Money vs Science cities

cusp

Chieftain
Joined
Aug 28, 2014
Messages
13
Hello all, half a decade late to the party, but I've been getting back into Civ 4 recently (50% Monarch), and have a bit of confusion regarding specialization of science and money cities.

Some of what I've read suggests only building science buildings in some commerce cities and only money buildings in others.

The confusion for me is that in practice I will have more science multiplier buildings, so I tend to run 100% science for a while, go broke and then build up some cash to fund more science.

In this scenario, the only thing that makes sense is to just build both types of buildings in every commerce in no particular order to take advantage of both 0% and 100% slider rates. (With the added bonus that all of these other buildings except library, bank and university also produce happiness/health bonuses)

Th alternative is to use specialists for money (dedicated GP farm with merchants). The downside to me is that if I overdo this, I will spend the entire game pumping out merchants, so if I'm lucky enough to have 2 solid GP farms early on, then I can do one each or something of the sort.

Any general consensus on the issue? Is the loss in hammers (could be used for wealth or military instead) worth it? I'm aiming to move up to Emperor sometime soon so I'd really like to polish my empire management skills off.

Good to be back!
 
The "dedicated gold cities" have lost their popularity and that advice would mainly be found in old threads and articles.

The consensus seems to have moved towards getting gold mainly through building wealth, failgold from wonders and selling techs to keep the slider high.
 
In other words, prioritize science buildings in all cities, unless happiness or health become an issue? Now that I think of it, I'll still have to build a minimum of 6 banks and universities anyway, so the strategy I've been using is more or less OK. Bottom line is that from what I can see most of your core commerce cities are going to end up with every s&g building anyway. Unless you build some of the banks in high production cities to get them out faster?

What do you keep the science slider on? As high as possible at all times to take advantage of the multipliers + short periods of low research in case of emergencies?

I'll give it a spin during my next game, although I just rolled Augustus on a Pangaea so I'm not sure if I'll ever be leaving the Classical age :devil:
 
Gold buildings are very marginal buildings and markets are very expensive early. You have to ask yourself what you are trying to do with your game. If you are just going for military victories you may not build any. Space may be a different story as by that point you will have much larger cities and may need the happy and health far more than gold. Regardless, you still don't need to build those buildings everywhere and likely far better off building wealth in cities that simply don't need those buildings.

A market in a good Bureau cap may be the only place worth it in the middle game.

It really boils down to learn city specializations. Libraries are highly value early for the science boosts and running scientists for GS bulbs. Once you bulb your way to Liberalism then Great Merchants are highly valued in the later game for trade missions. Trade missions, fail gold, GPT trades, and tech trades for gold and you should have no problem with gold in general.

As for sliders, don't get stuck on having a certain % for the research slider. In fact, often in the early game while expanding and getting up libraries I run at 0% to accumulate gold. Takes some practice to do that. Later on when gold is more readily available you will try to run at 100% constantly. However, for much of the early game I'm either at 0% or 100%.
 
Playing on a non-pangea and/or larger-than-standard-size map will provide more opportunities/leeway for one to crank up their science slider :p (considering you're not sharing a continent with every other civ & constantly trying to conquer something).
 
Wait until you hear that you don't need 6 banks because Wall Street is useless if playing for domination.
Or that you don't need universities either, especially on pangaea :)
 
I usually try to capture a decent Shrine city, that's the only place I'll usually bother with all three money buildings. If it's a corker, I'll think about going for Wall Street and heading for a Corporate economy.

As for building my own gold cities, as Windsor says there's better sources of funds.

I tend to keep my research fluctuating, with periods of building up funds and constructing science buildings and then periods of losing money on 100% research. With occasional flexibility to get certain milestones, bulbs, weapons and wonders :)
 
The gold buildings really do too little for how many hammers they cost.
 
Gold buildings (at least the Grocer and Market, and if you're England the stock exchange is meh to decent) do provide a considerable health/happiness bonus if you control the relevant resources, so they are usually worth getting later on regardless... unless of course, you're playing on a standard Pangea map for domination.
 
