Economies in ruins!

Ereiid said:

Even on Chieftain, I find that Hinduism and Buddhism are a wash unless I have the good fortune of starting with Mysticism. Judaism seems to be pretty reliable to score.

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I play Noble and if I don't start with Mysticism, I'll shoot for Polytheism and most of the time will get it too. Even if I have to research Hunting first, which is always my first choice in tech.

If you're having so much trouble with it, it might be a good idea to keep an eye on your first few cities, and don't build a new one until the old ones are at least breaking even or even showing a profit. Another stategy you can try is to check up on the other civs, and just try to keep with them, city for city. It seems pretty obvious you're trying to expand too quickly. I usually don't have a dozen cities until I'm approaching the Industrial Era.

Wodan said:

Another good option is to not build so many cities. Throw a shell of cities out where you would have the borders of your empire anyway, but skip over the in-between spots (skip over the inner circle of cities). Some people cringe at that, but in Civ4 the distance penalty is a pittance compared to the # of cities penalty. Seriously.

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That's the way I do it too, and it works well. In fact, I've noticed that the AI tends to do it that way as well. With cultural expansion happening on both sides, in no time those center cities are secure for future development. Then you can take your time to develop them as you can afford it. You just have to be careful not to extend your outer ring too far, or it will cost you. I usually don't go beyond a second tier of cities, leaving the inner ones sometimes until the Industrial Era.

It has another advantage as well. Having that outer ring of cities set up lights up your whole interior so you can secure yourself from Barbarian spawning in your core. You just have to worry about defending the outer cities so your Workers can actually get something done in behind them.

DrewBledsoe said:

Try that too often on marathon / huge , and you'll have an inner circle of barbarian cities

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Just don't extend your outer ring too far. Put it out just enough that a single cultural expansion lights up the interior, along with Capital's cultural boundaries. You'll never have a problem with Barbs in your interior again.

xonixs said:

DraconisRex:


You really think so?
I only build courthouse when i want to build the forbidden palace.
I have one question:
Does the courthouse require maintenance too?

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Buildings don't have their own maintence costs anymore, they all get wrapped up in the overall city maintenance. So having a Courthouse can save you a ton of money, especially in your outer cities. Right off the bat they can cost you 3-4 per turn, and they get even more expensive as you start building in them. I've seen cities of mine with maintence costs of 6-8 gold per turn. A 50% savings on that is considerable if you have a dozen or so cities.

If you're getting in trouble with your economy, always check with your financial advisor. His services are free and confidential.

You must always expect to run in the red during the classical era.That is the "price"(don't mind the pun)of expanding.I find any civ(especially Ghandi)with industrial will allow your civ to pull through this problem quickly.Forge is a great asset that will allow increased production(built twice as fast with Ind),and the fast woker is nothing if not FAST.'Nuff said

some people think that its cheating or boring if you edit in civ. but sometimes its necessary to increase the fun and pace of the game. what you might want 2 do is... preplan. go into the edit options and create as many new resources as you can think of. don't go crazy tho. otherwise you'll b super rich and the game will b boring. a good idea would be to look for resource guides from books or whatnot. then, place new resources with similar resource icons all over the map.. for instance. salt, bauxite, plastic, titanium, small towns, small cities, large cities, coffee, chocolate, processing plants. all of these outside the ranges of cities, if you're creating established cities. the most successful version of this being in civilization 3 play the world teturkhan huge world map .whatever the case, enjoy the newfound trading options that come with more resources. DON'T FORGET TO GIVE TO OTHER CIVS!! i remember once i spent over an entire month filling the entire earth map teturhan version1.3 with each single nation on earth and every new peice of weaponry and modern equipment. the united states, canada, all eu..china... etc.. IT WAS AWESOME. but here were the stats, if you don't beleive you'll keep a steady source of income that can be exchanged between nations. becuz trade is key. u.s.-1000000 each turn, with 1000000 in bank. china-600000e...etc.. something like that. i can't remember. last info is. if u make cities. THE GROWTH RELIGION INFLUENCE GOES ALL THE WAY TO MILLION!!! it expands about 8 times, just in case you didnt know

