1000 Coins! Per Turn!

[EndoConvert]

Okay, so someone else started a pretty popular thread about strats for rapidly getting "1000 Beakers! Per Turn!" I'd like to do the same thing, but for gold.

Specifically, I've seen a lot of players recommend strats wherein they are in perpetual RAs with all other civs and/or in perpetual alliance with all CSes, especially maritime and cultural CSes. What I don't understand is how the heck people are managing to have the bank to do all that. I play a REXxy style---sometimes with lots of war and sometimes not, depending on whether I feel like it or not and on if the AIs attack me---which should be conducive to moneymaking, right? And I've tried all the following, and I still can't get enough money, not until close to the very end of the game:

- Avoiding heavy-maint railroads and just using direct, shortest-route possible roads to get trade routes (and harbors for cities on another continent).

- Avoiding constructing any buildings which aren't really necessary to my style of play (XP buildings, cultural buildings beyond the cheap Monument, etc.)...

- ...while rushing to and constructing all the gold-producing buildings (market, bank, exchange).

- REXxing to luxuries and then selling my excess to other civs.

- Deleting extra units that aren't doing anything to cut down on unit maint.

- TP-spamming (instead of farming or milling) so that all my tiles make some gold, especially useful for Golden Ages.

- Going for the money SPs like Mercantilism, Professional Army, Socialism, and Trade Unions. Unfortunately, Socialism's Order branch comes only with industrial era, and thus quite late in the game, and also, w/ me REXxing and thus driving SP cost up, it's hard to get upper-tier policies from three different branches (Honor, Commerce, Order).

- Going for the money wonders like Big Ben and Pentagon, but both are quite late in the game.

- Setting cities to produce wealth if there's nothing else useful to produce (but usually there is something useful to produce, so this is of limited utility).

And yet I still feel poor except during Golden Ages, which are also hard to get to because of my happiness problems: with me REXxing, I have perpetual happiness problems which force me to build lots of Colosseum/Circus/Theatres/etc. to avoid an angry pop'n, but all those happiness buildings cost maintenance. I try going Forbidden Palace and the like, but often other civs beat me to the happiness wonders.

Help me stop feeling poor! How can I make ridiculous bank as soon as possible, without using any trading exploits (like pillaging your own luxury after trading it or setting up uneven-turn-strat-res trades to get infi strat res) or relying on stuff unique to only one particular civ (Chinese papermaker, Persian extended Golden Ages, etc.)? I want to make lots and lots of money.

Also, a couple of questions on tile management:

(1) What's the tile improvements strategy on moneymaking? I've heard someone say that to get gold, they farm a lot to get lots of pop'n; that doesn't sound right to me, and I almost exclusively TP instead. I also avoid constructing any tile improvements, even TPs, if I don't have the pop'n to work it, to save on tile maintenance costs.

(2) For the purposes of making money, are sea tiles worse or better than land tiles? Obviously sea resource tiles with boats and seaport are awesome, but, in general, is it better to settle toward sea tiles or land tiles? Unlike land tiles, sea tiles all have an automatic coin without requiring an improvement, but on the other hand, you can't TP them, and each person working a sea tile costs a happiness and 2 food, so the only gain is that 1 gold. I used to think land tiles were clearly better, but I've noticed that the wealthiest AI civs tend to be the ones with the most sea tiles.

 

[Airey]

Between selling lux and connecting trade routes, you should have enough $ to do full RAs or full CS alliance initially.
If you are running negative on cash flow, prob over expanding too soon. You prob already know, but early on, try to prioritize cities with lux resources and work that tile. The filler cities can come later after 1st round of Colosseum are up.

By early midgame, there's no room to expand, waring and GPT from peace talks are one way you didn't mention. Personally, I buy my target civ to war with a CS I want to ally with before declaring war on the civ. After the initial stage with CS, quest will make it easier to sustain relationship, rather than trying to keep buying them.

 

[vexing]

i c s

 

[bryanw1995]

Between selling lux and connecting trade routes, you should have enough $ to do full RAs or full CS alliance initially.
If you are running negative on cash flow, prob over expanding too soon. You prob already know, but early on, try to prioritize cities with lux resources and work that tile. The filler cities can come later after 1st round of Colosseum are up.

By early midgame, there's no room to expand, waring and GPT from peace talks are one way you didn't mention. Personally, I buy my target civ to war with a CS I want to ally with before declaring war on the civ. After the initial stage with CS, quest will make it easier to sustain relationship, rather than trying to keep buying them.

CS quests are tough right now, the "build me a road" was broken with the patch, and the "kill my enemy" quickly destroys your reputation, making RA's hard if not impossible.

@OP: what level are you playing on? it's much easier to have high gpt on immortal/deity than on king b/c the ai has so much more $$$ at higher levels.

 

[Raethwyn]

(1) What's the tile improvements strategy on moneymaking? I've heard someone say that to get gold, they farm a lot to get lots of pop'n; that doesn't sound right to me, and I almost exclusively TP instead. I also avoid constructing any tile improvements, even TPs, if I don't have the pop'n to work it, right, to save on tile maintenance costs.

