Economies in ruins!

joasoze said:
Dont listen to people claiming they can run at 100% science and be successful. They are either:

Playing on a low difficulty setting
or
Not expanding fast enough

If you want to be among the top civs you must expand relatively fast and your science will drop below 100% for most of the game. That is not a problem since 70% of a large empire is more than 100% of a small one :)

Can someone explain to him what religion can do.
 
I play pretty much exclusively on Monarch, win more than half the games that I play past 1 AD, and seldom play a game where I could realistically keep my science at 100% the entire game (not that I would want to as it seems foolish). I say that even though I often play financial leaders, found and aggressively spread at least one religion every game (although seldom more than one unless I am going for a culture win from turn 1), spam cottages like crazy and usually have open borders with at least a couple other Civs.

I imagine it is relatively easy to maintain these science rates playing below Noble, but for Monarch and above the statement that you should be able to run at 100% science an entire game seems unrealistic. I also almost never get the Pyramids (pretty much have to be Industrious with stone to even try) so they do not seem particularly "essential" to me. In general, very few things that people say are "essential" in Civ 4 really are. There are a ton of ways to win and I am still finding new strategies each time I play.

Regarding the OP's problem, sounds like over-expansion and there has been a lot of good advice about combating the problem. In general, I stop building new cities when my Science rate dips below 40% and do not start founding new ones until it is back over 50%. I have not had a significant financial problem since I adopted that policy. This is not Civ 3 anymore, the penalties for over-expansion frequently out-weigh the benefits.
 
I find that 12 cities are really unnessisary(on standard map). there is just not enough land. while you play, noitice that only 5 or 6 of your cities actually produce anything(the ones where the building menu comes up every 3 turns). I've noticed the rest of the cities just sit there at 7 population, fledgling culture, produces a basic unit every 10 turns, etc. There just there for resources and a small slice of territory (though that 7 population can help in a diplo-victory). Though they may develop, having a lot of these hurts the economy and over extends your military(which in turn hurts the economy).
 
I want to say just one word to you, just one word: cottages.
 
Grachi said:
Build Too fast and too large, you end up like the actual Russia of the past...Tons of people, huge amount of territory, and way too poor.

Or, you know, the actual Russia of the present.
 
in your first cities make sure you make at least 3 cottages each and make sure that your cities work them as soon as they are made. Prioritize code of laws, followed by currency. then prioritize courthouses. no when to stop building cities. if you are not making money at 50 - 70 percent science rate, stop building cities. build courthouses, develop your commerce within your cities. when you are at 70 percent research and making money proceed building cities. Founding Religions also help if you get a great Prophet to build a shrine with.
 
I win domination victories without dropping science- cottages markets courthouses and banks- buildings liek this. As i'm a warmonger i usualy run a deficit from Captured icties money.
 
problems are:
1. You can't build usefull commerce-boosting/maintenance reducing buildings at the moment
2. You can't build wealth/research at the moment
3. All you money goes to maintenance cost
4. You can only build military (unit upkeep)
5. You can't research things to build because you haven't got any money

solution: attack/pillage an enemy for some gold, and use it to research Code of Laws, Currency or Alphabet
 
I just automated my workers, they gave me the income i needed to support about 20 cities at that time and my tech was usually on 90%, with organized religion on only. another good idea is to build all the wonders possible, increasing your borders allows more space for your workers to build money makin buildings on.
 
xonixs said:
Can someone explain to him what religion can do.

The only game in which I was able to (almost) continuously run at 100% research (not that I did... I loves my culture) was on a huge continents map in which two civs on isolated island founded all religions but confucianism and islam. I founded both, and promptly spread them to the 12 other civs in my continent. The confucianist shrine is netting me 90+ gpt (I founded it first), and the islamic one around 60 (travel to the other side of the continent is slow...)

All other games, I need to stay at 70% (80% on my best ones) through most of the game to break even, but a cottage-heavy approach means I'm raking at least one half more raw commerce than my closest competitor, or more if I'm a commercial civ.

