In all honesty, why would I want to keep the vaults stocked? Keeping just enough that there is no unhappiness is enough, additional is just gravy, but unnecessary. There are a few things that I do to make sure there is plenty enough money. Also, that doesn't work very well with the Doviello because once it becomes possible for them to build axmen, they can no longer build warriors.
Now, for keeping the vaults stocked, there are a few things that I do. First off, I grab RoK, and build its temple in all my cities. Combining this with the market, and you get +5
, and +2 merchant slots. Getting enough food for two specialists (4 extra
) is fairly easy with the little cities, which means that each city is now producing +11
, not counting any other modifiers or sources. Later on, you can also grab a gambling house to make that 14
. The next thing that I do is take the holy city of RoK, and farm/get food however I can the heck out of it, but I also make sure that there is still some hammers. The holy building provides at least 1 merchant slot (maybe more, don't remember perfectly). Getting more merchant slots is a little trickier, but still possible. Then, move the capital there (optional, but helpful), run godking, and build the Bazzar of Mammon. With all the merchants running, you get plenty of great merchants. Settling them in this city gives you even more food and gold, and when modified by the godking bonuses and bazzar of mammon, a single great merchant ends up providing 15
. Add to this a tax collector/money changer, and that becomes +18
. Combining this with 1 gold for every city with RoK in it, which turns into 3 gold, and you have an awsome money producing city. Oh, and every merchant produces 9
. With an empire of 10 cities, running 5 merchants, and having say, 3 great merchants settled there, with RoK in every city, and the 8
from market/RoK temple/gambling house, (not counting any gold from commerce), this one city alone will produce 153
.
So this means that I have 1 city producing 153
, and 9 other cities producing a minimum of 11
, for a total of 252
per turn. The downside is of course maintenence, which is why once my empire passes about 6 cities or so, I'll grab orders from heaven, stack law mana (i'll try to get 6, for a 30% bonus), and have courthouses and basilica's. This will all combine to 0 maintenence costs, even with a gambling house. Now, a warrior can upgrade to an axmen for a mere 34
(or so, IIRC). Or, it can upgrade straight to a champion for around 100
or so.
The biggest advantage of this tactic however is being able to scrape together a massive force very quickly. Each of the little cities can produce a warrior in about 2 turns or so on average. Having gold in the bank, means that in the course of about 10 turns or so, you can build up an army of 50 axmen or champions. If say, I was going for axmen, then I could get 50 axmen in ten turns for the price of around 1500
. In ten turns, with the gold amounts above, I can get 2500
or so, not counting any gold that I were to get from commerce and whatnot. Naturally, there will be a little less than that coming in due to maintenence costs, but even if just the money from the gold capital actually ends up in my pocket, I still get around 1500
.
Getting 50 axmen in ten turns means that I can rapidly assemble an army, and even against the AI on deity, you can get actually outnumber them. The only downside is you can't do the same thing with trebuchets... oh well. Another very important thing to remember here is to never ever build both an archery range AND a training yard in your minor cities, because then you won't be able to build more warriors. The last important thing is that I can assemble this massive army very quickly, which means that I can afford to have a smaller standing army. This means that when I'm not either at war or looking to go to war soonish, I won't be paying big maintenence costs on my smaller army, and my minor cities can do things like build wealth and whatnot (or start stocking up on trebuchets...).
A big point to make about this strategy though is that not ALL of your cities are minor cities. Generally, I will have 1 major city (able to work the full ring around it) for every 3 minor cities, and my first 3 cities (initial settler, +first 2 built settlers) found major cities. Then I can found another 9 minor cities before I look to settle another major one, usually amongst the ashes of a long ago enemy. Each major city tends to work as a center that the minor cities send their warriors to to upgrade, and usually focus more on buildings and trebuchets/support units that my minor cities can't build. Another thing is that while I'll try and pack my minor cities tightly, I don't worry about them not being perfect - it matters little whether a minor city can work only 8 tiles, or if it can work 12, I'll just fit them in where I can, and they can even make use of marginal terrain. I will however try to make sure that they can work at least 6-8 tiles. They build a monument, elder council, market, temple of kilmorph, and gambling house, as well as a courthouse, and if I follow order, a basilica.
Hope this answers your questions.
-Colin