Bank Account

[foodguy]

How much do you usually keep in surplus? And does anyone know whether the surplus that is shown for other civs is their actual treasury, or the per-turn amount that is left over? Early game, I try to get to $1,000 as quickly as possible and then stay there. Mid-game it's more like $2,000, late game it's $3,000. Unlike Civ2, I don't seem to be able to acrue much beyond that. Also, unlike Civ2, there doesn't seem to be as much of a point, since you can't "buy" cities with your spies.

 

[Allemand]

It depends on the level and size of map (more cities means more income) you are playing as to how much income you can bank. In one Regent game I had about $50,000 at the end of the industrial era. I could have spent it on rushing improvements but they were coming fast enough without it. Had about 80 cities.

I like to keep a reserve of about $2,000 or more as a warchest. After you get Banking it's easy to do.

 

[WUM]

The surplus that is shown for other civs is their actual treasury. It´s usually between 0 and 50 after they bought my techs

When it stays like that for 20 turns that means of course that they pay their entire income per turn to other civs.
It happened to my many times that they didn´t have any gold, but when i offered a tech they wanted to pay 10/turn. When i offered another tech (for instance just discovered gunpowder) they could also manage to pay up to 90/turn.

What i do is keep their treasures empty, and hence rampage their own technological research. This makes them depending on me, which of course will cost them more and more and more...
So i don´t worry about a surplus, there is always enough money once you get technologically advanced.