As mentioned before, the key is not to overexpand... 12 cities is a bit too much, I don't get that many until around or after the middle ages (depends on the map mostly)... It's a matter of checking the upkeep costs compared to raw commerce output. If the next city isn't producing as much to pay for itself, then stop on new cities for a while.
 
Willem said:
You're not sending it far enough away, I usually get returns of 4-5000. The further the city you send it to is, the more you get.
It depends on map size & speed, on standard/marathon you'll get 9-10 k gold.
 
Continuous war with city destruction and pillaging works well up through at least the middle ages, because war weariness seems to have little impact. Later on you have to have shorter wars. For a while you can run 100 gold in the hole per turn. If you have several Great Merchants that can generate 2500 gold each, you can keep up 100 percent science for long periods, especially if you spam missionaries.
 
mmmmm, I don't think you can shoot for both Stonehenge and Pyramids in harder difficulties without access to lots of forest and stone... and even that, it'd still be a tough challenge.
 
My brother had the same problem playing Neopoleon on Warlord. He says that when he built Courthouses his economy came back up (0% to 70%).:)
He also says that libraries are an economy killer.:mad:

I play all the same settings & I have never had an economy problem.
I think his problem was his ICS (Infinite City Sprawl) problem!:eek:
I have never completed a true game (I have to do it perfect). In the game I'm playing now it's about 300AD and I just built my 5th city, and I'm the 3rd most powerful nation in the world, as well as being one of the most advanced nations.
I have very few cottages no Courthouses & I'm running 100% science, & I have money in the bank. My beginning of game strategy was to turn my science to 80% (because I was breaking even) and to develope Hunting, I bult a warrior first, then I built a Scout, then I built a barracks, & then I built my Settler.

P.S.
I have built every wonder.​
 
My brother had the same problem playing Neopoleon on Warlord. He says that when he built Courthouses his economy came back up (0% to 70%).:)
He also says that libraries are an economy killer.:mad:

I play all the same settings & I have never had an economy problem.
I think his problem was his ICS (Infinite City Sprawl) problem!:eek:
I have never completed a true game (I have to do it perfect). In the game I'm playing now it's about 300AD and I just built my 5th city, and I'm the 3rd most powerful nation in the world, as well as being one of the most advanced nations.
I have very few cottages no Courthouses & I'm running 100% science, & I have money in the bank. My beginning of game strategy was to turn my science to 80% (because I was breaking even) and to develope Hunting, I bult a warrior first, then I built a Scout, then I built a barracks, & then I built my Settler.

P.S.
I have built every wonder.​
 
I'm having the same problem in my current game... monarch, started as Babylon (Sevomod/epic speed/huge map/random all), and found myself right next to good o'le Caesar... well, we can't have that now. So I jumped a couple of cities up toward him to pinch him off a little bit, built a stack of axes, and off I went to take care of Jules before he started cranking out the Praets. Well, lo and behold, I get to Rome, and it's only defended by 2 archers. Munch. I went on and kept 2 other of his cites that were in good spots (one had silk/copper/gold, the other had 2 golds, 2 fish and an iron) and close to my initial fence cities, chop/popped a new palace to one of the border cities to be in the middle of my now main cluster of cities, and sent my army out to finish off Jules (which they did).

The problem is, I'm STILL only able to run research at 15%... this was after years and YEARS of 0%, and STILL losing money to the point I had to kill cities and pillage to stay out of strike. I eventually got it back up to 35-40%, but noticed that I was now next to the Phonecians, who were starting to run away, and was back down about 176 gold and -5 per turn, so my 4-5 promotion army dusted off their weapons and destroyed about 7 of his cities/pillaged the heck out of him, knocking him down.

But at this point, I'm starting to wonder if it's too late to recover. I've got 10 cities, most in the inner ring around the palace, with 2 in an 2nd ring and only my previous capital outside of that. My workers have cottaged everything in sight, and folks are working them. All of the cities show as being self-sustaining, but just barely. A quick look into my financial advisor shows that I have a pretty high unit cost (almost exactly twice as many troops as can be supported for free), but it's hard to disband four and five promotion units to save on the UNIT COST (I'm gradually settling them back down at home and killing off the lower-promoted and generally lower strength "home guard" garrisons). Meanwhile, here it is, AD 200, and I just discovered... alphabet. Ouch. The ONLY bright spot seems to be that the AI haven't run totally away in tech, near as I can tell anyway (I haven't seen any uber-advanced units, for example, and Islam hasn't been founded yet). But I'm still now something like 21 turns from Math, then 36 turns from Currency, THEN 63 from Code of Laws.

