Deficit spending versus early surplusage

[LightSpectra]

Emptying your treasury early in the game means you'll be slightly ahead in research, and most good players seem to utilize this strategy. But has anyone ever thoroughly tested the opposite, that is, getting an early financial benefit so you'll have more commerce around mid-game?

If I'm about equal with every other civilization around me, I tend to try and get at least +1 gold/turn, and if I fall behind in techs, I can either buy it off, or then start going into deficit to catch up. Works fairly well most of the time.

 

[Harbourboy]

There are many different approaches. Some uber warmongers will run at 0% science and still have a deficit. Finance is meaningless to them because they fund themselves through pillage and science is meaningless because they plan to have devastated much of the world long before they get to any advanced science. All depends on what sort of victory you are gunning for, I suppose.

 

[Bhruic]

Someone who spent their money early is going to get to the techs that increase money (or decrease upkeep costs) before the person saving. So all other things being equal, the advantage is theirs.

Sure, you can try and buy tech off of them, but then they have even more money to fuel research. You're not likely to catch up that way.

Bh

 

[LightSpectra]

Someone who spent their money early is going to get to the techs that increase money (or decrease upkeep costs) before the person saving. So all other things being equal, the advantage is theirs.

That's a good point. Though a civ that's two or three techs behind is going to be significantly stronger if there's a 500 gold difference, especially in a war time.

 

[Harbourboy]

Unless you have spent that money on 20 catapults and 10 swordsmen and are busy hacking and bombarding those marketplace-filled cities.....

 

[Bhruic]

You seem to be talking apples and oranges here. In the early game, you can't actually spend money on units, just on unit upgrades. And since you can't upgrade to Catapults, I'm not sure how you are implying someone "spent money" on them.

There's a big difference between using monetary surplus to fund research and building money/research buildings. You can easily build a large military while overdriving your research.

Though a civ that's two or three techs behind is going to be significantly stronger if there's a 500 gold difference, especially in a war time.

That's a possibility, but definitely not a certainty. If someone researching faster gets to Construction before you, and starts churning out Catapults, having 500 gold more isn't going to help you one bit. The gold is only an advantage is you (A) have units to upgrade, and (B) have the tech to upgrade them. And that assumes that your enemy can't turn around and trade from their tech advantage to get gold, which is a bad assumption to make.

Bh

 

[Galileo44]

Early game, no question. Deficit research. What else will you use it for? In the early game it may take 3 turns to save enough gold for an upgrade while later, one turn will give you enough gold to upgrade 5 units. The science is way more valuable early on. I repeat, what will you use the money on?

 

[LightSpectra]

In the early game, you can't actually spend money on units, just on unit upgrades.

That's my point. Build, for example, warriors and upgrade them to axemen. Saves a lot of time, even if it is costly.

 

[DaveMcW]

You should build up a surplus while constructing science improvements.

You should burn through your surplus if you are researching an economic tech.

 

[axident]

You should build up a surplus while constructing science improvements.

You should burn through your surplus if you are researching an economic tech.

I agree with DaveMcW completely. I tend to really crank it up after my cities build the latest in science-boosting buildings, but the period right before then I turn the slider down a notch. And of course go flat-out towards a vital economic tech.

I'd like to add that you can get gold in a variety of ways, from tech trading, extortion, pillaging, "building" wealth, etc. whereas there are only a few ways to add beakers, the main ways being: commerce slider, specialists, and building wealth. The esoteric ways are lightbulbs, University of Sankore, and asking for and receiving a tech from a friend. Once you are cranking at 100% slider rate and have plenty of specialists (with Representation I hope), there is precious little that you can do to speed it up short of those esoteric methods or "building" research, which is not a good idea most of the time because you're probably better off building units or structures in most situations. So why not keep the slider as high as possible, deficit be damned, and hope that you'll get the gold somehow, someway, in the near future? Heck maybe it'll let you research a tech just before your economic collapse, at which point you can trade that tech for 2+ other techs from the AIs, one of which you will sell to the last-place AI for gold!