Am I just building too much?

[Anarchist]

My main problem (after happiness) is getting enough cash. I have a feeling that I build things in cities when they have a bit of spare time instead of going for cash or beakers.

I think specialisation may be the only way to cut that heavy cost - if the building will not pay for itself, just don't build it!

There have been a few threads on the subject, and my overall impression is, after few wins and a few losses, specialise, specialise, specialise. Even at 1 gold per 10 hammers, you then stop building something that will waste gold.

Thoughts?

[edit]
My main reason so far has been the ability to change production on the fly. That requires (to be effective) many redundant buildings. That may be a flawed strat and I think it will get the boot

 

[eewallace]

In earlier civ games, I often ended up building basically all the buildings in all the cities. That doesn't work in Civ V because of building maintenance costs and/or the costs of supporting a large army. When you don't have something you need to build, in theory you would want to produce wealth or research. In practice, producing wealth is a joke--you can earn more by building scouts then disbanding them for gold.

 

[r_rolo1]

The civ V mantra on this seems to be: don't build, buy

In other words, make skeleton infra and land improvements that give cash . Very unlike any other previous civ game, I must add , even those that actually had building maintenance.

 

[SJSpook]

Try not to build unnecessary buildings for certain cities and I've found that building plenty of trading posts makes me plenty of cash.

 

[AnarchistCy]

I usually have my workers automated, and they filled unused areas with trading posts. I rarely had problems with money. Whenever this happened, markets, banks and stock exchange in key cities did the trick.

I agree though that it is unwise and nearly impossible to build everything in a city. Only build what you need.

 

[kossmikman]

Trading post spam, maritime city-states whoring and no barracks should cover the basics for cash shortages. Selling your surplus to other AI is another good way. If all fail, build scouts to disband them and collect the 10, it's way more efficient than building wealth.

 

[aimlessgun]

In my experience there is always something useful to build. Many people have noted that techs outpace production in this game, and that production is quite low. I am usually on the verge of not being able to build everything I need, and tend to need to sacrifice military unit production to get the buildings I want.

You don't have to spam TPs to get a decent cashflow, though it is by far the easiest way, and will definitely produce the best cashflow. However I just won a modern age domin-diplo victory on deity and I built like...3 tradeposts the whole game.

(domin-diplo victory means play non-interference, let warmonger AI run amok until they conquer everyone, then after you build UN, liberate conquered nations so they vote for you!).