CIV Illustrated #4: "Hybrid Economy" !

[Seraiel]

CIV Illustrated #4: Hybrid Economy​

Hi

Welcome again to an issue of CIV Illustrated, the guides that explain the game to you in a manner, that you can easily understand them and use the learned concepts to advance in your play .
Today, we're gonna chew us through a topic of major importance, the “hybrid economy“ . If you are playing CIV a little longer already, you know, that there were tons of different concepts, that all had their unique advantages and weak points, making the topic of economy incredibly difficult. I'll try to keep it simple though.
All those economies, like Specialist Economy, Cottage Economy or also Traderoute and Hammer Economy are obsolete, as all different economies have evolved to one ultimate economy that uses all of the earlier concepts together, depending on what gives the highest benefit, so instead of relying on only one or two sources for your economy, CIV players nowadays use all available resources and the question which type gets chosen depends mostly on the terrain!

Let's look at the major 5 pillars of today's economies:​

1. Traderoutes



Traderouts imo are the best source of , because they are quite strong and because they sometimes are established automatically, so for free (River- and Coastal connections with Sailing) , or they only need a Worker to build a Road, which can even be done in advance, so with good coordination, you can have a city connected from the time at which it gets founded.
There are internal Traderoutes which give only little benefit in most situations, and there are foreign Traderoutes, which are very desirable. As one often gets them with Sailing, it's good play to especially unfog the Rivers and the Coast with the initial unit.
The best Traderoutes are intercontinental ones, which can make it desirable to found some island-cities and also build an exploring water unit, to early discover the civs on the other continents.
With the GLH, Free Market and / or Corporation, Traderoutes get even more important. As one will often have at least some internal TRs, it's efficient to not whip 4 cities, because this greatly raises the amount of that the other cities get from the TRs. TRs are also one of the main reasons, why Currency is the most important tech after Pottery.
More about the GLH later.


2. Cottages:



Cottages are another major factor in an economy. They're not very strong in the beginning but later, when they're Villages or even Towns, these are basically the best tiles there are for . This is, because Grassland Cottages are food-neutral, so a city can work as many as it has Grasslands. Cottaging Plains is not advisable, except in rare scenarios in a Buro capital.
The only real disadvantage Cottages have, is that they need time to grow and become attractive. This can make other improvements that give their benefit instantly (Workshops, Watermills, Windmills, Mines, Farms be the better choice. Still, almost all players Cottage their capital because the Buro-bonus makes them even better.
There are also specific playstyles for very long games, like i. e. Spaceraces, where cottaging basically everything can produce amazing outputs of with running Emancipation and Free Speech. Having the Kremlin and lots of good, conquered Cottage cities can even make Univeral Suffrage attractive, though whipping, drafting and Representation often is the stronger combination, but if research doesn't play a role anymore, like in the very end of many rounds, there ofc. is nothing speaking against running US, Nationalism and Slavery to rush a maximum nuber of units every turn.
There is one additional important fact about Cottages, which is, that they outproduce Specialists, except if hiring Specialists leads to getting a Great Person. This is also the main reason, why Specialist Economies are as obsolete as pure Cottage Economies, one simply needs both. GPs get more expenisve with every GP born, so Specialists lose in attractiveness, anyhow, they're absolutely necessary in the beginning for certain bulb strategies. Also, State Property Workshops and Watermills outperform Cottages when building units, which is, why most players only Cottage their capital and maybe some tiles of the first handful of cities.


3. Workshops and Watermills



These are the ultimate improvements for production in longer games, so games that go past Communism. A Workshop run under State Property easily gives as many as a Lumbermil and that without needing a Railroad. You can directly learn, that Lumbermills are bad improvement, unless on Tundra tiles. Chopping the Forest earlier and then building a Workshop is superior, especially if running Caste on top, making 2 4 tiles out of them. The same is also true if going the corporations route, then Sushi or Cereals pay for the missing food.
What makes these tiles also strong from an economical point of view, is, that the can get production multipliers on top, making them even stronger, and these tiles help to get the necessary infrastructure, units or plain Wealth / Reaearch, which is more difficult with US, as rush-buying is very expensive and not everything can be rush-bought. Producing units at 1 / turn is also better than always needing to spend one turn of production on them, to ne able to rush-buy them without malus.
Watermills are either on par with Workshops when not running Caste, or they're even a little better, because they give food with SP and the from them should not be underestimated, especially because it's instant, basically obsoleting all Cottages. As this requires Electricity, this is very late in the game.

