Economic Freefall

[steveg700]

Take a gander at the image below. This seems to be a recurring issue. I'm kind of used to it by now, but I'm surprised there isn't more discussion.

Spoiler :

So, I've landed the Great Library and Great Lighthouse, giving me a free library and lighthouse. The only buildings I'm paying for are a monument, shrine, and grannary. The second city has no buildings. In terms of units, I only have an archer, scout, and warrior.

Yet, there it is: -3 GPT. Looks like I only had a few options:

1) Settle one city at the river.

2) Take Tradition and hook up with the cost savings from Oligarchy and Monarchy.

3) Beeline to Currency and build markets to stop the hemoraging.

It's a pretty bad map, all things considered. Almost no luxes, and hemmed in by rivals on three sides. I loved all that grain I had, and hammers from pretty much every tile, but grain alone does not a viable empire make.

 

[kirbdog]

Market won't really help that much. In the early game, irregular sources of income are the best kind. Discovering city states, destroying barbarian camps, popping ruins, selling embassies, and selling excess luxuries (including selling them when you have 5+ happiness) will all give you plenty of gold to survive to the mid-game, even if you have a few minus gold per turn getting there.

I'd suggest that getting trapping and a worker sooner would have helped you a lot because then you could have sold the truffles sooner.

For city placement, I think 1 tile to the west would have given you uluru, the coast, and better access to the river (and one less tile of road). You will be getting a fast religion so church property or tithe may be to the rescue here.

I must admit it is a rough start. Plains usually are.

 

[Matthew.]

Are you playing on scarce resources or something? Your main source of gold until later techs/buildings come from rivers, oceans, and luxury resources. The single luxury is killing you and there is no way to avoid a slower start.

Monarchy would be best in this current situation, partially solving your luxury and gold issue with a single policy.

If it is lower difficulty and you want to play out the game, you should be able to brute-force it. Ignore expensive techs like NC, and get markets quickly. Make sure to work those truffles and any ocean tiles. Less food, but you are capped by happiness anyway. Get a religion up with Uluru and pick happiness traits.

Try and get access to those river tiles. Sell the horses to another Civ.

 

[Greasy Dave]

If you've got the Great Library and the Great Lighthouse, you're not playing above emperor. So you need to get those truffles up and start building a road to Salzburg. By Turn 61 you should have both. Hook up the truffles, get your happiness into the black, and start growing you second city, by the time the road gets there you should have a pop 4 city and be able to get decent gpt.

Also, the river would have been a better site for Salzburg - closer -so lower road maintenance,and the gold on the tiles.

The CS to the south no doubt has a couple of quests. Do them, get it allied and get the happiness boost of its lux. You might be in position to sell your own truffles then.

You seem to be playing an island map. Why did you get the Great Lighthouse? AFAIK that gives only a movement bonus. Has the colossus gone already? If not, build it.

The start isn't great, but I think you've made it a little worse by building the Great Lighthouse instead of colossus.

Also, turn 61 and you have no tiles yet developed by a worker? What have you been doing/ building? Forget your wonders. One of the first items in your build queue should be a worker - if you don't steal one from a CS or a barb camp. Only after you've got one or two workers up and running should you be beelining wonders.

 

[azzaman333]

Why not settle the river as your 3rd city? SW of the horses appears to still be a valid city location.

 

[Jelster]

Trade routes (a road between your cities) will offer you a source of income, but you don't seem to be working the tiles that will earn you money.

Even on Pricnce & King levels I suffer periods of negative income, just make sure you're selling lux's, overturning barb camps and finding new states. It's surprising how long you can last on -7 GPT when you have other incomes !!

 

[Light Cleric]

Yeah, it's totally normal to go through a period of rough GPT in the early game, especially if you're building a military. As others have said, you need to improve those Truffles, that alone would be a huge boon. In an isolated start like that, I would have also settled on that river directly above southwest of the Horses; if you can settle on a River, you should.

In your defense, though, that is an impressively brutal start. A bunch of Plains with 1 luxury?

Did you not go Tradition? This start just screams for a humungous capital via Monarchy + a few happiness buildings.

 

[Mesix]

I agree with what others have already said. Build a city near those horses in the south. Connect your cities up with roads for some trade route revenue. This should get you into the positive side as you continue to develop.

 

[steveg700]

Thanks for the responses.