I'm certain that the only tile improvements you pay maintenance for are roads/railroads, so the only thing you save by improving tiles according to city pop is worker time, which can be important if you are expanding and need those workers to only improve what you need now

 

[bryanw1995]

yes, you should improve all "good" tiles asap, esp in cities like your capital that can grow very fast. post-patch you shouldn't ignore farms, esp river farms can increase your pop quite rapidly. look at it this way, an irrigate river farm lets you get 4f1g plus say a 2h/2g hill, while a tp farm gives you 2f3g only. I almost always farm river tiles post-patch unless they are in my capitol and I have plenty of maritimes on board already. even then I usually will but it's just not 100%. non-river farming vs tp usually but not always favors the tp.

 

[EndoConvert]

I'm certain that the only tile improvements you pay maintenance for are roads/railroads, so the only thing you save by improving tiles according to city pop is worker time, which can be important if you are expanding and need those workers to only improve what you need now

Wait, really? I stopped doing the "improve ALL tiles" strat (as opposed to the "improve select tiles" strat) because I could have sworn I saw tile maint costs go up when I did that.

 

[SeptimusOctopus]

It really should be only roads and railroads that give you tile maintenance.

 

[bryanw1995]

yes, roads and RR's only cost maintenance. it's very easy to check if you don't believe us, just build a tp/mine/etc and check the maintenance change. alternatively, in the very early game you can just count the roads and see that they're the only thing causing you "tile improvement maintenance".

 

[EndoConvert]

yes, roads and RR's only cost maintenance. it's very easy to check if you don't believe us, just build a tp/mine/etc and check the maintenance change. alternatively, in the very early game you can just count the roads and see that they're the only thing causing you "tile improvement maintenance".

Well, it's a bit harder to test than that because I thought the rate was either fractional (i.e. each tile improvement adds a fractional cost) or graduated (i.e. the cost goes up in tiers when you hit a certain number of tile improvements), like how unit maintenance costs are apparently fractional or graduated (you can frequently delete a single unit without it changing your unit maintenance; delete some more, and then you'll see the cost drop a significant number all at once). Obviously, tile improvements can't cost a full gold each since then everyone's economy would crash.

 

[biohazard72]

Tile improvements cost nothing, except roads and railroads.

On harder difficulties, your economy won't generally be excellent because of the strong impetus for science buildings and production-focused tile improvements. The biggest source of income is luxury sales, so grab as many of those as possible during expansion, then war for more.

I should also mention that sticking it to a rich AI civ can net you 5000-10000 gold, if they are the type of civ to hold on to that sort of cash.

 

[Airey]

CS quests are tough right now, the "build me a road" was broken with the patch, and the "kill my enemy" quickly destroys your reputation, making RA's hard if not impossible.

Was just trying to offer OP alternatives rather than paying Gold.
Kill my enemy doesn't destroy player's rep since you bought the AI to declare war on CS first.
Plus there are some easy ones as they want a GS/GP...Just a chance to save 250G.
I usually make/wait everyone to war someone...so prob I don't notice it as much.
And not sure why everyone is so concerned with reputation.
Just war the civ till it has 1 city and kept gifting them extra lux for the rest of the game, they'll love you.
Not sure why making RA would be hard/impossible considering 1 lux sale is 300G.

... the cost goes up in tiers when you hit a certain number of tile improvements...

No. Only cost, like many have already said, are road/railroad, units and buildings.

 

[bukalski]

On deity you can maintain full RA and about 12 CS allies. I usually run 3-5 cities. The minimum needed to grab as many(even duplicate) luxuries as I can. If i can get 2 luxuries within 7 spaces of each other Ill settle a city.

I run the arabs for the bazar doubling my luxuries. I prostitute anything I can. Open borders, luxuries, strategic resources. I sell the luxuries I get from CS.

I get the social policies that give me double strategic resources and more happiness from city states.

I keep my population down so I dont need as much happiness for my cities. All my research is from city states(well most of it) and RAs. All my culture comes from them. All my money is from trade/selling. I am protected by the CS(I run 24 of them). I buy my military when Im done with RA spending.

On deity I outpace the AI technologically straight to modern era around 1000ad. About one era ahead of all the AI. Giving me subs, mech infantry my 2 bread and butter units since their early in modern era and speed/power of mech infantry is pretty high compared to infantry before that

 

[biohazard72]

On deity you can maintain full RA and about 12 CS allies. I usually run 3-5 cities. The minimum needed to grab as many(even duplicate) luxuries as I can. If i can get 2 luxuries within 7 spaces of each other Ill settle a city.

I run the arabs for the bazar doubling my luxuries. I prostitute anything I can. Open borders, luxuries, strategic resources. I sell the luxuries I get from CS.

I get the social policies that give me double strategic resources and more happiness from city states.

I keep my population down so I dont need as much happiness for my cities. All my research is from city states(well most of it) and RAs. All my culture comes from them. All my money is from trade/selling. I am protected by the CS(I run 24 of them). I buy my military when Im done with RA spending.