 

[Seraiel]

4. Mines and Windmills:



The difference between Mines and Windmills basically is, that Mines produce more while Windmills give more and have some basic (very late) . Windmills are therefore stronger as long as one runs Slavery and whips, while Mines need a really large city (like 20+) to have about the same efficiency. Additionally, Windmills have the basic , so in the most scenarios, Windmills are just plain better. The last is especially the case when being FIN and building riverside Windmills and ofc. also from Electricity onwards.
Mines still got their place though, like in early game, in low- enviroment or in fully specialized cities like the IW city or the three cities in a Space Race that build the Engines and the Stasis Chamber. You also don't need to necessarily replace all Mines by Windmills, because once you got Railroads, Mines are on par or only very slightly sub-par again.


5. Specialists:



Specialists are somehow expensive but very rewarding in the earlier phases of the game. It's almost standard play to build a Library in the capital directly after the Granary, to hire two Scientists which leads to a Great Scientist that can either build an Academy (about +40 / turn with a good city) , they can bulb or partial bulb techs like Philosophy or Education, and bulbing really catapults an empire forwards, and number three: Especially in Lategame and with many cities, Golden Ages rock (hard with the MoM) .
However, without REP, their efficiency is very low, and the longer the game goes, the more costly become the GPs. If one has the Mids though, being able to hire some Specialists is great. If you got too little Workerturns i. e. because you focus with 10 Workers on chopping out the Taj Mahal, simply hire a Specialist, and your loss compared to an improved tile is really negligable. It's a trade of "Food vs. Science / Gold / Espionage / Culture) .
The most important to know about Specialists imo, are two tactics, one being known as "the mid-game Caste-rush" and the other one I like to call "the GA chain" . What this means, is, that you should try to not work unneeded Specialists during peace-times, because once you start the Golden Age and switch to Caste + Pacifism, sometimes even to Mercantilism, then you got the real multipliers, like +100% for the GA, +100% from Pacifism and maybe +100% from Philosphic-trait and +100% because of the NE. Rome can even have an extra 25%, and having in mind that theres also the Parthenon, you can crank up production from 100% to over 500%! Now think of those points, and how you even get more, when you starve a city, not as much that it would shrink, but just enough to ideally end with 0 in the bin once the GA is over.
In those scenarios, it's also very strong, if you not only work your GP-Farm for GPs, but use every large city that can hire as many Specialists, like needed to create one GP, or maybe also only a half, and the second half in the next GA. And here, we're at the core of HoF and GOTM. The best first GA is usally with Education, because then, one needs every little bit of production, but it's also ideal, because if you create three GPs in the GA, you can chain the next GA with two and use the other one when he's needed. This is also the time where the Taj Mahal often gets built, so GA, GA, GA, and the one from the Taj Mahal is even one turn longer, when being built while a GA already runs.

 

[Seraiel]

Other sources of economy:​

6. Wealth / Research:



Building Wealth or research has various reasons. The economical ones are really easy, you build Wealth or Research 1. when you need more of something and 2. if you have nothing left to build. And example for 1. are the several races in CIV, so being first to Music, Liberalism, Economics, Physics and Communism. In those situations, you often interupt the build-queues of the cities, to build Wealth to have enough to reach one of those techs, or you build Research to raise the output of your BPT to a level where you can compete or even overtake the AIs. Another example for 1. is, when you are conquering really much land in really little time. Someone once said to me that "a Mine working Wealth or Research is as good as a Courthouse" , so you really have to evaluate from what you get the biggest bang atm.. Courthouses are ofc. stronger in the long-run, but in a short game, maybe even on a small map, they're not worth to be built at all, because unless being ORG, they're huge 4-pop-whips and having 4 pop more that work Cottages, Farms for Specialists or Mines for Wealth and Research is simply the faster gain.
An example for 2. happens in many non-domination / Conquest games, like when you build in the three legendary cities in a culture victory, once they got all Cathedrals, or in Space Races, when your cities have the Infrastrucure, which is most often after the Coal Plant that belongs to the city's Factory. Most buildings in CIV are superflous, or only justifyable in very certain situations, so cities can run out of builds also earlier, like i. e. once they got the University they built to unlock Oxford.