A lot of you guys are speaking as if I should have settled my capital elsewhere. Is it regular practice for you guys to actually not settle on turn 1? Seems like every turn is precious at that stage.

Yeah, it's totally normal to go through a period of rough GPT in the early game, especially if you're building a military. As others have said, you need to improve those Truffles, that alone would be a huge boon. In an isolated start like that, I would have also settled on that river directly above southwest of the Horses; if you can settle on a River, you should.

Yeah, I wanted the NW and the CS was encroaching on it rapidly, as they tend to do. I had designs on that tile of grain jutting out from the eastern continent, but one round after I settled, Maya gobbled it up (didn't have embarkation yet, so neither of us were aware of each other until that point).

This is basically a dead end game though. What you see is the only area to expand into. Sweden has the western continent, and, worst of all, Polynesia is immediately due south.

Btw, this is a Shuffle map. If anyone out there wants a tough game where the usual bag of tricks don't work, stop playing on Deity. Do Shuffle. You can get a map with no nearby luxes, farmable land, or CS's. I actually was happy to get plains since my previous three starts were on tundra

 

[King_Course]

2 cities one luxury is the reason why. You can put down a city at the river mouth for some river gold and better trade routes/roads.

 

[Smokeybear]

Lets see- plains start, no water, one lux with a measly 2 gold output, no other gold from tiles at all... that's one of the suckiest starts I've ever seen. I'd have just taken one look and rerolled a decent game. All that wheat won't do you much good if you can't afford to buy a bakery (figuratively speaking). And grain on waterless tiles is only marginally as good as grain with water.

 

[joncnunn]

1) Settle one city at the river.

2) Take Tradition and hook up with the cost savings from Oligarchy and Monarchy.

3) Beeline to Currency and build markets to stop the hemoraging.

It's a pretty bad map, all things considered. Almost no luxes, and hemmed in by rivals on three sides. I loved all that grain I had, and hammers from pretty much every tile, but grain alone does not a viable empire make.

Agreed; I'd have restarted in 4000 BC with that map.

 

[Xiao Xiong]

Is it regular practice for you guys to actually not settle on turn 1?

I settle on turn 1 unless by moving I can get my settler onto a hill next to a river. In that case the extra hammers of settling on a hill, the defensive bonus, and the eventual waterwheel, make up for the loss of the turn.

I wouldn't call that a free fall, at -3 gold every CS you discover buys you another five turns even if you are the 2nd one to find it, and you have 166 cash reserves--so get scouting, you should be good!

I almost always run negative gold while I am building up my infrastructure, I make up for it by selling off luxuries and scouting.

Here's some good news -- are you on an island? Then you can save a fortune by not having an army, just a unit or two for barb control. Everyone will hate you for awhile for being weak but they can't invade until at least optics and they realistically won't, by then you should have solved your problems.

 

[Matthew.]

The main thing I look for on turn 1 is how I can get 2 hammers. Either from settling on a hill or having wheat/stone/dear next to capital. I hate starts with 1 hammer and will reload the map if I can't get one.

 

[steveg700]

Looks like all the other civ's went for Optics, so they can embark. Also, I'm sharing the island...with Polynesia.

I abandoned this game shortly after posting this thread. Seems to me that while this map is pretty bad, any map where you don't have rivers is going to put you in the same spot. Even with a normal amount of luxuries present, that's rarely enough gold.

Sounds like a lot of folks' rely heavily on that involve exploiting AI weaknesses like selling resources (for which they overpay) and the ease of stealing workers rather than building them. It doesn't seem they'd work well here, and I'm not sure depending on bursts of gold to compensate for negative GPT is sustainable.

 

[Light Cleric]

Looks like all the other civ's went for Optics, so they can embark. Also, I'm sharing the island...with Polynesia.

I abandoned this game shortly after posting this thread. Seems to me that while this map is pretty bad, any map where you don't have rivers is going to put you in the same spot. Even with a normal amount of luxuries present, that's rarely enough gold.

Sounds like a lot of folks' rely heavily on that involve exploiting AI weaknesses like selling resources (for which they overpay) and the ease of stealing workers rather than building them. It doesn't seem they'd work well here, and I'm not sure depending on bursts of gold to compensate for negative GPT is sustainable.