On deity I outpace the AI technologically straight to modern era around 1000ad. About one era ahead of all the AI. Giving me subs, mech infantry my 2 bread and butter units since their early in modern era and speed/power of mech infantry is pretty high compared to infantry before that

On Deity? Really? I've never seen anyone get a full era ahead of the best AI. If you could make a more detailed post (game speed, size, number of AIs, etc) that would be cool. Because the only way I see this is as remotely possible is if you're playing an extremely overstuffed game with lots of AIs for RAs.

 

[Aldor]

This advice may be obvious, but here goes: grow your cities!

Small cities cannot be self sufficient if you have too many buildings. Large cities usually are, AND you also get the better trade route income.

 

[Deep_Blue]

(1) What's the tile improvements strategy on moneymaking? I've heard someone say that to get gold, they farm a lot to get lots of pop'n; that doesn't sound right to me, and I almost exclusively TP instead. I also avoid constructing any tile improvements, even TPs, if I don't have the pop'n to work it, to save on tile maintenance costs.

Dont do farms on all tiles, do 1 or 2 farms per city and remaining tiles must be trading posts. Get food required to grow from maritime city states, grab policies that improves city states alliance first.

(2) For the purposes of making money, are sea tiles worse or better than land tiles? Obviously sea resource tiles with boats and seaport are awesome, but, in general, is it better to settle toward sea tiles or land tiles? Unlike land tiles, sea tiles all have an automatic coin without requiring an improvement, but on the other hand, you can't TP them, and each person working a sea tile costs a happiness and 2 food, so the only gain is that 1 gold. I used to think land tiles were clearly better, but I've noticed that the wealthiest AI civs tend to be the ones with the most sea tiles.

Only go to coastal spots if there are resources there (at least 2 fish), never put a city on a sea spot that do not have costal resources. In general Land tiles are better than sea tiles.

on maximizing gold, in addition to what was mentioned I want to add:

• Assign Merchant specialists in every city.
• Focus on getting great merchants and use them to build custom houses.
• Setup a Great Merchant farm:
  • Build all wonders that produces Merchant Points in this city
  • Dont build any other wonders in this city to avoid polluting the Merchants Pool
  • Build all buildings that give Merchant Slots as soon as possible.
  • Only assign merchant specialists to avoid polluting the merchants pool
• Get The Colossus and Machu Pichu wonders early.

That what came to my mind at the moment.

 

[bukalski]

On Deity? Really? I've never seen anyone get a full era ahead of the best AI. If you could make a more detailed post (game speed, size, number of AIs, etc) that would be cool. Because the only way I see this is as remotely possible is if you're playing an extremely overstuffed game with lots of AIs for RAs.

standard size
island map
quick speed(too lazy to do slower but it hurts militarily)
standard AI(6 or whatever the game automatically picks)
24 city states

The island and city states is in my advantage. quick speed is in AIs.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10070547&postcount=8

some more details about how I play

 

[bryanw1995]

On deity you can maintain full RA and about 12 CS allies. I usually run 3-5 cities. The minimum needed to grab as many(even duplicate) luxuries as I can. If i can get 2 luxuries within 7 spaces of each other Ill settle a city.

I run the arabs for the bazar doubling my luxuries. I prostitute anything I can. Open borders, luxuries, strategic resources. I sell the luxuries I get from CS.

I get the social policies that give me double strategic resources and more happiness from city states.

I keep my population down so I dont need as much happiness for my cities. All my research is from city states(well most of it) and RAs. All my culture comes from them. All my money is from trade/selling. I am protected by the CS(I run 24 of them). I buy my military when Im done with RA spending.

On deity I outpace the AI technologically straight to modern era around 1000ad. About one era ahead of all the AI. Giving me subs, mech infantry my 2 bread and butter units since their early in modern era and speed/power of mech infantry is pretty high compared to infantry before that

please give us some save games, that is quite impressive. I'm surprised that none of the deity ai's bothered to take over any of your cs allies (or you for that matter when you bought CS's that were in their "sphere of influence").

edit: n/m, you're taking advantage of the ai's lack of seaworthiness. plus the islands map keeps most of the CS's safe from ai conquest. I'd be interested to see how that strategy works with different map/major civ combos.

 

[harry_flashman]

(you can frequently delete a single unit without it changing your unit maintenance; delete some more, and then you'll see the cost drop a significant number all at .

Fixed in the patch I believe.

Bigger cities mean more money from trade routes.
Specialised cities mean less city maintenance
A highly promoted army can mean less units and less maintenance.
A lot of cash can be made by destroying AI armies, but not taking their cities. Often they will give you all the cash they have. And if you leave them significant moneymaking capacity that may be a lot.
Puppet cities prioritise cash.
Create a gold city. Multiple gold silvers plus mint and farms to work the mines.

 

[Deep_Blue]

I am protected by the CS(I run 24 of them). I buy my military when Im done with RA spending.

24 City states? so you pay 24*250 = 6000 gold every few turns how that can be and where did you get all that money?

In my experience it is not easy to even keep 4-6 city states.