7. Failgold:



Screenshot by Pangaea

Starting on building World Wonders that are not needed for your strategy, gives better multipliers than plain Wealth or Research, if you got the resource speeding up the Wonder. Still, it can be better to run Wealth or Research when you need instant or . If you have an economical cushion though, like you have 1k of and that's enough for the next 50T because you only got a deficit of -20 GPT at 100%, taking advantage of the better multipliers is the best option to convert into while again can be converted into or via the slider. Running OR would be enough already, but that gain is so small that you'll probably be better off with building Wealth or Research, but it's good to know, that that multiplier also works, and can bring you up to a conversion rate of 100 = 275 , so almost 3 for 1 . Failgold is best btw. when playing an IND civ, than Failgold is effective even without OR or the proper resource.
There are various Wonders on which you can fail, like the Aestetic-Wonders (Marble, Gold, Ivory) , the Chicken Pizza or better, the MOAI statues (both Stone) and ofc. also the Hagia Sophia, the Angkor Wat, Notre Dame, the sixtine Chapel and so on and so forth. Advantage of the World Wonders is, that you can get less earlier, because getting Failgold from a National Wonder requires you to build that Wonder in two or more cities, to generate profit.
Failgold also has the mega-great advantage, that it allows converting Forests into huge sums of , like when chopping all over the empire, and always inserting the Wonder that will probably go next into the queue, to finally have i. e. 10 partially built Angkor Wats which give major profit.


9. Selling Techs:



The higher the level at which you play, the more the AIs will have. Even if the AIs only seldomly offer the full value for a tech, every little bit can still be better than nothing. What do you care, if someone is totally backwards and you can sell him Literature, Drama or Music, techs that don't make him militarically stronger. Or the AI at the other end of the map that still needs Civil Service, while you are short before finishing Education. Situations like that are also why researching Currency is the most important thing in the classical era.
The best moment for selling techs is after a World Wonder was constructed. Then, the AIs often have huge amounts of failgold, for which you can trade. On a level like Deity, it's not seldom to get enough to run research at 100% until very far in the Industrial era.
There also is the sub-category of selling the worldmap, if you're first to Paper, which you'll almost always will be, because you prioritize it looking ahead at Lib, while the AI usually techs it quite late. Sell a small tech like CoL to get the full world-map from some AI + get the money that AI has, and then trade that worldmap to everyone else. This can net thousands of on Huge or Large maps.


10. Shrines:



Often, you have the possibility to conquer a Shrine, which the AI was so kind to build for you. In this case, you can build Missionaries and spread the religion. It's often only needed to build one Missionary, and the AI will spread your religion to many, if not all of its cities, so this can give huge profit, and the best: Missionaries are one-time investments, so the longer the game goes, the greater the payback from them will be. Assuming you have +100% modifiers in that city (Bank, Grocer, Market) , 1 Missionary equals 2 / turn. Even before, when you only got a market, only 32T are needed for the Missionary to pay back its cost (normal speed values) , and everything after that is pure profit. It's not just as easy as described, because in many times, you'll need a Monestary to be able to produce Missionaries while running Pacifism or Theocracy. Then, the best tactic is to build the Monestary in the capital, as that city puts out so much , that one can even recognize the small gain of 10% . If you want, you can let the capital construct Missionaries 'til short before the end, ofc. only assuming, that you need to strengthen your economy at all. Selling techs i. e. can grant such high sums of , that you maybe simply don't need the extra and will only want to produce units.

 

[Seraiel]

11. Selling Resources:



Very imporant, the higher the level at which you play CIV, the higher the amounts of / T the AIs are offering. Even if AIs offer only small amounts of / turn for your resources, you won't need every resource most of the times. Trade the others and especially the duplicate one's to the AI, and that as early as possible and also for nothing, if the AI currently offers nothing, because on top of getting / turn for it, you also get a diplomatic bonus for delivering resources to an empire, which can be as much as +2. It builds up really slowly though, +1 for 50 resource-turns iirc.. This time can also be shortened if trading more than one resource at a specific AI.
There is also an exploit, where you offer / turn to the AI to make the AI offer the maximum value it is willing to offer, and then trade the resource for the full amount of / turn. After 10 rounds, you cancel the GPT-trade(s) and you now get huge amounts of / turn while the AI is economically crippled. If you're really good, you can even gift a resource with the / turn, then you only need to pillage the resource, and the / turn trade gets cancelled, so you don't have to wait 10T. As told, this is an exploit, so it's in the legal grayzone. (S)GOTM forbids using that exploit, HoF doesn't, so you need to decide on which side you are. I personally never used it because I usually always had enough in my games due to a strong economy and lots of tech-selling, so for me, it was an advantage if an AI gets not crippled, because then, I could longer and more often trade techs with it.


