Any Way to Maintain Conquests?

[Neurospasm]

I've played Civ II and III, but with Civ IV, I think I've given up with conquests. After capturing several cities, the maintenance rates go up exponentially and start killing my economy (despite having well-developed core cities), so I have to reduce my research rate to 50% or lower, and I fall behind in the tech race. Even with courthouses, the economy still suffers and conquests in general seem to be extremely discouraged.

How does this make sense from a historical standpoint? Didn't invading armies gain lots of loot? How does being a large empire restrict technological advancement?

Why has this been done from a gameplay perspective? For a lot of us, conquest has been the most exciting aspect of the Civ series. For it to be drained of its fun like this is dissappointing. Has anyone even won a conquest victory on a standard sized map? I'm sure it wasn't fun! What are we supposed to do without war? Sit around and hit enter while moving workers around each turn?

Is there a mod out there that nerfs maintenance penalties?

Has anyone found a good way of controlling these ridiculous penalties?

 

[Exavier]

I personally play Only COnquest maps on Stander/Large sized maps. I never have a problem.

If you do it right you shouldn't have a problem. HINT: Cottage Spam. Yes you will drop in research a little bit, heck my current game i expanded so fast I am sitting at 20% research and still leading the AIs in the tech race (on Noble). I might look into maintainance reduction if i think about it but atm I really don't have many problems.

Think of the extra maintainence the cost of keeping troops there to supress rebellions in those cities. once they are converted to your side completly (usually after culture expands a few times) the maintainance goes down... either that or the income from the city goes up enough to cancle it out

 

[player1 fanatic]

Actually I do gets lots of loot with conquest.
Around 150gp per city.
Keps my economy going for few turns after conquest.
After that...

 

[Kieran]

The AI seems to be very expansionist and can easily afford to build cities anywhere. I am always stuck with 2-3 cities for half the game as the smallest civ and behind in tech with a small army. If i expand my research will drop fast.

I can mod so i can afford more cities but I don't know how to make it so the AI can't afford to be so expansive.

I am now going to try out the 'infrequent settlers' mod to see if that can even things out.

 

[Kieran]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=148603&goto=newpost


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There are several places the maintnenance values are defined, and yes even at the nobel level the AI get's some "help" so you can address that too if you like

For the first instance you have the difficulty levels (CIV4HandicapInfo.xml), all of these bits are pulled from the Noble setting:

Decreasing any of these will make it easier
<iDistanceMaintenancePercent>75</iDistanceMaintenancePercent>
<iNumCitiesMaintenancePercent>70</iNumCitiesMaintenancePercent>
<iMaxNumCitiesMaintenance>5</iMaxNumCitiesMaintenance>

Alternatively you can get into the map size definitions (CIV4WorldInfo.xml), these bits pulled from the "standard" size:

Increasing this will allow you to support more cities before maintenance becomes a burden
<iTargetNumCities>5</iTargetNumCities>

Decreasing this can make distant cities easier to manage
<iDistanceMaintenancePercent>80</iDistanceMaintenancePercent>

This is similar to the target number of cities but allows for more fine tuning, a lower number will reduce the maintenance costs from the number of cities
<iNumCitiesMaintenancePercent>30</iNumCitiesMaintenancePercent>

And last but not least you have civic upkeep. The AI gets a big cut with civic upkeep so any changes you make here have a bigger affect on human players. It's all in (CIV4UpKeepInfo.xml) and it's pretty easy to understand, lower values will make the base civic upkeep values lower.
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[Crimso]

My strategy for conquest (large map, prince) is to assimilate two or three neighbors, spam cottages like crazy, gain a huge tech lead, and then raze every other city on the planet with tanks/modern armour. City specialization is really key: choose five or so cities as your main unit makers (just farms and mines), and the rest should be pumping out the cash.

You're research shouldn't drop below 60% at it's worst. Adopt all the "liberal" civics to get those towns at full strength fast. Soon, you'll be running 90% again, getting a new tech every three turns while skimming a nice piece of the top. I guess the real challenge is conquering those nieghbors to get your empire going, but it's far from impossible.

 

[Saint_Saturn]

I play very expansionist, and while that does affect my research percentage (it is below 50% for a large portion of game), I am more than able to keep a healthy treasury going and good research rates at the same time. My strategy is that I try and expand early on with chop-rushing settlers out, and after getting a solid portion of territory down (and having to drop research % a tad to keep money up for upgrading warriors), I try and take out the nearest civ to me; the choice on which though is kinda detailed, and best suited for another topic. Because wars tend to be very costly, I try to take out the majority of cities in the enemy civ's territory, then pull out with a peace treaty. Once I'm back in a peaceful state with multiple newly acquired cities, my upkeep really jumps up - so how do I maintain a healthy treasury? First off, courthouses! They are a fine boon to lowering city costs. Next, cottages help out, especially if I've built them a long time ago - they are really a great investment. Building a Forbidden Palace is helpful, as well as using the State Property civic. Marketplaces, banks, and other improvements help pull the income back into the green also. If you follow the majority of these options, and remember that research doesn't always have to be at 100% (besides, thats why you have libraries/universities/great scientists), you shouldn't have any major money problems during and after war-time.

