Early Epic game Economy Issues..

[Angmar]

I am looking for a little advice to help salvage my current game. I am an long time Civ veteran, and just picked up Warlords this weekend. My experience with Civ4 was very light compared to my Civ3 play time. I am going through and re-reading the manual right now to refresh my understanding of how how Civ4 works.

I am currently playing an "Epic" speed game at skill level 4, and seem to have got myself on track for a losing economy. I have just entered the classical era, I am working on Mathmatics, I fear my rivals have a strong tech lead due to years of my crippled economy. I have spent many many turns, micromanaging a few of my major cities to try and keep myself from losing more money. I failed to notice the auto adjustement of the research slider, currently it is at 10% and Im still losing money. Currently I have a couple of my coastal cities providing the majority of my income, at a cost of crippling their production.

The problem I have come up with is that I got off to too strong of a start, having built three very solid cities and then quickly ramped up to about 10 well before I had advanced far along the tech tree. I spread my empire out to take advantage of the land around me and the 'open borders' feature. Basically I was able to extend across the continent and isolate a large portion of the land so that only I could settle it. I thought this was a good thing ...

The situation I am in right now is that all of my major cities, have built all of the buildings I can ( which is only a few ) , and my only option is to create more units. I have now gone over my free upkeep of units and each turn one of my cities spits out another unit, costing me more money.

One of the answers is of course go to war to burn off units, but this will cause more problems as if I take more territory I fear how much my city upkeep is going to grow. My empire is far to large for its own good right now, taking control of more cities farther away from my capital will hurt. I decided to try this before I came to work today but managed to declare war on the wrong civ.. thank god for autosaves

The real answer I know is to restart, and pay more attention to my economy, however I am very happy with how strong of a position I put myself in with this game during the settler rush period. I obviously have lots to learn about economy, however if you guys can help me save this empire, or atleast extends its lifespan, I should be put in a very strong position to advance the difficulty one more notch in a couple more games.

Cheers,

 

[MrCynical]

Bear in mind that you don't have to keep any cities you take in war. You could just burn them, saving you the upkeep cost, and getting you a lump sum in gold for doing so. It would also put those units to use rather than just having them costing maintenance.

 

[Codeman]

war could save your economy on a temp basis. just don't keep the cities. pillage. it could get you through. also, build a world wonder but make sure you do not finish it. when an ai finishes it you will get gold. this could help you buy some time. at noble this could still be salvaged.

 

[Wodan]

You should immediately assign some specialists. You probably only have scientists available but they're probably the best choice anyway. Scientists will keep your research going even though you have to have all your commerce go into your treasury.

Research Currency after Math, I would suggest. Then, possibly Code of Laws. Courthouses will help you.

Look at the financial advisor (F2) and see where all your money is going. You might be paying for units because you have too many, or you might be paying for having too many units outside your borders. Both of these are easy to rectify.

Wodan

 

[cf_nz]

I think you are still in a reasonable position. If you civ is in fact very large, larger than any of the AI's your population will allow you to catch up on tech once your economy recovers.

As Wodan said go for Currency to build wealth and Code of Laws for courthouses.

After that if you are not so far behind the AI in tech, research what friendly AI civs don't have and trade with them.

I've been in a similar situation; expanded early via war; research rate 0% and still losing money; units on strike; units getting automatically disbanded because I couldn't afford them. Was a long way behind on tech but caught up and won a cultural victory.

Don't give up yet.

 

[slowcar]

it's a common error of civ3-veterans to just settle all the available land.
for a good start you need 3-5 cities, according to ressources and difficulty, which should not be too far apart from eachother.

each city costs you maintenance, and if you build another the costs in ALL your cities get higher. you can easily reach a point where a single city costs you 10-20g a turn.
real expansion is not possible until courthouses, the forbidden city and/or versailles allow some more and for real big empires you are more then happy to revolt to state property.

as a 5th and 6th city i tend to get enemy cities. they are (mostly) well built, have already well developed ressources and give a good share of money when conquered. and especially enemy capitals are on very nice places

 

[GIO888]

You get actively CANED for over-expansion early on in Civ4, more so on Epic and Marathon.

Building Courthouses asap really helped me, also open borders and early trading although that is also risky - open borders with Monty for the sake of revenue also means a friendly Scout will scope your entire empire, followed by not so friendly whatever he can throw at you 5 turns later!

Build 5 decent sized cities, beeline for Representation - or build the Pyramids! crank some cash up then you can build 5 or 6 more, or conquer, really quickly.