12. Missionary / Exec Failgold: (Credits to WastinTime for making me aware of this. )



Once you can build Missionaries or Corporation-Executives, you get a great way to convert into . As you know, both of those units have a maximum limit, so one can always only have a maximum of 3 Missionaries or 5 Executives. What happens though, if you could finish 20 Executives on one turn? Very simple: Every city that has invested into one of those units, that comes past the 3 or 5 units allowed, gets those converted to , so you can simply insert all Missionaries or Execs in the queues, produce them for 1T (or not if you need really urgently) , whip, insert in the next city's queue, wait 1T, whip (...) and at last, produce the units in the first cities that you had, which makes all cities after those three get failgold for the invested .
This tactic allows to raise huge amounts of and that almost instantly, and when having the Kremlin, it's ridiculously efficient. Only drawback is the additional whipping-anger you get, and ofc. the loss of population.


13. Too much Overflow:



A unit or building can only store as much OF, as it costs. In the original version of CIV, every that was above that simply disappeared, but in the CIV version most us play (BUFFY / BUG / BAT) , this bug was fixed, and OF beyond the limit gets transformed to . This ofc. works best, the smaller the build is, so the ideal case is to produce a Warrior until 1T before complete, and then whip it (and maybe even add chops) . This is an easy and great way to get mentionable amounts of that has the same efficiency of Wealth / Reserach, but it's instant!
Only drawbacks again ofc., the additional whipping-anger and the loss of population, but you won't think about that twice if you rush superearly and conquer a lot of cities before Currency, and need to reach that tech somehow.


14. The Great Lighthouse (GLH) :



This WW is definitely worth an extra paragraph, as it alone can be enough for a good economy. When mixed properly with all other economical sources, the GLH with it's extra two TRs / coastal city still is a big source of , which you'll notice once you build it, and try to focus on building your cities at the coast, or capture coastal cities preferably.
As settling the cities coastal if possible is advisable, the GLH may not have the extreme "kick" on Pangaea that it has on Terra or other maps where water plays a major role, but even on Pangaea, you'll find numerous games, in which the GLH produces great benefit. If playing competetively on Big & Smalls, Archipelagio, Terra or all the other maps that got islands, the GLH is almost a must. One can make up by building a lot of Cottages, but from experience I know, that an empire with the GLH always has the edge. You'll also experience this, when an AI gets the GLH, because that AI will almost always develop to a "runaway-AI" .
One short note at the end: With the extra-TRs from the GLH, cities often get only internal TRs. To counter that, you need to build 4 oversea's (island) cities, because those give +2 .

 

[Seraiel]

Conclusion:​

Now you've seen, that there are many many more sources of or , than Cottages and Specialists. It'll take some time 'til you've learned to use them, but you can always go back to this article, and in some time, you'll be masters of the economy in CIV. If you remember the first 5 + building Wealth / Science and Failgold, you'll already be in an excellent position, as you can make every city contribute to the economy. If the city has a river, why not build Cottages, if the city has good Food, why not run some Specialists in it, if the city has hills, Mine (or Windmill) them and either build Wealth / Research or Failgold, if you got multipliers and don't need the / immediately. You can also mix the economical options. If a city i. e. has good food, building Cottages at it is still important, if you i. e. are still in Slavery, can work a maximum of two Scientists, and if you need every that they produce. River-cities can also be partly farmed or mined. Remember (or read again) CIV Illustrated #3, if you have questions about city-specialization.

Should you have any questions now, I'd be happy to answer them .

Again: This thread was a lot of work, so if you liked it or got a better player through it, please don't forget to rate it! As always, every vote is needed (except the "1 star voters" , those can go home )

Thanks for your attention ,

Seraiel

 

[Seraiel]

15. Gold thefts:



There is a new way of getting that players only recently became aware of, it's converting " into " .