I have the luxory of enough down time at work to read the manual and the brady games strat guide in its entirety ...anyway.. all the threads are accuratte in here and what is so wonderful about CIV IV compared to the other previous ones is that its all about less tedium and less micromanagement of 25 different cities on even a dinky small map so in other words you are NOT suppose to have a lot of cities doing so will kill your economy it takes time to found a lot of them .. It seems to work with me to get all the early techs so you can manipulate the terrain ... farms, mines, cut down forest and jungle but after these techs go for the money techs writing, currency, code of laws , banking .. I mean don't skip these got back to em and build your grocer and court and stuff ... this really helps ALSO do the civs that save money.. AND most importantly too .. in reading all the manuals and stuff this version .. CIV IV is all about the specialists too.... when you build on of these buldings if allows you to have a tax collector guy specialist or whatever they call em ... in the city screen enabling him really helps and with enough food you can get two or three or more once you build and reasearch enough to allow this .. this really helps also consider having a city that just makes food only so to speak so you can have whatever specialists ya need .... get the strat guide and read all the manual its all about less cities but huge cities and specialists .... and wonders and civ choice... now go forth and conquer...

Courthouses are by far the most powerful tool to alleviate the 0% science woes. If you are going bust before you get code of laws, you either need to slow your expansion, or get code of laws earlier.

Courthouses are indeed very important. (They are the reason I always seem to found Confucianism!)
I am also a big fan of the Organized trait as it lets you build them at half cost.

If you are in a position to do so war can bring in a lot of cash quickly. Just pillaging can stave off your forclosure and allow you to continue research. Capturing cities can bring huge amounts and if you are already overextended destroy the city unless it has a valuable wonder in it. Tree chopping to build court houses rapidly can be very helpful. If you want to capture a city eventually, consider leaving some villages so they can grow to give you more money once you take over. Courthouses are my standard build when conquering cities at any significant distance from my capital.

I never use any of the high cost civics. Also, if the AI offers you goods for goods, accept it and immediately try trading another item - it may then offer cash instead (even 1 a turn can help).

I am reluctant to trade techs as, at higher levels, the AI tends to outresearch you anyway.

Another point - whatever religion(s) you get send out missionaries to the other nations. If you hit enough cities they may convert and if you have the holy city you will get lots of gold.

Try to persuade one or more of the cities to produce a great merchant. Returns vary but I have had from 1200 to 2500 from a merchants trade route.

TheBrute said:

I never use any of the high cost civics.

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That doesn't make sense. If you get a desired benefit from them, why not use the higher cost ones?

[/QUOTE]Try to persuade one or more of the cities to produce a great merchant. Returns vary but I have had from 1200 to 2500 from a merchants trade route.[/QUOTE]

You're not sending it far enough away, I usually get returns of 4-5000. The further the city you send it to is, the more you get.

TheBrute said:

I never use any of the high cost civics.

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"Never" is a bad word to use in Civ4. Some of those high-cost civics are very powerful and well worth their upkeep costs. It's really a question of knowing when to use the high-cost civics. Don't pay for them if you aren't using them....

In the OP's example, Organized Religion is a very costly civic. It's great if you have more commerce than hammers and you need to build up your infrastructure. However, it sounds like the OP is having the opposite problem: plenty of hammers, but not enough commerce. In that case, get out of Organized Religion immediately, and don't look back until you're "in the green" at a decent Science rate.

Your problem is not enough COWS!

COWS = MONEY

This is all so laughable. Every redicuous reponse comes down to balance. There are three thing to balance in civ, do you know of which I speak?

The executive, legislative, and the judicial?

EDIT: /obvious troll

RedWormCharlie said:

three thing to balance in civ

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Lemme guess. Total commerce, number of cities, distance of cities to capital/forbidden palace?

xonixs said:

DraconisRex:


You really think so?
I only build courthouse when i want to build the forbidden palace.
I have one question:
Does the courthouse require maintenance too?

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Buildings dont require maintenance

Dont listen to people claiming they can run at 100% science and be successful. They are either:

Playing on a low difficulty setting
or
Not expanding fast enough

If you want to be among the top civs you must expand relatively fast and your science will drop below 100% for most of the game. That is not a problem since 70% of a large empire is more than 100% of a small one

joasoze said:

Dont listen to people claiming they can run at 100% science and be successful. They are either:

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You don't want to do that anyway, it makes buildings like Market, Bank etc. totally useless. I discovered that if my rate was any higher than 80%, I may as well have not bothered to build them since the city wasn't producing enough commerce to justify having them in place.