Frustrating, to say the least.
 
If your plan is for early conquest, cottages very are important to achieve this.
The more cities you have the more units you can make. You can overwelm a more advanced civilization on sheer numbers. And steal their technology, by cohersion or destroying them. Numbers have and advantage also in sieging their resources or pillaging. Since they have lesser cities than you, more than likely they have a higher population along with higher technology, government and civics. They cannot mobilize for war as fast. Take out their food first then workers. At first they feel snug with their thechnology advantage, until their cities go into disorder by starvation. Attack their resources with quick manufacture of scouts. Provoke them to death with scouts. Swarm there borders with scouts or explorers, then attack. So much for advanced technology. This is called "Pawn Provoking". No one is safe!
The disavantage is if you fall to far behind in technology, they can and will successfull counter attack. Early in the game most civilization don't have big military adavantage. Build lots of cottages and cities (along with iron, ore and horses) for early conquest, not for early expansion. You have to balance food and cottages to maxmise gold output. cottages need food to be productive and grow. Sell some baracks to compinsate for a large army or change civic to save on upkeep. Get rid of walls and any improvement thats not truly productive or about to become obsolete. cultivate sea and ocean squares. If that don't work, then toogle emphasis commerce in govenor (city) screen.
 
I usually play on Noble level, huge worlds, continents. Like the OP, I tend to be somewhat, ah, expansionist, and I do the "shell game" where I block off entire portions of the continent I'm on with a ring of outer cities and fill in the gaps later. I usually *plan* on taking a hit financially from this expansion, because I've found that by the time I start getting into the late Renaissance/early Industrial period, my finances are back in the black because of the earlier expansion. By 500 AD, I'll usually have 9-12 cities, but my tech spending will be down to 70-80%.

How?

Several things. Cottages, while not *the* end all and be all, ARE very important. Build them early, because it takes time for them to develop to towns. Build them beside rivers, because you get that extra coin per tile, AND if you are a financial civilisation (England under Victoria, Russia under Catherine, etc.) you will be getting three coins right off the bat (1 coin from cottage + 1 coin from river space + 1 extra coin due to Financial trait where any space generating 2 or more coins gets an extra coin = 3). My strategery for cottages is this - build them on plains. Generally, I save flood plains and grasslands for food production, unless I'm already to the point with a city where food prod. is insanely high and it's growing larger than I want/can maintain without stuffing the city with military units to keep down disorder (hereditary rule civic).

Now, one other thing I do is MASSIVE early exploration. Build some scouts and get out there and explore all over your continent. Find every tribal village you can and walk on it. Scouts get an advantage in goodies from tribal villages. Even explore the useless polar regions on a large continent, even though you'll never be doing anything with them. Usually, there's 3-4 villages in an arctic region of a good-sized continent. More often than not, you will get gold from the villages. I've had upwards of 400 gold by 2000 BC just from aggressive exploration with scouts, even when I have 100% science setting. Recently, I've begun setting my science to 90%, with 10% to gold right at the start of the game. This generates an extra +1 in the treasury per turn, which may not seem like much, but DOES build up over time, and will be very good to have when you need it. I don't find this causes much of a problem in maintain tech parity/superiority, either. These early money-making schemes are important because they will "subsidise" your early expansion. I've had upwards of 700 gold by ~750 BC doing both these things, and this allows you to "deficit spend" when your expansion invariably begins to hemorrhage gold through maintenance. Building markets and courthouses will provide a good slowdown on the treasury loss once you hit the later Classical period, but if you've been aggressive (and yes, lucky) in your exploration, you shouldn't have to drop below 70% science even before building these improvements.

Hope this helps (better late than never, eh?)
TQC
 
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