How to increase productivity/gold while @war?

Thanks

Go full Honor and earn money from kills. Use it to buy more units, hammer buildings, gold buildings and happiness.

Go full Commerce and roll in dosh.

dont forget to pillage improvements
make some puppets working trade posts
sell conquered cities to other AIs

consentient is right about those policies, but it takes some time to fill a whole tree. However you really need to give more informations, to begin with :

• What difficulty level are you playing?
• Is it an early or a late war?
• Is it offensive war (you go domination victory) or defensive?

Thanks all for the replies!!!

Bob Morane said:

consentient is right about those policies, but it takes some time to fill a whole tree. However you really need to give more informations, to begin with :

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• What difficulty level are you playing?

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Normally PRINCE

• Is it an early or a late war?

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It's middle (definitely not early)

• Is it offensive war (you go domination victory) or defensive?

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It's offensive but not in early stage...
Actually i'm attacking small country... but it's befriend with the largest countries...

Since you don't need to wonder whore as you'll be getting those wonders from city captures and don't need to focus on production focus on gold, especially in the capital. In saying that one wonder you want is Machu Pichu. Don't use the mayor lock tiles manually. The earlier you connect your cities with roads to the capital the quicker you earn more gold, especially when you compound the gold output with markets/banks/stock exchanges.

Another tactic is to focus on early science as you are on Prince you should out tech the AI fairly quickly. You don't need so many units when you have Artillery/Infantry when the AI has knights and trebuchets.

Dont forget to: Pillage routes!!

scout your target for trade route BEFORE the DoW, and have one or two units parked in the right spot to pillage. Especially important when gold is tight. pilaging 3-5 routes lets you rush buy another unit or building, or just provides a treasury buffer for recessions.

And...
Have your trade routes going places where they are less likely to get captured. Rebuilding trade units is a huge production sink. You only want to build them once. Send them in new directions if you think a DoW is likely in the next 30 turns. Send them internally if its world war time. Having a couple of nearby allied CS can be very valuable.

You should always be working all of your trade routes. Dont leave anything out. Its important for gold, science early, religion and diplomacy.

consentient said:

Go full Honor and earn money from kills. Use it to buy more units, hammer buildings, gold buildings and happiness.

Go full Commerce and roll in dosh.

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What path through Commerce do you prefer to follow? Every time I do the Honor Commerce route it's so hard clicking those policies with those few less than amazing policies.

b1gzero said:

Normally PRINCE

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OK. Don't want to sound rude but you probably need to improve your overall game cause you shouldn't have much troubles at Prince. Prince AIs generally don't have that many units and as stated you should be ahead in tech so you shouldn't need much units yourself and shouldn't have issues with maintenance c5gold: cost for keeping your units), certainly not reach a point where unit support causes a loss of .

If you need many units you must learn to use your units better and avoid loosing them.
If you are not ahead in tech by the end of medieval/early renaissance, something is wrong with your science. Lack of science can cause troubles in every part of the game.

Fewer AI units makes honor finisher less useful than it would be on higher difficulties. AI is also less likely to be able to buy your luxuries for a good price on Prince.
Some generic tips that can help in case you are not already doing this.

• Have enough workers. They are probably the most important units. As a rule you should have 1.5 worker per city. If using Liberty (especially if you have Pyramids) you might be good with 1, if you go Tradition and your population and borders grow quickly, you might need 2. If you are working unimproved tiles after the early stages of the game, something is wrong.
• Get your cities connected by roads. This will give you gold based on city population and capital population.
• Keep your cities growing. More population gives more gold from roads, more science and more tiles to work.
• Build your Universities early and use those scientist slots. They give you neither gold nor production but they are important for your science. Lack of science makes you worse at every other aspect of the game.
• Don't go wonder crazy. Sure you can get them easily on Prince but you don't need all of them (actually you need none for domination, some might help you). If you overbuild wonders you probably are not building more directly useful stuff.

z284pwr said:

What path through Commerce do you prefer to follow? Every time I do the Honor Commerce route it's so hard clicking those policies with those few less than amazing policies.

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Apart from the faster Great Merchant birth, i don't see any bad SP in Commerce. For gold i find that the +2 per caravan half cost for roads really help. Lansknecht are most useful if you can get them early in Medieval so i would probably take those first. They are both on top of the tree so that's nice.

Bob Morane said:

Lansknecht are most useful if you can get them early in Medieval so i would probably take those first.

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I concur with all Bob wrote, but based on OP's gold problem, I wanted to highlight this in particular since pillaging can really make or break the cash-flow, and high move or no-move-cost-to-pillage units are key to making that work. Landsknechts upgraded to lancers are perfect for this.

If gold is really a problem, after a city is razed, you can still pillage in neutral territory, so much so that many players considered it an exploit. One lancer can keep three or more workers busy making repairs!

z284pwr said:

What path through Commerce do you prefer to follow? Every time I do the Honor Commerce route it's so hard clicking those policies with those few less than amazing policies.

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I'm all about Opener > Wagon Trains > Landsknechts (which should come around at the time you want a few lancers for capture and dealing with nasty horse UUs) > Cheaper purchasing > Merchants > Finisher

Once the finisher is over you need never worry about happiness again.

If you have any additional policies between Commerce Finisher and Autocracy, go Liberty for a bit of extra culture (assuming you have a few capitals in the bag already).

The policies are all less than amazing, but the finishers are sick to compensate, and when you have Honor and Commerce full, then Open Autocracy and get Mobilisation and you've built Big Ben, wow, it's unreal.

Took me a really long time to crack that strategy but I'm making headway now.

consentient said:

The policies are all less than amazing, but the finishers are sick to compensate, and when you have Honor and Commerce full, then Open Autocracy and get Mobilisation and you've built Big Ben, wow, it's unreal. Took me a really long time to crack that strategy but I'm making headway now.

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I know from your other posts that you are making this work at Deity -- which I am very much struggling with generally (although my current Korea game is going exceptionally well even though I don't know what I really did differently). Anyway, what other secrets can you share for pursuing Honor/Commerce/Autocracy? I have no objections if picking a certain civs and map combination make this almost too easy...

beetle said:

I have no objections if picking a certain civs and map combination make this almost too easy...

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Poland would be good for the free policies and I had great success with the Mongols. A swarm of Keshiks can mow down units like crazy which is nice with Honor finisher. I'm thinking of trying the Aztecs too just to see if the Culture per enemy killed can make a difference or not. A Lakes map for the Floating Gardens would be really easy to test things on.

1. Go easy on the fighting until XBs. Make a ton of units (hence 3 cities that will grow - to increase 'supply') and train them on barbs, a vulnerable city state, or an AI that can't war properly. But trade with everyone else, and try to grow those 3 cities. Build markets, universities and eventually aqueducts.

2. But delay Construction as long as possible, and then immediately tech to Machinery and hopefully it will coincide with the Honor finisher. Then start taking out capitals and do whatever you can do to keep growth going at home while building mainly units & important stuff like workshops.

3. After Machinery, tech to Chemistry, and then Oxford into Dynamite. The Commerce tree will help a bit, but the main thing should be the Honor finisher helping pay for stuff. Save money for 3x factories for when you hit Industrialisation (right after Dynamite). Next turn choose Elite Forces and more importantly Mobilisation. Build Big Ben after that, but really, Mobilisation, the reduced purchasing from Commerce and the Honor finisher is completely awesome. You'll earn a 1000 gold a turn if you do it right and you can spend it straight away on elite troops.

4. After Industrialisation, if you have capitals you need to take out with ships, go to Navigation. At some point Peddro suggests selling universities, but I'm not sure when the best time to do this is. It's probably situational.