Your own money

[stratego]

For those people that makes thousands of gpt, you must have done it by trade with many civs (at least for me, I can't make more than around 100 gpt by myself). So my question is, do you run into financial problems towards the end of the game, when there are fewer and fewer AIs to trade with, and more army support due to war campaigne( Assuming you're keeping conquest victory as an option).

[Aggie]

No, when you assure that every town has marketplaces, banks, stock exchanges, harbours, commercial docks and you also have Wall Street, Foreign Palace at a good place (a 2nd core)...you won't run into money problems. Except when you also try to research at 100% without trade.

And indeed, when I make a lot of money while still researching at max it is mostly from the AI

[superslug]

The critical thing in that situation (common in many HOF games) is to know when to switch from producing military units and going back to settlers. Personally, I raze just about everything. Since this gives lots of free workers, infrastructure expansion is accelerated, between the roads, new population and new territory, the income starts coming in from there.

In the later stages of the game, when the Conquest is winding down/over and you're sitting just under the Domination limit, the first trick is to disband 95% of your military and just leave enough to quarantine the last AI city. That way, you don't even need defensive units.

The other big thing is to rush Marketplaces in all towns.

EDIT: Aggie beat me to posting, and he's very very correct about the Palace/FP placement.

[cracker]

You can also look at the information on the Game 5-6 "Commercial Domination" game which is just closing in the GOTM Forum and you will find some excellent examples where players are producing 1500-2000gpt even before they get through the middle ages and they already have 15,000 gold in the treasury.

Many people operate under the misconception that things like the commercial docks and stock exchanges may be required to dominate the game, when in fact most experienced players can succeed in dominating commericial production long before these late game improvements even begin to be available.

Just look at some of the examples and you will be amazed.