Early Economy

[Steelyglint]

Steelyglint plays Quick games on King and on Huge maps.

For GPT, which is best in general out of wide and tall empires?

The scenario: There's no-one conquerable in my vicinity, I'm matching the AI in all areas apart from gold. Probably 10-15 turns before I run out (150 or so in the bank, losing 10-12 per turn - not entirely sure why it keeps fluctuating but oh, well) and my swordsmen start vanishing. I've done everything obvious which gives me more gold - sold luxuries (I absolutely violated the Arabs in the Ancient era so only three Civs who'll trade with me ), markets built, some cities producing Wealth to stem the losses. Don't really want to set them to gold focus because then I'll end up being dependant on them not growing or producing very much, just to keep my army intact. Getting rid of units isn't rly an option. Notre Dame and lots of Coliseums all finished in my cities pretty much at the same time so I've got lots of happiness to be spent. No Social Policies upcoming.

To produce as much gold as possible should I let my current midsized cities grow or set them to grow more slowly and found new ones?

 

[Becomedeath]

I find that early on, resource capturing is the easiest way to make money, but that also requires roads, which cost money.

Even if you balance that well, it can go disasterously wrong.

From your scenario, it sounds like you build too quickly and expanded your military too fast. Painful place to be.

That said, you might just have to make some cuts to make the books balance, but you can generally turn it around within 20 turns if you focus on it enough and are willing to micromanage your cities for a while.

 

[brasaelal]

Which civ are you playing with?

 

[jega001]

Not entirely sure on all of the details of your situation, but i'll do my best to help. As was stated earlier selling resources, strategic and lux are some of the best ways early on to make some cash. Get what your can with your current diplomatic situation. Normally a lux is 240g but with the way your diplomatic situation sounds 109g may be all you can get. Get what you can right now to prevent loosing your army. Second markets everywhere. There isn't any reason you shouldn't be building markets everywhere. Third as it appears you kicked the Arabs in the face, puppets will normally always set themselves to be on gold focus. TP (trading post) spam everywhere. Replace all farms in a puppet with tp's. If your going a domination path I've found as you continue to acquire more puppets they will become a substantial part of your economy. It also sounds like adding another city or several really could be much needed. Hopefully with Notre Dame you have the happiness to support the addition of more citys. If your continuously running deficient on gold especially early game the addition of more citys is probably needed. Remember tho, after your army of swordsmen take a city they should be followed by an army of workers to tp spam everything especially farms. Use your happiness for your own citys to expand, your puppets don't need to be huge and should be there just to pump money into your economy.

 

[peddroelm]

solution

 

[Steelyglint]

Which civ are you playing with?

France.

Thanks Jega n Becomedeath, but I've done those things already. Still in -10. Probs 'cause the Arabs decided to be gay and not settle any cities so I only won like 15 tiles from them, lol. I know to sell off luxes and build teepees in puppets, but what I wanted to know is about which is better out of wide and tall empires for the economy. I think I heard that bigger cities give proportionally more gold than smaller ones from trade routes, but would a larger number of cities not give me a solid number of gold from markets and working more tiles?

solution

lol

 

[KrikkitTwo]

France.

Thanks Jega n Becomedeath, but I've done those things already. Still in -10. Probs 'cause the Arabs decided to be gay and not settle any cities so I only won like 15 tiles from them, lol. I know to sell off luxes and build teepees in puppets, but what I wanted to know is about which is better out of wide and tall empires for the economy. I think I heard that bigger cities give proportionally more gold than smaller ones from trade routes, but would a larger number of cities not give me a solid number of gold from markets and working more tiles?



lol

Basic gold stats:

1 non-capital citizen= 1.1 gold (from trade routes) + gold value of tile they work*multipliers

1 capital citizen = 0.15 gold*# of Other cities (from trade routes) + gold value of tile they work*multipliers (can have additional 0.5 gold from monarchy)

1 city= -1 (from trade routes) -3 (from road costs) +2*multipliers (marketplace)

So wide empires (more cities) are poorer in gold than a tall empire with the same # of citizens. (wide empires usually have more citizens)

If you are really hurting for gold and have a lot of excess happiness, sell some of those Colluseums (unless that happiness will get you to a Golden Age soon) OR expand into places where you can work gold tiles.

