't be this in favour of stealing big amounts. The costs will perhaps be higher, and the amounts much smaller, but it can be something to keep in mind. If you already have enough espionage to investigate cities and see a big pile of gold you cannot otherwise get your filthy mittens on...

e: He has almost no gold now (I wonder why... ), so the amount is pathetic, but right now it's actually 2:1 ratio. Don't think it was quite that high earlier, but I don't recall the exact numbers either, only that it was a really good deal, like stealing 1600/6400 (until I later knew more about the formula, and went to his bigger city, and stole even higher proportional amounts).

shulec said:

It would be great to see a begging section added. Begging yields can be tremendous. I know Neilmeister has a formula that came from code diving that he used in SGOTMs that helps determine begging thresholds.

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Begging formula can be found here.

I'll add an extra chapter about it when I have time, it's basically Turns + 50 * 2 * Power Ratio, so if you know someone for 100T and have half of his power, it'd i. e. be 150 * 2 * 0,5 = 150 . Ofc. , everything one has already begged from somebody, gets subtracted from that amount, so if you had begged 100g already earlier, you could only beg for another 50.

I admit though, that I never use that formula when playing one of my games, because usually, I don't know my power-ratio, so I just beg for something like 150 for the first time, and then always 50 every 25th turn. 25T pause, because that gives the AI to 8x% chance to forget about the last beg, if it still remembers it, all begs are automatically refused.

@ Pangaea: Stealing gold is definitely a chapter that's missing, now knowing the relevance of this tactic. I just ask myself if it would be better in this guide (economy) or if it should be handled in an extra espionage-guide. Maybe describe the tactic here, and give full details in an espionage-focussed-guide.

It would probably fit better in an Espionage Guide. This one is about Hybrid Economy after all, and espionage isn't really part of that, strictly speaking. It's more about a bird's eye view of how to better utilise the cities in one's empire.

Great guide as usual Seraiel, which I rated 5* for you. One minor quibble in the opening sentence of Post #1: A "manor" is a house/estate. You mean "manner".

misterfilmgeek said:

Great guide as usual Seraiel, which I rated 5* for you. One minor quibble in the opening sentence of Post #1: A "manor" is a house/estate. You mean "manner".

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Thx and fixed .

Seraiel said:

...an extra espionage-guide...

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That would definitely a great subject for another guide! Another guide that would be very useful as well imho: A Diplomacy Guide! Including things like Defensive Pacts, Peace Treaties, Vassals, War allies, What's a "Worst Enemy", Gifting and Trading (from diplomatic, not economic viewpoint), etc. This is still one of the most difficult game elements for me.