The basic mechanism of this is, that once a civ got only one city left, you can steal their complete at a ratio of about 1 = 1 . -points got mostly wasted or used to see what someone is teching before this, so being able to use them to strengthen the economy was a great step towards better games. All you need to do is direct your Espionage early enough to the target that you're going to attack, and send some Spies to the city you'll conquer last. If you don't have enough free , you can also steal less when the target still got two or more cities. If you have more than needed for one theft, you can also steal less in a 2nd theft from the same target.
The formula below this is "city-population / total population" , so if the target has two cities of the same size, you can steal half, or a third if it still has 3 cities that have the same size. The costs ofc. adjust to this, as the ratio of conversion stays the same.

Credits for discovering this go to Pangaea.


16. Conquest economy:



This is a very unreliable source of economy, but when you have a large military, you can pay for the research mostly by conquering cities and getting through that. The earlier techs are quite cheap, so if you're i. e. able to conquer some hundreds of through taking the cities of your first opponent, you could pay for the Maths or the Currency tech, even while having expanded up to the point, where you're making 0 GPT with a 0% slider. The formula to calculate the amount of you're going to get from a city, can be found here.


17. Professional beggar tactics:



New players won't be aware of this, but after having seen one of the Let's Plays that are available on Youtube, you should know, that civs are willing to give you smaller (and sometimes also larger) amounts of , if you ask them friendly for it (requires pleased+ stance) . The formula for this was found by a player named Silu and can be found here.
If you set yourself a timer of 24T ( "Alt + M" ) , you'll be reminded when you got an 80% chance that you can beg again. Placing a sign ( "Alt + S" ) on the map about the amount and the civ from whom you begged, is also a good way to keep track of your begs. The amount you begged previously always gets subtracted from the maximum possible amount. If you beg for GPT instead of : The AIs calculate a beg for GPT with a length of 10T, so if you could beg 50 , you can beg 5 GPT.
Demands basically work the same way, only that you need enough military (at least 2/3 of their strength iirc. ) for an AI to even consider giving in.

 

[Seraiel]

Also reserved.

 

[Seraiel]

And reserved cause all good things are three .

 

[MrGrandiose]

This serie of Civ-illustrated is gold... especially this one

Somehow, I had never though of building a wonder in more then one city for massive fail gold amount but it also borders the "exploit" status. I had no idea about the missionary/exec trick either.

And yeah, the GLH as been a staple of many of my games. Even on lake heavy map!

 

[pandamancer]

Another well thought out guide. Nice work!

Btw, there is still one more source of income...stealing via spies. Personally I haven't tried it but the civ tips tell us that we must. Do you think it is feasible?

 

[Seraiel]

This serie of Civ-illustrated is gold... especially this one

Somehow, I had never though of building a wonder in more then one city for massive fail gold amount but it also borders the "exploit" status. I had no idea about the missionary/exec trick either.

And yeah, the GLH as been a staple of many of my games. Even on lake heavy map!

Thx for the compliment with the gold

Another well thought out guide. Nice work!

Btw, there is still one more source of income...stealing via spies. Personally I haven't tried it but the civ tips tell us that we must. Do you think it is feasible?

I've never ever stolen with a Spy, but I think, I should test it. After having posted the guide, I also thought that I should have included Granary mechanics, because micromanaging somehow is also a form of economy.

If someone is experienced with stealing via spies, explain it please . If noone knows it, I'll test.

 

[mdesy]

Ah yes I was looking forward to this, a big thank you to you Seraiel!

That will take a while before I can master all those new tricks I wasn't even aware of, I will certainly come up with questions as I play. Thanks again for this invaluable source of information really appreciated!

 

[Jivilov]

Thanks for the guide Seraiel. One question about this: "... once you start the Golden Age and switch to Caste + Pacifism..." Does this mean there's no anarchy during the GA (playing Vanilla)? Thanks.

 

[elitetroops]

Very nice guide! One of the best on these forums so far!

I've never ever stolen with a Spy, but I think, I should test it. After having posted the guide, I also thought that I should have included Granary mechanics, because micromanaging somehow is also a form of economy.

If someone is experienced with stealing via spies, explain it please . If noone knows it, I'll test.

