Gold diminishes too quickly?

Hello, guys I a newbie to civ3 and have been playing for less than a week. I have played a couple of games just to get to grips with the game. Each practice game, I build up gold pretty consistently at the start. However, once I have between 6 and 8 cities and try to crank out my army units the gold vanished in a few turns. I get a warning message stating that my treasuury is dangerously low. That has happened in both my games to date. What am I doing wrong.? Am I spreading my gold too thin? Am I trying to go too far with my cities and too soon?
Thanks

shane

Welcome to CFC, shanemckay!

Without seeing the save file, it's hard to tell exactly what's going on, but the usual suspects for this kind of problem include:

• Not expanding fast enough;
• Not building enough workers;
• Not building enough roads; and
• Building unnecessary structures.

Can you post a save or screenshot of your empire?

you probably need to lower the Science slider. If you call up the Advisor screen, and got to the Domestic Advisor. Just next to the icon of her head you should see two sliders. One for Science and the other for entertainment. At the lower levels you might want to slide the science slider up to 90% or so initially. It controls how much you spend on research each turn. After you get 6-8 cities and a few units built you will start to spend your gold on other stuff so you need to lower it.

Like Aabraxan said it's a little hard to say w/out seeing your save. The buildings are a something you really want to look out for, don't go building to many of them as they cost maintenance every turn. I would also suggest not building too many units till you've got a semi-definite plan of conquest--in the military adviser screen it tells you how many units you can build for free maintenance and after you've past that number you start paying one per turn (in Despotism). Don't be afraid to pass this limit but you have to really concentrate on workers and settlers at the beginning of the game so you probably won't pass it early on because of that.

Gold/commerce management was the single hardest thing for me when I was first starting, the single thing that helped me most to get over it was settlers.

I seem to have that problem a lot also, however my wife is generally the cause.

If you press F1 in the game, you get a view of where the money is going at the left top of your screen.
You can take the science slider for more taxes (money/gold).
.
If you post a screenshot we can tell you what's going on.

The advice given here is generally the reason people will have treasury problems towards the Middle Ages. You run out of room for expansion, build up your military and surpass your unit support limit (once you pass it you have to start paying gold), you start building too many improvements (which cost maintenance every turn), and marketplaces take a lot of time to build. Also make sure that you're adjusting your science slider in the domestic advisor screen (F1). Finally, always trade, trade, trade! They're always willing to give up gold for techs and resources that they don't have. Hope this helps some, but as already said it's hard to know for sure without posting a save game.

@shanemckay

It would be nice if you can post a picture or save.
When you reply, click on "Go Advanced" Then the new page will have a "manage attachments" button

Anyway, my general advice is:

1) don't build your cities too far apart
You only really need 3 squares between your cities. Less is also okay.
City - tile - tile - tile - City

This gives you more room for cities -> more unit support per city.

2) Don't build every single building
- Temples are basically worthless.
- Markets only needed in top ~3 cities
- Libraries only needed in top ~3 cities
- Granary only needed in 1 or 2 cities.

3) Build roads for commerce
Roads give you gold, as a rule of thumb.
Every tile doesn't need a road, only the tiles your cities are working (look inside city screen).

4) Watch your government type
Republic:
You need to be careful with Republic. Here's my quote from another thread:

It should be noted that to fully use Republic, you need to understand several important game concepts, like:
- City Management
- "Worked tiles" vs. "non-Worked tiles"
- Why does a city riot?
- How do libraries / markets work?

If any of those terms sound strange, you may want to re-think republic...

Click to expand...

Monarchy:
Try to get your cities to size 7 or above.

Despotism:
Spam cities, each city contributes AT LEAST 5 gold to your empire. 4 Unit support + at least 1 uncorrupted gold.

He's right, don't build every single building. But don't listen to the people who say that temples are useless. It's a load of crap. Granaries usually aren't needed early on except in a select few cities, but almost every city can make use out of them eventually. Marketplaces are good for any city that is growing too fast or too much and needs some help with happiness, but that only works if you've got lots of luxuries. Otherwise marketplaces are really only needed in major cities that are very productive commercially. I tend to build as many libraries as possible; scientific research and culture are good.

