Some small tips

You have to be careful when you play the stock market with buying food, culture and science. You have to watch that they don't roll over (unless you want them too). Military prices don't fluctuate in a useful way and so they are harder to invest in. That said I bought a bunch of man-at-arms for around 100ish and sold them on for 600ish. Now, the commodities seem slow to drop down in this game. They are the slow growers.

Approx. prices for investment....(These 4 tend to be the most dynamic)
buy food at <250 sell at >500 about the same for hammers but the price can really fly, i have seen it go over 1000.
buy culture <75 and sell for >150
buy science <200 sell for >450

Now, that is just based on game 150...market might be behaving differently in other games.

Paying attention to the military prices and comparing them to the hammer cost of building the same unit can be quite profitable.
Especially during early(ish) game pay attention to Galley price because it's the only naval unit available. People don't realize you can build Galleys for 100 hammers and they end up just buying a bunch.

I have only played 2 games so far but made a huge profit in both early when everyone is warring and Galley sell prices have been 2k+ while in the mean time 100 hammers can be bought for 400gold.

Another thing i'd like to mention is probably the most important aswell, which is communication within your civilization. Use the "private" civilization chat and use it often.

Like times you figure out an easy tech maze that you can finish with say <10 initial moves. Let your civ know how its done and watch how you'll bump a tech within minutes.
Tell people when you are planning to sell a bunch of food because you need hammers for other stuff so they can take advantage of the lowered food price if they are planning to grow.
Question their desire to build certain wonders that clearly have no other use than a cultural medal when there are far superior options available with similar cost.

Small things like that which are communicated frequently can/will make a civilization succeed.

Also, be aware that units auto upgrade for free if you have the right techs.

sadmachines said:

Also, be aware that units auto upgrade for free if you have the right techs.

Click to expand...

I noticed this. Buying some units just before finishing said tech and then selling em wehn upgraded can be a good way to make money if production prices are low.

Or upgrade just moments before war starts!

A new game just started 2 hours ago and already i see people with 7 citizens. How is this possible? 1 farmer and 6 builders.

@Loev
Fertility Rites

Everyone seems to harvest great scientists now in case the above event wonder shows up.
The price has become already insane high. Almost twice the price of other great people in the first era.
Just like the Secret Weapon, the Fertility Rites is absolutely overpowered.

sadmachines said:

Also, be aware that units auto upgrade for free if you have the right techs.

Click to expand...

They don't upgrade 1:1 though. I'm not sure what the exact formula is, but I know that when I bought a lot of cheap units just before a tech upgrade, I did not get the same number of advanced units. I suspect the game gives you an equivalent "value", which makes upgrading much less useful.

The way fertility rites works is just stupid. In my latest game I was the first person to log in as the game opened. First thing I did was found a civ, BUY a great scientist cheap off the market with the gold you are given, and build fertility rites for myself.... before anybody else had even joined the game. Yeah I'd say that's a pretty significant bonus for being the first into a game.

I guess all mini-wonders are pretty poorly balanced and need to be changed, but fertility rites especially so. Members of a large civ have very little chance to get this because you need so many people online, aware, and willing to give up their great people to build it.

I was expecting upgrades to be like Civ but they aren't. I was watching an upgrade and the total hammers invested in the old units are used to buy the new ones. For example, I had a lot of militia (25 hammers each) and when they upgraded to phalanxi (75 hammers each), there were 1/3 the number.

Khaim said:

They don't upgrade 1:1 though. I'm not sure what the exact formula is, but I know that when I bought a lot of cheap units just before a tech upgrade, I did not get the same number of advanced units. I suspect the game gives you an equivalent "value", which makes upgrading much less useful.

Click to expand...

That's right. I think you get the same as the number of hammers invested. Except when you have just 1 unit to upgrade. In that case it is one-to-one.

PieceOfMind said:

I agree. The bubble popping yields way too much income as a reward for such a mind numbing task. Popping bubbles for farms or production clusters would almost always be more profitable than doing the caravan minigame. I think it's poor design in the first place, but if this feature stays in I really think it needs to be toned down.

Click to expand...

i think that's the point. if you're going to sit around with your hand on the mouse and just wait for the bubbles to come up, you should at least be rewarded for it.