by WUM:
help me out here,
how the ???? do you gain 10.000 gold per turn???
That is gross gold, BTW. And I do not get 10,000 gold on every map... it ain't gunna happen on a small map, like GOTM 9, for instance. But on a large map, it is very "do-able".
The answer is, of course, trade and trade routes. duke o' york mentioned it in an overview mode.
Even if I rake in 1,000+ gold per turn, I spend most of it. 2-turn caravans, improvements, barbarian "recruiting" with diplomats/spies, etc
Exactly. Ditto for me. I spend most of my money, by far, on RB and PRB improvements. Until the very end-game, I never have "enough" gold. Gold can do almost anything in Civ II, so it pays (no pun
) to learn how to raise it efficiently (e.g., trade, trade routes, democracy, improvements, allies, conquest, barbarians).
Starlifter, another way to avoid losing much if barbarians threaten your new cities is to keep a diplomat within range of all cities. Buy a barbarian or two, kill the rest, and the city is safe.
Writing and Dips are a high-priority early game target. Roads allow fewer dips to cover the same number of cities, too. Bribed barbs will probide more than enough early game units on "Raging Hordes".
Tho bribing to liberate a small city from the barbarians is indeed sometimes better.
I don't lose cities to land barbs anymore, but sometimes a Sea Barb can get a city before all my units can respond. I fight land barbs before they reach my city radius, or at least before they reach the city. I usually set a trap for the leader, too, to fund my effort. In GOTM 9, I've been getting lots of NONEs with my ships/dips parked near Egypt, which has undeveloped terrain and generating tons of barbs in clumps. The unstacked barbs and their ship are bribed, and the stacked ones are lost when they attack the AI. But the escaping leader is then "mine"
.
My original point about gold/barbs was that if someone is apt to lose a city to a barb sacking, the price to prevent a key sacking is much lower if you have a small treasury. I don't normally use that in my games, as my empire becomes an elaborate "barb filter" to "strain out" the leaders... in effect, barbs=ore and leaders=refinement.
You get a much better price for rushbuying caravans. Store them up for rush building wonders. A wonder will cost the #shields x4 gold, a caravan approximately #shields x 2.5 gold
You're a refined player, Sodak... the advice is excellent!!
The underlying principle which several posts have touched on in thei thread is to save gold and/or be efficient. The 10,000 gold per turn comment I made is quite doable, and it is gross. Expenses are deducted from it. To get as much net as possible, Adam Smith's, RB, PRB, IPRB, Barbs, Extortion method, etc.... all contribute. The IPRB (Incremental Partial Rush Buy) method Sodak described is highly recommended to win key wonders like MC in a tight race... but you must plan
ahead.... if you wait until it's too late, you have to squander the extra 150% gold, not to mention the shields unused times 4, to get the wonder. Certain wonders are worth a RB, but lots of early-game critical gold is also wasted
.
). I managed to buy the vast majority of my SS parts and then, once I had launched it, visited the French empire with a whole gang of diplomats and subverted all their cities but the capital. Even after all this expensive entertainment, I still had 4000 or so gold at the end. Although having lots of money will have an adverse effect when another civ demands tribute or a barb ransoms your city, I find that the ability to build a good defensive unit in a single turn far outways this and has saved my cities many times.