Thanks guys for all the help!

shane

A few more tips on the buildings... even I, who tend to build too much, find that of the three ultra-early improvements: barracks, temples, and granaries you'll only be able to build two without falling behind in other things. You will almost never need colosseums.

I'm more improvement-friendly than most, but yes, colosseums and cathedrals are essentially useless.

I just noticed your sig.

@shanemckay
What difficulty you play at?
Easy, like Prince?
Or hard, like Emperor?

almost every city can make use out of [granaries] eventually

Click to expand...

I'd just like to point out that the fastest way to grow population eventually is not to build granaries in every city, but to have 1 or 2 worker pumps at 2 turn workers.

2 turn worker = 2 turn per population point. No City / Metro can ever beat this.

culture is good

Click to expand...

Culture is very expensive to build early game.
At low levels, you don't need culture unless for culture wins.
a) No culture risk at all. The AI can't amass enough culture for anything...
b) The 2 biggest factors in culture flip are:
---Number of foriegn citizens (aka French people in a Maya city)
---Number of tiles in city radius from another civ territory.

Spend those culture shields on more units. If you need GPT, build a settler or worker

temples

Click to expand...

Temples are okay, I guess. They're a bad way to convert shields to commerce, but they still do the job.
I personally don't start building temples until I need to grow my cities...
Just avoid building them too early...

bob_rulz also made a good point about temples in the other thread:

It's usually later when I build a temple, and by the time I've built a temple the best units available are ones that cost as much as or more than a temple.

Click to expand...

Under despotism:
1 temple
60 shields
cannot move to another city that needs it
produces 1 content face
costs 1GPT

3 archers
60 shields
can move to other cities that need it
produces 3 content faces
costs 0GPT
Help defend the city (defensive bombard).
Can capture other cities to generate GPT.

I'm not really that much of a warmonger, I'm more of a builder. I never really shoot for a specific victory, I just end up winning either through domination or space race, or losing to space race. I've never gotten a cultural victory, but then again I've never tried specifically for one and it's hard to get one if it isn't exactly what you're aiming for.

It just honestly does annoy me when people say temples are useless, because imo they're far from that.

EDIT: And yeah, my sig is pretty awesome.

bob rulz said:

I'm not really that much of a warmonger, I'm more of a builder. I never really shoot for a specific victory, I just end up winning either through domination or space race, or losing to space race. I've never gotten a cultural victory, but then again I've never tried specifically for one and it's hard to get one if it isn't exactly what you're aiming for.

It just honestly does annoy me when people say temples are useless, because imo they're far from that.

EDIT: And yeah, my sig is pretty awesome.

Click to expand...

I agree with you. I don't care what they say. A 1,000 year old temple is a powerhouse in a cultural race. Y'all can go whistle and I'll build my temples (and subvert your cities with them )

I use temples to fill up cultural gaps between my cities.
Not many things are more annoying than the enemy founding a city between mine.

Seriously, why not just settler those unclaimed sites yourself?
Why leave 3-4 tiles between cities?

Wait, did you say "only" 3-4 squares? only?

Even if you build OCP, there should be only a stroke of 2 unclaimed tiles between cities before culture expansion, and the AI won't settle there, the AI never settles 1 tile away from an other city.

@ZzarkLinux, Minor nitpick: only 2 MP under despotism, so 3 units in a city give 2 contentness effect.

MAS said:

Seriously, why not just settler those unclaimed sites yourself?
Why leave 3-4 tiles between cities?

Wait, did you say "only" 3-4 squares? only?

Even if you build OCP, there should be only a stroke of 2 unclaimed tiles between cities before culture expansion, and the AI won't settle there, the AI never settles 1 tile away from an other city.

@ZzarkLinux, Minor nitpick: only 2 MP under despotism, so 3 units in a city give 2 contentness effect.

Click to expand...

City placement and getting as much production out of a city as possible are more important to me. Unconditional CxxC does not at all fit my playing style.

To remove any misunderstanding:
I was talking about leaving 2 unclaimed tiles between cities, that means a maximum distance of 4 tiles between city centers. (in other words the OCP pattern)

I've never seen the AI settle CxC from my cities. As far as I know, the won't. Maybe if you are at war with them, but then they will settle in the middle of your culture even.

You are right about end tile on a long peninsula thing, but planting a reg warrior there can most often take care of that.