Economy mechanics..?

[Warlord Sam]

Could someone please explain how the economy works? I am aware of the obvious stuff like city improvements and tile improvements, and the occasional bonuses due to civics. Also familiar with technologies improving stuff or adding trade routes.

What I'm not familiar with is how trade routes work. Can you manipulate them short of open borders agreements? Do they automatically choose the most profitable trade routes? How is profitability determined? (Distance?)

Lastly, what is the balance that you try to strike on building cities on maps that are really crowded and land is at a premium? Is it better to tank your economy a bit to grab that extremely valuable land???

What's the balance between getting powerful enough to be competitive and being too powerful and becoming the target of other civs? I'm trying to find this balance rather unsuccessfully, currently, on standard size, epic time terra maps.

Any advice is appreciated.

 

[BubbaYeti]

What I'm not familiar with is how trade routes work. Can you manipulate them short of open borders agreements? Do they automatically choose the most profitable trade routes? How is profitability determined? (Distance?)

Cities choose the most profitable trade routes available, you dont have to worry about that. I have seen some other threads about how this is actually determined, although I dont worry about the details myself. IIRC, distance is a factor.

Lastly, what is the balance that you try to strike on building cities on maps that are really crowded and land is at a premium? Is it better to tank your economy a bit to grab that extremely valuable land???

My experience is that on harder levels expansion is necessary, just to keep up with the AI civs in research. Your economy takes a hit initially, but the extra commerce generated will push you ahead eventually. So go ahead, and grab that land! Of course on Terra maps you could focus on researching to astronomy and grabbing the lions share of the new world too.

What's the balance between getting powerful enough to be competitive and being too powerful and becoming the target of other civs?

This is the last thing you should worry about. Get up on top of the AI's and stay there! Use diplomacy (via religion eg.) to avoid the AI's from ganging up on you (a large military helps dissuade them as well!).

 

[maltz]

On trade routes, you can try this article:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=159047