City state embargo & embargo me = Lose?

[gremlins0]

I was playing Shaka on Emperor, and doing ok until the AI decided to ban city state trade and then embargoed me. Now my gold is -100 a turn, and when I take a city of around size 8, can't decide if I will be losing money due to maintenance of buildings or not. Basically, once you get embargoed, any advice to not lose rather quickly due to no money? I don't have enough money now to bribe all the CS to even reverse the embargo at the next vote.
I have pretty much built all the money buildings, but without trade routes I can't support my armies and building maintenance.

 

[kingofsealand]

yeah not having any trade routes = awful. You can try conquering everyone really fast? Honestly it is unlikely that one of the other civs will propose to repeal the embargo against YOU even if you are their friend. It is possible one of them may propose a repeal of the CS embargo but if they passed it its unlikely theyll have the votes to repeal it. I also feel like the CS embargo can kill the game b/c it is embargoing 20+ trading partners at once and while the AI will frequently try to use it to cut off gold to warmongers they are also conveniently forcing you to give away science by trading with them.

 

[DemonMaster]

"There is no nation on earth so dangerous as a nation fully armed and bankrupt at home"
-- Henry Cabot Lodge

 

[Tiggurix]

"There is no nation on earth so dangerous as a nation fully armed and bankrupt at home"
-- Henry Cabot Lodge

Yeah, except that army costs a lot of money to maintain, as it turns out, and if you don't pay them they'll just desert you. So that quote is not really applicable to Civ 5...

As for the OP, I honestly have no idea how to help you. I think that you might as well consider that game lost, to be honest... Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, mind you. If we didn't have the potential to lose, why should we enjoy winning?

 

[Autoclave]

I need to try this next game out: embargo city states, embargo warmongers and raise army tax. Muhahaha

 

[DemonMaster]

Yeah, except that army costs a lot of money to maintain, it turns out, and if you don't pay them they'll just desert you. So that quote is not really applicable to Civ 5...

As for the OP, I honestly have no idea how to help you. I think that you might as well consider that game lost, to be honest... Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, mind you. If we didn't have the potential to lose, why should we enjoy winning?

Sitting there and die doesn't really help either so ...

Going honour, earning money for kills ... kill, plunder and loot. You can stay afloat amazingly long and somebody else is burning while you do it.

 

[Autoclave]

Good point, what social policies did you take? Did you know you can sell building while raizing the cities? It will give you that extra money you need to stay afloat. Also I would probably sell useless buildings of your own, like faith generating ones to minimize maintenance.

 

[DemonMaster]

... and hopefully at when you can propose, propose to lift the CS embargo (most likely to get votes) and hopefully the other proposal is not very well liked so AIs might vote no for that (World Religion typically attract many no votes). Also put a diplomat in an AIs capital (with many votes) and try to bribe him to vote for you).

 

[Vohbo]

It's not really all that problematic to lose out on trade routes unless you are a trade route specific civ maybe. You can still use them internally for production or food.

 

[kingofsealand]

yeah but he already said he has no cash to bribe CS'es or buy votes which probably also means he cant propose. Unless he gets really lucky neither embargo is going to be lifted. The conquering/razing and selling buildings strategy is solid IF you still have the units left for conquest. You may want to try loading an old autosave? It does suck but you seem to be in a tough spot

 

[deity12]

One method, to get votes, although this is pretty darn dependent on your situation, is to just wipe out those city-states that belong to those who will vote against you. Probably not a very good strategy, just it hasn't been said before. The less votes the AI has, the higher vote percentage (out of the total) you have. Fingers crossed those city states don't gang up on you and hate you forever .

 

[Vohbo]

Just on a sidenote: this is often a consequence of quick conquest and is something you should expect. Your income can dip deep into the negative while you wait for cities to come out of resistance and while waiting for the tradepost spam to kick in. Remember the city won't produce gold until it is out of resistance.
The best thing to do is not to panic about it. Make sure cities are connected, make sure you don't lose your most valuable units (sell buildings to prevent that), and just keep spamming tradeposts around the cities you conquered.

 

[Outlandish]

Did you know you can sell building while raizing the cities? It will give you that extra money you need to stay afloat.

Hah, I didn't know that. That's one piece missing from why I always fail at warmongering. Thanks!

 

[DemonMaster]

yeah but he already said he has no cash to bribe CS'es or buy votes which probably also means he cant propose. Unless he gets really lucky neither embargo is going to be lifted. The conquering/razing and selling buildings strategy is solid IF you still have the units left for conquest. You may want to try loading an old autosave? It does suck but you seem to be in a tough spot

If it is early WC, then there are not so many votes to begin with and CS do have quests, many of them are quit influence heavy.
He said he had -100 gpt, you don't have -100 gpt unless you have a lot of units. I lost all my trade routes in a war once and didn't go -100 gpt (I got -40ish, with fairly good amount of units), so to have -100 gpt, he has units.

If it is late WC, then it is more problematic, but there are choices in the ideologies that helps.

