I'm so broke!

well the title pretty much explains it. I'm having trouble keeping my economy afloat although I am doing very well score wise. I'm forced to have the tech slider down to 50% and -13 per turn. I'm playing on prince level. I suspect that rapid expansion is what is causing this but I don't know how to get out of such a deficit. Any suggestions on what to do?

heres the save: http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/62045/Washington_AD-1424.Civ4SavedGame

For an immediate fix, sell Drama to Isabella.

The problem is that you're very light on Cottages - Delhi's the obvious exception. Not having Cottages is fine if you've got your mind set on a specialist-based economy as the alternative, but you're not running specialists either ...

... I suggest that you need to knock over more forests and put down more 'food sustainable' Cottages in a few cities that you consider would make good commercial centres (food rich and ideally with a commerce-yielding special resource or two).

Over-expansion is usually a problem before you get Currency and Code of Laws > Forbidden Palace, but you're past that stage.

Best of luck!

I haven't looked at your save game. But usually, you shouldn't expand to such a point unless you have researched currency. This is because currency at least allows you to run a few cities on wealth while you shore up your economy. Getting down to 10 or 20% on the science slider is not always a bad thing. The key is whether the expansion was worth it and if you can recover quickly enough. In addition to having currency, CoL is key along with slavery to whip courthouses in the furthest cities.

Play through games like this. Don't panic. Maybe switch some worked tiles to more commerce heavy ones, hire some merchants, run wealth, get courthouses built, whip away some pop (lower pop=lower maintenance).

You need to learn the fine line between healthy expansion and over-expansion, and there is no better way to learn it than experience. I've had games that I ran science at 0% for a long time before even gettting currency or CoL, and still turned out well in the end. Just because you are losing money at 50% doesn't mean your economy is ruined.

Xanadux,

Believe me, it's lack of commerce-yielding tiles without a specialist mindset. Delhi's got Pigs and Floodplains mostly with developed Cottages - once it deals with city maintenance and gets more 'multiplier' buildings, things will improve. The capital - Washington - needs more development in terms of leveraging Bureaucracy's +50% effect.

ill try out making more cottages and whipping some courthouses. thanks for the tips. I suppose I should also try this specialist economy thing some time.

You have two big problems. One is that you have a big empire, and your city maintenance is higher than it should be. You have the right idea in building courthouses in your western cities (though you're building a useless temple in one).

The other, larger problem is that your eastern core cities are not developed well enough to support your maintenance. I see all these cities with population greater than 10 that are working mostly forest. You have a big stack of workers that are sitting idle, put them to use in your east. Chop the forest for economic buildings and replace it with either farms or cottages. Theaters aren't important, you aren't at the happiness cap and most of your population is working unimproved tiles anyway. If you go with farms, run a lot of merchants or scientists, switching to caste system if necessary.

Edit: was looking at the save and didn't see Cam's posts which have the right idea.

The thing is if I chop all the forests how will I get hammers?

Mines, Specialist Engineers, Workshops and Watermills are all possibilities; the last two bolstered in value with some later technologies (e.g. Chemistry, Replaceable Parts) and civic choices (State Property). If in Slavery, you can convert into , so even Farms can in a sense be used as producing tiles!

Forests do have a role - two Forests add 1, while a Railroaded Lumbermill is a powerful enough producer in its own right. If you get the Beyond the Sword expansion pack, the National Park national wonder gets benefit from (preserved) Forests, and is generally more problematic with this expansion, so the value of keeping Forests is often heightened.

... but that's not to say that Forests are untouchable, and in your game you need to chop some of these away to make way for more appropriate tile improvements. Bombay and Kolhapur for instance could see some serious Forest removal and replacement with Cottages provided they can maintain a respectable food surplus during and after the transformation. The chopped Forests themselves of course will yield that you can put towards the production of complementary buildings. Other cities (e.g. Boston, New York) can continue to act as your unit pumps.

Alright, all your help has improved my economy greatly, however I'm starting to think how I want to win. Usually I win by space race but unless I'm able to get a lead in tech that may be hard. I would also like to do some more conquering, possibly of Saladin for I am pretty powerful. But, I wouldn't want to raze his cities and If I kept them I would be back to a large deficit, right? also some of my cities are producing practically no hammers, which I don't really like but in some of my other cities, like Washington, I don't know what to build. (im trying to avoid units im gunna have to pay for) So anyone have any more suggestions

heres the save: http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/62045/Washington_AD-1496.Civ4SavedGame

and thanks for the help so far!

Prior to Beyond the Sword, forests also have the powerful benefit of +1 with the Environmentalism civic. (In BtS the Forest Preserve sort of replaces this, but it's not as strong.)

But yeah, what he said: if you want to be richer, cottage them.

Just to give some simple rules of thumb to start with:
- replace all forest hills with mines, always a great source of production
- choose some cities as "production cities" whose job it is to build units. maximize production in those cities by leaving forests (except probably in the hills)
- otherwise replace flat grassland forests with cottages (and farms, but especially cottages), especially if they're on a river.
- leave some flat plains forests, to taste. use Slavery as desired (but it's very powerful, so typically a lot)
- if you want a sudden burst of production, like if you're building a wonder or preparing for a war, you might want to sacrifice a lot of forests for it.

The grocer is a good build because it multiplies the wealth from the Hindu shrine.

You can take over Saladin if you want. It looks like he has good land and resources that you don't. If so, then you know what to build: units. Sure, your costs will go up. Build more cottages and whip more courthouses.

The demographics screen shows that you're first in land by a 3:2 ratio. On most difficulty levels that's easily enough land to win the space race. The main ingredient of the simplest strategy is to build a lot of cottages. There are many secondary ingredients but for this game I'll mention just three:
1. build a few more cities up north, especially to claim resources that you don't have yet.
2. keep building units in a couple cities.
3. generally a granary should be the first, second, or third building in every city

Checked out the first post save.
To maintain the current deficit, but increases research, I switched into Caste System. Delhi is an excellent science city, so I built more Cottages and Farms. Next, I managed to get 6-8 Scientists running in Delhi after switching tiles to high food yield.

Used the Caravel to scout some more. Contacted Huayna and Alexander. Alex is Confucianism, Judaism and Christianity founder mad: ). Christianity is his SR, and Huayna's is Judaism. Huayna's teching is better than Peter's. He's already at Banking and might have Rifles. We don't even have Gunpowder.

Boston and Washington became military cities. Rest became Cottage cities, with a few Watermills and Workshops thrown in.

Deleted extra units. That brought deficit from around -5 GPT to -2 GPT. Razed the northern barb city and fortified three fog busting Guerrilla I Longbows.

Finished building courthouses. Built FP in Jaipur (one of the Indian cities, at least), and when coupled with courthouses, dramatically increased gold output. Raised science slider to 60%.

So the situation looks like this to me: Tech to Rifling and MT, then mass Rifles and Cavalry to go after Tokugawa. Once that's over with, hunker down for a Domination. Space Race will be a longshot due to the teching of HC and Peter. The problem is Saladin and Peter have more power than we do. I suggest knocking out Tokugawa and Isabella first, then swooping in for the other two. This is going to be a long haul, boys.