 

[brasaelal]

Basic gold stats:

1 non-capital citizen= 1.1 gold (from trade routes) + gold value of tile they work*multipliers

1 capital citizen = 0.15 gold*# of Other cities (from trade routes) + gold value of tile they work*multipliers (can have additional 0.5 gold from monarchy)

1 city= -1 (from trade routes) -3 (from road costs) +2*multipliers (marketplace)

So wide empires (more cities) are poorer in gold than a tall empire with the same # of citizens. (wide empires usually have more citizens)

If you are really hurting for gold and have a lot of excess happiness, sell some of those Colluseums (unless that happiness will get you to a Golden Age soon) OR expand into places where you can work gold tiles.

Sell Coloseums?? Happiness is very important for gold too, because keeps you growing and give lots of gold during golden ages.

 

[Rittmeyer]

There`s a lot of advice that could be provided. But before anything else, you should stop playing quick/huge.

It`s your game, you can play whatever you want. But it makes no sense to play a huge map in quick speed. It will lead to anormal situations and may render good advices useless.

If you want to play huge, play at least normal speed. If you really want quick, play at most standard size.

 

[jerbacca78]

Modified by a quote from Homer Simpson:
Gold (like beer) is the cause of and solution to all of lifes problems

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Sell Coloseums?? Happiness is very important for gold too, because keeps you growing and give lots of gold during golden ages.

Well to keep growing, you just need Happiness >0

As for golden ages, it depends on how close you are to one... in a tight situation (bankrupt in 10 turns) it might be justifiable.

If there are gold tiles available (luxuries, rivers) then settling [but don't connect the city up just yet] would probably be a better use of the excess happy. .. Since you can only grow so fast.

 

[Martin Alvito]

For GPT, which is best in general out of wide and tall empires?

Long story short, a tall empire is always going to have a period of time when it goes broke. Universities are really hard on your GPT. The maintenance plus pulling two citizens off producing tiles is a killer.

That said, build and staff Universities quickly anyway. Once you get up to Currency and build Markets, life will improve.

If you have Notre Dame and a massive surplus, selling of a bunch of luxuries will get you through the rough patch. I don't often go down to -10/-12 GPT, but I often go down to -5/-7 for a little while.

So wide empires (more cities) are poorer in gold than a tall empire with the same # of citizens. (wide empires usually have more citizens)

Once you account for the extra citizens (and better tiles to work) that going wide will afford you, it isn't hard to see that the wide empire is going to have better output. As long as you aren't stupid and avoid spamming expensive buildings everywhere, anyway.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Long story short, a tall empire is always going to have a period of time when it goes broke. Universities are really hard on your GPT. The maintenance plus pulling two citizens off producing tiles is a killer.

That said, build and staff Universities quickly anyway. Once you get up to Currency and build Markets, life will improve.

If you have Notre Dame and a massive surplus, selling of a bunch of luxuries will get you through the rough patch. I don't often go down to -10/-12 GPT, but I often go down to -5/-7 for a little while.



Once you account for the extra citizens (and better tiles to work) that going wide will afford you, it isn't hard to see that the wide empire is going to have better output. As long as you aren't stupid and avoid spamming expensive buildings everywhere, anyway.

I agree, more commenting on the immediate OP situation, founding a new city (going wide) is only going to help short term gold if the new citizen can work a gold tile... AND if you Don't build any roads (trade route doesnt pay profits until ~pop 4).

To produce as much gold as possible should I let my current midsized cities grow or set them to grow more slowly and found new ones?

If you have plenty of happiness you can do both,
1. build new cities that can get luxury tiles (+2 gold) in the first ring
2. have your other cities growing as fast as possible (while still working as many gold tiles as possible)

(Side note:if just looking at trade routes, 1 pop in the capital is better than 1 pop in another city when you have 8 cities connected to the capital. So unless you already ARE wide, grow your non capital cities fastest)

 

[Steelyglint]

Once you get up to Currency and build Markets, life will improve.