If isolated:
* Have a scarce but decent net of roads so you get city connection gold. This also needs you cities to be large, but since you are isolated - food caravans, especially to the capital.
* Change focus in the cities, not in all perhaps, but in the ones that matter.
* If not at war, reduce size of your army, keep only the highly promoted ones. If at war, it is not that hard to pillage and loot (even without the honour finisher) so you keep afloat (so try to move the war to them). With the honour finisher, it is easier.
* Try to get your way into the game again. Doing quests for CSs. Try trade luxuries for money, even if it is not huge (due to the fact that the AI hate you. I once traded my incense for 2-5 gpt each, not much perhaps, but it was to 7 AIs and also I got a diplo-hit (traded recently) with each of them.
* If you manage to get to propose, try to propose to lift the CS embargo and then try to bribe an AI with some resources to vote for this (just to make sure that they do).
* Insert your own idea here ...

 

[rattlejaw]

If trade routes are that big a part of your income, you're probably not managing your conquests properly. Warmonger economies are based on city connections and trade post puppets, with extra spikes when you actually go to war and get all that pillage and city conquest in. It's quite possible to be making money without a single trade route. I just played a conquest-oriented game in which I was making about 150 gpt without anything but a few internal caravans carrying food and production (I wasn't making trade ships, because at that point sea routes were just me turning hammers into money for my enemies), simply off a wide network of profitable puppets. Trade posts put in a lot of work. Just make sure your puppets aren't growing and aren't swiftly producing expensive buildings you don't need by trade posting over their farms (and maybe even mines if they start working those).

You might also consider a few points of Commerce. It's not really necessary to finish the tree, because you don't actually want great merchants and there's enough happiness in Autocracy that Protectionism is unnecessary, but the opener boosts your capital income significantly and that completely underwhelming-looking tenet about road maintenance actually adds up to a huge amount of money once you've conquered a continent.

Finally, once it starts taking too long to steal, park your spies in city-states. That'll eventually get you a few votes to protect yourself, and if you see an ugly resolution coming your way, you can pull a spy out and send it to someone as a diplomat to see if you can buy a bit of help in the WC.

 

[Rohili]

Yeah, that's what happen to warmongers in BNW - you threaten all the other civs, who will then embargo you; and because you spent all your resources building and maintaining your army, you cannot afford to beat them in the WC. That's the beauty of BNW IMO - it allows other players to penalise warmongers via diplomacy even if they cannot beat him on the battlefield.

I don't think there is a good solution for this predicament after the fact; you are supposed to manage your conquests, your economy and your CS relations properly so that this doesn't happen in the first place. WC votes take place every 25-30 turns after all, and you can see the proposed resolutions long in advance and act accordingly.

 

[feketebirka]

... the AI decided to ban city state trade and then embargoed me. Now my gold is -100 a turn

Erm ... you pretty sound like there was one turn between proposal and -100 gpt. I also had a proposal like that one once, but i managed it to fail. So i am a bit confused, why you play on emperor. A few countermeasures:

1. making friends is important. keep many friends, and try to make your friends hate your (preferably few) enemies, tho do not mindlessly make friendship declarations.
2. make trade routes to these friends. if they make 20-30 gpt from this, they will not vote to embargo you (select highest gold delta ...).
3. i find trade routes to city states not so profitable. pledge to protect and aesthtetics will make them perma friends for free, and you can slowly work up to alliance.

Some ideas for -100 gpt:

1. burn down unneeded cities, or better, sell them to friends for $$ or gpt. I always have some minor civ friends without declaration of friendship, whom i give these cities.
2. kamikaze rookie units into enemy force, or as a last resort, disband.
3. have a small, elite force. upgrade to extended range and double attack.

I think on higher difficulties you cannot choose yourself how you will play, b/c many factors come on first come first served basis (religion, ancient ruins, land, etc), and the AI starts with a gold bonus ... so you have to use and abuse allies, friends, rules, city states as much as you can.

 

[kaltorak]

I don't see it that bad. In my last game, granted it was only king because I wanted to test some things, I only used internal traderoutes. And in turn 350 I was able to chose between 3 types of victories, science, cultural or diplo. I was like 15 techs ahead and earning about 150gold per turn, 600 culture and 240 tourism. And I only had traderoutes sending food and production to the capital.

During the entire game, I only used 1 traderoute once to a city state to complete a quest.

But as I said, this was king. I think it's still viable to work without external traderoutes on emperor. but higher than that, probably not

 

[Nilaus]

My proposal for a solution is "Ask for tribute" with CS. You cannot compensate 100 gpt, but you can make a lot of money if you are warmongering and don't have CS allies.
It doesn't help your reputation, but since you are already embargoed, your rep is probably in the toilet anyway.

 

[Polisurgist]

Yeah, just offset that loss with plunder and turn all your trade routes inward to boost production to replace any losses from desertion/combat.

Also, civs will lose delegates in the WC rather quickly once you start destroying all their city-state allies.