You can certainly play the game without selling anything to the AI, but I would just play multiplayer if I wanted to do that

I don't think it's "overpaying"; 45g per strategic/240 per luxury is pretty reasonable. What they DO overpay for is cities that are close to them. They really will pay you +2000 gold for a 2 pop city with no buildings as long as it's near them. That's why I don't sell cities to the AI anymore The trades do become less valuable later in the game, but by then you have plenty of ways to generate gold on your own(Banks, Trade Routes, National Treasury, Stock Exchanges, policies, puppets w/Trading Posts etc.), whereas early on you've not got a lot of options.

 

[steveg700]

You can certainly play the game without selling anything to the AI, but I would just play multiplayer if I wanted to do that

I don't think it's "overpaying"; 45g per strategic/240 per luxury is pretty reasonable. What they DO overpay for is cities that are close to them. They really will pay you +2000 gold for a 2 pop city with no buildings as long as it's near them. That's why I don't sell cities to the AI anymore The trades do become less valuable later in the game, but by then you have plenty of ways to generate gold on your own(Banks, Trade Routes, National Treasury, Stock Exchanges, policies, puppets w/Trading Posts etc.), whereas early on you've not got a lot of options.

You're selling the luxury because you don't need it. Why is it reasonable that the AI, who almost certainly has more happiness than you already, will pay enough for a few points of happiness to halfway finance your next settler?

And then there's the sheer lunacy of buying strategic resources in the early game. The Ai's unlikely to use it at all within 30 turns (in which case, "overpaying" is an understatement), and even if it does, when the deal ends that resource is gone, those units are worthless.

Don't get me wrong. If that all floats your boat, then it's all good. Enjoy yourself. Butf for me it's weird that some folks seem to look down on playing below Emperor, of Immortal, or even below Deity, and then find that their strategy relies so heavily on loopholes that really ought to be patched up.

 

[Matthew.]

Deity is a special case since the bonus gap between Immortal and Deity is significant. On Immortal and below you really don't need to cheese the AI. I rarely steal workers unless they are in a barb camp, and even then I often return it for the rep. I am stubborn and hard-build settlers 90% of the time. If I am playing on King or below, I generally won't trade luxuries for gold, only for another luxury (The AI needs all the help it can get)

Like I said in my original post, your early gold is coming from rivers, oceans, or luxuries (as in tile yield). The above map, it was a crap start. Only one fish, one luxury, and a river right down the middle out of range of both coastal cities.

And yeah, money is supposed to be tight until markets.

 

[sufficiency]

What is the concern here? You are making -3 gold per turn but you got 166 gold...

 

[Light Cleric]

You're selling the luxury because you don't need it. Why is it reasonable that the AI, who almost certainly has more happiness than you already, will pay enough for a few points of happiness to halfway finance your next settler?

And then there's the sheer lunacy of buying strategic resources in the early game. The Ai's unlikely to use it at all within 30 turns (in which case, "overpaying" is an understatement), and even if it does, when the deal ends that resource is gone, those units are worthless.

Don't get me wrong. If that all floats your boat, then it's all good. Enjoy yourself. Butf for me it's weird that some folks seem to look down on playing below Emperor, of Immortal, or even below Deity, and then find that their strategy relies so heavily on loopholes that really ought to be patched up.

First off, I am not going to crap on anyone for the difficulty they play because a lot of that has to do with play time and experience. IMO Deity requires either an extraordinary amount of skill or an extraordinary amount of insanity (take a guess which one I am ).

Anyway, this is how I look at it. They know the AI buys luxuries and have changed it in the past. When Luxuries were 5 happiness they paid 300 gold per, now they paid 240g which is 60g per happiness. Now, it's true that they don't really need those luxuries, but that IN ITSELF is justification for me; if the AI is, for all intents and purposes, exempt from the happiness system, then I don't feel bad taking some gold from them. I mean, they cheat on everything anyway, but the level of cheating with Happiness is the most egregious.

Strategic Resources are hit and miss. Many civs won't buy the resource if they don't plan to use it, and when those deals are about to end they ask for a renewal. When you consider they start using Swords around turn 50-60 odds are that Iron will get used, although I don't usually end up at Iron Working that early anyway.

Bottom line, when I see an AI that can do stupid crap like succeed on coups that are basically impossible for a human player to pull off, tell you "move your troops or DoW" which a human player cannot do, or spam cities like this with no consequence, am I really supposed to feel bad for taking 240 bucks?