I got that ages ago, and selling luxes is the only thing stopping me from being in the minus-thirties.

 

[Martin Alvito]

I got that ages ago, and selling luxes is the only thing stopping me from being in the minus-thirties.

You must be carrying too many units or Renaissance buildings, then. You probably also don't have any rivers at all.

I'm pretty minimalist on units unless I intend to knock somebody over. A few Archers alone will keep you alive until deep in the Renaissance even on Deity if you have defensible terrain. It's when your dirt is flat that you start to run into problems.

Usually the best solution under those circumstances is to stack the National Treasury and a Bank in the capital or best city. That'll give you a big GPT shot in the arm.

 

[Sir Lunchalot]

Maybe you built way too many units? Are you playing as Germany and "borged" a lot of barbarians, which are now costing so much?

 

[RealHuhn]

-30 GPT ?!?!?!? Do you build roads everywhere or what? In CIV5 you don't have to connect ressources with roads, you know?

 

[Steelyglint]

-30 GPT ?!?!?!? Do you build roads everywhere or what? In CIV5 you don't have to connect ressources with roads, you know?

Yes, and yes I did know that. But I was getting more from Trade Routes than I was losing from tile improvement costs, so ha.

Printscreen doesn't appear to work when I'm playing on Civ 5 (or else I'd have just given you one ages ago and saved myself lots of typing), but;

I was losing roughly the same (55g) from buildings and units in five settled cities and a puppet, and 25g from tile improvements. Was gaining 30g from trade routes, 60g or so from other civs and 35g from my city output. Date was about 500AD.

Do I build too much stuff?

Spoiler :

I ended up doing what Krikki said and did both; founded a city on an island with lots of stuff around it, and set a lot of cities to food. Then I got a GG when I killed a barb and started a Golden Age. Thx for the advice tho!

 

[Deau]

35g from city output in a setup with 55g unit maintenance and 55g building maintenance is definitely problematic.

You should probably also post your total citizen count as out of those 35g from city output, given you said you had a market in each city, it means you only have between 20-25 gold coming from worked tiles

I believe your main issue is not settling rivers in your first few cities (doesn't have to be riverside but have access to riverside tiles).

Then either your army is too big or you built too many expensive buildings for "your VC type". i.e. if you aimed for domination, your army is fine but you didn't need so many buildings in every city. If you were playing more peaceful but wanted to use a defensive DoW to expand through some puppets, then your army is too big.

 

[Rpger29]

I'm sorta necroing this thread because I'm now running into the same problem. I'm hoping most of it is map selection, but maybe you guys can help.

I am doing the following:
1. Limiting city expansion to those areas where I can hook up at least 1 luxury, 1 strategic (if possible) and 3+ "secondary" resources.
2. Building Mints/Markets (both when possible), and later Banks in every city.
3. Building Colosseum only when necessary.
4. I don't build things like Theater unless I can also follow that with Stadium, and only in cities that have the population to merit it. Ditto for expensive Culture buildings if not needed.
5. I start building trade routes at pop 3-4 from both sides, anticipating completion at pop 5-6.
6. Settling rivers when possible (even at the expense of resources). I seem to be running into a river shortage lately.
7. Selling duplicate luxuries of course.
8. Limiting workers for efficiency, but not at the cost of hooking up resources.
9. Limiting military to what is necessary to defend cities with no major losses. I actually welcome DoW's because of the inevitable settlement when I win.

I'm having trouble getting above ~100gpt on Prince+ before the Modern era. The whole Ren. era is just terrible, with gold going as low as 0gpt when I'm dealing with 1-2 DoW's.

Exception: I rarely have this much trouble when I'm warmongering from the start.

I appreciate any help you can provide. If it helps, I've been playing a lot of Highlands + Lakes, and some Pangea. My Pangea games have been terrible - long snaky landmasses with crappy tiles and few rivers.

Any map setting to get more rivers