 

[GenericKen]

The simplest way to maintain conquests? Raze! Worthless cities that cost you more than they're worth and don't seem worth keeping... aren't worth keeping. In fact, most cities extremely distant from your capital aren't worth keeping, even sometimes for wonders. Even the cities that *are* worth keeping will require some time to recover, and will sag your coffers for some time before they can pay for themselves.

An economy needs to be exceptionally well developed to support a large empire, and that means slowing down for markets, courthouses, religion, and towns. If you don't want to slow down, burn em down! Don't forget to pilliage on your way out for extra $$$.


The historical precident for this is quite massive. Almost all empires in history have fallen either to incompetence in leadership or overexpansion and corruption. Looting makes plenty of money initially, but keeping a people under your thumb from very far away gets to be extremely expensive.

 

[calyth]

I don't really know what to tell you, cause I don't really know any good fixes.
I think part of the problem has to do with how at least half the conquered city's cultural sphere still belongs to the original civ.
I usually build theatres and courthouses immediately, try and conquer enough cities to minimize the amount of cities with crappy cultural spheres.
Finish off remaining high-culture cities if the civ is about to fall on that continent. And killing the civ would eliminate the "yearn for our motherland" complaint.
Put enough cottages down to make a lot of money. Remember that towns under universal sufferage would give you one production, which does help a bit.

 

[Proteus]

I have conquered Elisabeth which had a really large realm (much more population than my civ and some cities more) and doubled the size of my empire (Noble Level, Marathon speed).
It took around 100-150 turns because often I waited after the conquest of a city till the inhabitants stopped rioting (and the city started to earn me some gold). I still had to lower the science slider for some time to around 60% during the course of the war (started with around 60 gold/turn at 80 or 90% and maybe 2000 gold in my national treasury and tried to maintain the science slider as high as possible without burning my gold reserves too fast [with deficits of maybe 50-100 gold/turn max]).

There is not much I can add to the tips already mentioned.
Think strategic, for example eleminate the cities with much culture and especially, try to conquer the cities which could give you much gold as soon as possible as they might give you the financial backing to go on with your invasion (I chose London as my 5th city and Hastings as 6th city to conquer although there were much easier targets because London was the city with the highest culture in the empire and Hastings had the confucian holy shrine [which considerably helped to give me the financial strength to go on with the invasion])
And try to target important enemy strategic resources; if the enemy is lacking them he might not be able to build some units although he has the tech to do so (for this reason I targetted the only source for horses within the empire, to get rid of the english knights and later during the invasion made a push to the 2 cities which gave england its iron)

 

[QFG4]

But how can one know how much of cotteges and farms to build around of each city?

 

[Exavier]

But how can one know how much of cotteges and farms to build around of each city?

Basicly any square you can spare arround a city should be a cottage imo. Don't kill the city over it as sometimes its not possible to get even 1 cottage around a city without gimping it. It just depends on the situation. some cities will be able to have more then others.

As per comments above razing is a good option but the AI usually just recolonises it pretty fast. Another option would be to NOT build your forbidden palace untill the costs start catching up to you. then place the forbidden palace in one of the captured cities to reduce all nearby maintainance. I use this tactic on some of my island maps

 

[MadMaligor]

But how can one know how much of cotteges and farms to build around of each city?

Just to add to what Exavier said, I try to keep a one to three grain growth factor in all cities where quick expansion is unwise. Anything above that would only be for cities with lots of happiness or health cap room. Any grassland or flood plain (especially near a river) that is not needed for irrigation gets a cottage. I have even on occasion plopped a cottage on a hill or two if a city has excessive hills and all lowland is needed for irrigation. The key is not to overdose on shields too. Many times production is needed but quick production is not neccessary.

In later game stages when my main cities are flushed out building wise and are mainly producing units, priests, or science/wealth/culture, I will drop other land improvements for cottages.

You can also go the "Mecca" route and create specialty cities for production or wealth/science generation. Save Great Engineers and Scientists for rush builds on key Wonders and buildings in your low production/high science cities.

And remember, start building cottages early with that first worker whenever its not working a critical resource or irrigation/mine (and if you can start using one). You can always change over what you dont need later.