I find the Market happy bonuses are not often worth the hammers. By the time you've got two or three of them, it's not unusual to have several religions spread in your cities, allowing for easier Temple builds for happiness, Cathedrals and AP hammers, and are closing in on techs that'll obsolete most of your :) anyway.

Silk and Ivory isn't that uncommon, but it's usually accompanied by other happy resources, duplicate Ivory can be traded for several happy resources, and is usually in tropical land that takes a long time to develop, choking growth.

Grocer health bonuses are pretty decent. As cities reach midgame health caps, they're often better value than Aqueducts, and I usually find them indispensable to get my core cities working every tile in a Culture game.
 
I have tried this strategy in my past 2 games and got the following results:

first of all, this is probably some other mistake I am making but I can't even get close to 100% slider setting until well past the Renaissance. Most of the early-middle game I am actually running the slider at around 40%, and anything above that puts me out of business pretty quickly. Any idea what I could do to fix that? As it stands, since the slider is on such a low percentage I am actually losing quite a bit of gold I could have gotten by getting all those +25% bonuses everywhere.

The other question I had is more minor and is regarding the building of harbors and later customs houses in my coastal cities. Are there any rules of thumb for that? I went for a Colossus + coastal city emphasis in my last game, which by the way is just an insane way to make money (especially with hereditary rule!). I decided to build the harbor everywhere for the health bonus, but I am not sure about the customs houses.
 
If your tech rate breaks even at 40%, it sounds like you might be over-expanding or not developing many cottages. Every city you build costs money to maintain, so don't forget your courthouses and make sure they grow quickly and get self-supporting.

Coastal economies can be a lot of fun. Harbours are pretty powerful and generally worth it when they come along. Customs Houses are not a high priority unless you've got a bunch of intercontinental trade routes. Carthage with The Great Lighthouse on a map with several land masses is a top tier economic powerhouse :D
 
Customs houses are weak builds, one of many buildings you don't usually want to build.
Getting gold for high slider settings can be done by selling techs for gold, begging from Pleased and Friendly AIs, building Wealth and from intentionally failing wonders (known as failgold). Begging, selling and failgold are more useful at high levels where the AI has plenty of gold to trade and are likely to build wonders in a timely manner.
 
I'll give it a try next game. But just to confirm, by mid game I should be aiming for 80+% science slider?
 
A science slider percentage should not be your goal. What counts is how many science points your are producing, not the percentage. Science points come from commerce multiplied by the percentage of the slider and by the production of direct science points from specialists, both of these multiplied by the buildings that increase research. So, for example, 100% of 50 commerce points is far less then 50% of 200 points.
 
Id rather have as many cities as possible at 0% slider, each running two scientists and eventually wealth to get my slider up.

Every time I play a non Cre leader, I just cant. I mean other traits and combos seem so great in theory, but creative is just too good for rex and SE.
 
@cusp

As many mentioned, the % is not what you are looking for. The actual beaker per turn is THE thing you are looking after. And what matters in the end is hammer, since civ is usually a game of violence. You need to conquer neighbors, then likely sail overseas and do the same.

So, unless you are having fun for culture and space, the NORMAL winning route is to get some balance breaking military tech earlier than others and get a grand army asap. Then use this army to finish the game or sometimes to grab more resources and get another tech and repeat.

In general, land is power. Keep the production high, then you can build almost anything like research/cash. Also, running specialists is another way out. The other common skills are bureau capital with academy, gp farm(s), cottage/farm spamming, pop rushing key building/units.
 
It's worth mentioning that trading techs is not only a way to get money to subsidise more research, it's also a way to multiply your beakers. If you've got plenty of neighbours, alphabet, currency and aesthetics usually reap decent dividends. And if you have marble, decent production, and PHI or IND, the literature line is a piñata of beakers.
 
I found a stronk opportunity to build the bankings and a wall street (I am now obsessed with typing like a polandball):

Spoiler :




I need the monies to pay for my far flung naval empire.
 
Not so much. Wall Street should go in a holy, shrined city. Muliple shrines of well spread religions in a single city would be good as well. You want Wall Street multiplying even when your slider is 100% science. But it is a good Ox city.
 
Top Bottom