It works best the smaller the AI empire is, because you can only steal a fraction of his gold which equals targetCityPop/targetTotalPop.

It could perhaps work very well if you do it just before killing off an opponent, when he has only one city left. Maybe even take a cease fire, gift him a city close to your capital with tons of espionage bonuses and a stationary spy, declare and take out his second last city, perform steal treasury mission in gifted espionage city to steal all his gold, then take it back to kill him. Any unused espionage points would be lost when you kill the AI, so maybe something like this should be done every time you kill an AI that you have EP on... I don't know how AI gold is affected by losing cities, though. Perhaps they wouldn't have as much gold left after getting almost obliterated.

Pangaea mentioned stealing 6000 from Mansa in the current G-major, maybe he has more insight.

 

[Seraiel]

Very nice guide! One of the best on these forums so far!

Thx elitetroops

Pangaea mentioned stealing 6000 from Mansa in the current G-major, maybe he has more insight.

I think he achieved that sum by building Moai in 10 different cities or so, I don't think any of the HoF players are used to that, at least WastinTime wasn't in the last SGOTM, there he was surprised that lowthercastle proposed to use to steal from Willem.

 

[Seraiel]

Ah yes I was looking forward to this, a big thank you to you Seraiel!

That will take a while before I can master all those new tricks I wasn't even aware of, I will certainly come up with questions as I play. Thanks again for this invaluable source of information really appreciated!

It was my pleasure .

Thanks for the guide Seraiel. One question about this: "... once you start the Golden Age and switch to Caste + Pacifism..." Does this mean there's no anarchy during the GA (playing Vanilla)? Thanks.

Yes, in BtS, there is no anarchy in Golden Ages. Golden Ages are also sincerely cheaper, with i. e. only needing 1 GP for the 1st GA.

Get yourself BtS, it costs 5€ and is 50 times better than vanilla.

 

[elitetroops]

I think he achieved that sum by building Moai in 10 different cities or so

I was actually pretty lucky with things in the current g-major game. Via espionage I saw Mansa sat on 6500, but he wouldn't trade any of it. He only had four cities after I vassaled him. Because some of those were new-ish and small, I was able to steal something like 40% of his gold for each spy mission, and eventually stole at least 6000 of the original 6500

Anyway, I don't know the cost of these missions and how steal treasury / compares to / when stealing techs. I'm assuming stealing techs is usually better, if they have something to steal, because you can get additional value by trading it around. Unless you really really need gold to push research forward at that point. Or maybe if you don't have enough EP to steal techs and don't want to invest any more EP towards that AI.

 

[Seraiel]

Gold stealing missions are expensive, that much I know. In my current round 2-3 civs got a GM, and they need something like 2500 for robbing their treasures. Maybe something for very late game, when multipliers are in effect, earlier gathering that some only to get money seems quite unattractive, as one would need to run 100% Espionage-Slider, and that means no research, so stealing via espionage would need at least something like 1 = 2 or so.

 

[elitetroops]

That's what I thought. Putting EP on an AI with the intent to steal gold is probably not worth it. But if you have put some EP on an AI before going to war, to see demographics, for city visibility, or for some other reason, then using up the EP to steal gold before killing them would be better than nothing...

 

[Kallikrates]

I think there should be a patch to kill multiple National wonder and missionary failgold.
If you can't decide where to build a NW you should simply lose the hammers invested in the city that eventually does not build the NW. Period. That one can multiply "fail" to build a NW is possible is absolutely ridiculous... you can't fail with NW because you cannot compete with yourself for the wonder.
It's o.k. for world wonders because otherwise it would be too tough if one lost a wonder a few turns before completion (although I think here there should be a similar penalty similar to the more expensive whipping of wonders).
Sorry, that I keep harping on this stuff, but I can hardly express how stupid I find that this is even (and still after many patches) possible. It seems so obviously wrong to see this as a regular feature, not an exploit.

Otherwise, great guide!

I am not sure what it means "not whip 4 cities"? That there should be 4 cities still quite large so that internal trade routes give more revenue? Or that cities should not be reduces from 8 to 4 pop?
But the # of internal trs depends on how many AI cities one has contact with, doesn't it? If possible, all trs will be foreign, or am I mistaken here? Is there a correction for larger maps? traderoutes would probably be even better on larger maps with more cities and more AIs to trade with.