Financial Difficulties - Noble Difficulty (Advice Needed)

[somebody19]

Hi there folks, recently bought Civilization 4 and its expansion Warlords, and tried a custom game after reading a few of the strategy articles posted on the front page of civfanatics.com including Sulla's part by part walkthrough.

Tried a new game going aggresive with Zulu, the game plan was to keep ahead in tech, and be aggresive on the attack. However mid-game, my plans got a little messy and I think my research tree was all messy and it took really long for me to bring down the Germans.

The main issue is, my finance is going down the drain and frankly, I can't think of anything to recover from it. Civic expenses are killing me, and more so city maintainence. I've builty a Palace, but that doesn't seem to do squat for me.

Could anyone take a look and my game, and give me a few pointers to perhaps fix my problems? And also, any other useful tips un-related to the financial problems would also be most welcomed.

Oh and also, if someone could comment whether I'm moving through the game at a rather ok pace, or much too slow or too fast, I'd appreciate that as well. To me, I think I could've reached my stage now much faster if I did some alterations to my strategy.

Thanks in advance.

My save game : Civilization 4 Warlods (Latest Patch)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/67864/Finance_Issues.CivWarlordsSave

 

[carl corey]

I can't look at the game right now, but here are a few things:

- building a Palace just changes your capital from the original one (the one with the star around the population number), to the new one. You generally want to leave the capital in its original place, or shift it to a more central location for maintenance purposes - lowered maintenance in cities nearby - but this is rarely done.

- you can build a Forbidden Palace that acts like a second capital, reducing maintenance around it. You just need enough courthouses built and specifically a courthouse in the Forbidden Palace city.

- try to go for Currency & Code of Laws pretty early; with Currency you can build gold in the city, with Code of Laws you can switch to Caste System and assign Merchants if needed. Later you'll want Civil Service (to open up Bureaucracy for a very powerful capital), Education for Universities, maybe Divine Right if you're going the religious route (Spiral Minaret = gold, Versailles = third palace), Economics if you can get it for the free Great Merchant (send him on a trade mission).

- you usually have to switch between attacking & rebuilding to keep up with the bigger empire. Axemen -> Axemen & Catapults -> Courthouses -> Macemen -> Markets & Banks is a pretty safe way to go. Also, since later you get higher research modifiers like Universities you can safely lower your science slider and still get enough research done

- don't forget tech trading (also, don't trade for just anything, consider if it's really worth it) and lightbulbing techs; Great Scientists can help you a lot, since they give the highest bulbing output.

- don't keep every city; especially if you consider finishing an opponent, so that you don't care about him being mad because of razed cities; just keep the good locations, as the AI will often plunk down a size 1-2 city in a so-so location. You're better off without it. It doesn't matter if another AI will settle there, the smaller the city the lower its production so it will have few culture buildings anyway. Meaning it's not a threat.

I'll try to look at the save and give more specific advice.

 

[somebody19]

carl_corey : Dude, thanks so much man, will definitely try to apply your advice into my game and see if there're improvements. Hopefully I can get my financial issues back in the black once again. Looking forward to more feedback once you've seen the game. Thanks again.

 

[madscientist]

Not much more advice than the above post except to be patient. Do not conquer expand until your economy can support it. Use slavery in newly acquired cities to rid them of unsupportable population and create courthouses (if the conquered city doesn't already have them) or theaters (Odeans if you are greek or terraces if Incan). Rome was neither built or conquered in a day. Oh, one more thing, if using Shaka get a barracks into every city real fast as they decrease city costs.

 

[carl corey]

Ok, got the save. I'll have a look at it and tell you what's good or bad in a few minutes. I'll probably post several times as if there are several suggestions.

 

[carl corey]

1. Maybe moving the capital was indeed a good idea. The first one was pretty far from your other cities.

2. You had a good place for another city northwest of your capital. It could work fish, horses and sheep, pretty good site.

3. Your second city was a little far away, but you built the Great Wall to take care of barbarian problems.

4. Building the Pyramids, the Oracle for Feudalism, then switching to Police State & Vassalage is an awesome move! I'm not sure about switching to Serfdom though. Slavery is better for conquests, it allows you to whip the conquered cities to get rid of the unhappy citizens.

5. Question: what did you do with your first Great General? Edit: Nevermind, I see he died in combat, I assume you promoted a unit. I guess it's a good use since you're getting twice promoted units already from barracks & vassalage. You could consider promoting a unit with Medic 3, it helps a lot to speed the attack.

6. What was the composition of your attack force?

 

[somebody19]

Heh I switched to Serfdom because I didn't have any other civics in that category to choose from, and if I were going into anarchy, why not just switch that as well in case I would need it in the future. Yeah about the second city, I wanted to but forgot about it because I was lacking iron and needed to send my newly built settler straight for the iron to start the war going.. didn't have bronze either for awhile so I could do squat with warriors alone lol.

As for my first general, I sent it to 4 Warriors (forgot name) the one with the city attack 10% bonus, and 6 str and chose to lead as a warlord. My unit died soon after though due to an unlucky roll on an attack

 

[somebody19]

6. What was the composition of your attack force?

Well it mainly composed of three units only, Axemen all upgrade to city attack lvl2, warriors with the same upgrade and catapults with bombard lvl2. Usually I only go warriors and catapults but in this case, they had axemen as well which could easily handle my warriors so I had to counter that.

 

[somebody19]

Oh and yeah, after looking at the save, anything I can do to improve my finances at this state? Besides the comments you already stated in the earlier post I mean

 

[carl corey]

You should have Slavery if you have Axemen. (it's discovered by Bronze Working) Unless you're using lots of specialists you're better off staying in Slavery until Emancipation. You might want to switch to Serfdom after you get a bigger empire and you trimmed the cities down to happiness level so that you could improve your land.

Are you sure you're talking about Warriors? The very first units? They're very weak, it's not worth bringing them to attack. Swordsmen are the ones with 10% against cities and if you don't face any axemen you'll get decent odds against anything else. Use some chariots too to counter lone axemen and a few Impis to defend against chariots/horse archers. You could have promoted an Impi with Medic to heal your troops. Don't attack with it though, just keep it around as Medic.

 

[carl corey]

Oh and yeah, after looking at the save, anything I can do to improve my finances at this state? Besides the comments you already stated in the earlier post I mean

Getting to that.

 

[Jet]

Looked at the save.
* moving your palace was fine
* build more workers. More tiles should get improved. I'd suggest building five workers in Ulundi after it finishes the Colossus
* build more cottages. Choose some cities (half or more of them) as commerce cities and put all the cottages there.
* work all your commerce tiles (wine in the capital, silk in Cologne). If you're not used to going into the city screen and analyzing and changing what tiles are being worked, that's an good thing to learn to do. Play with the tile yield display turned on (Ctrl-Y).
* grow your cities to their happy caps, prioritizing working high-food tiles until they do. It will pay off. Half the job is making sure high-food tiles are available to them (placing them near food and/or building farms), the other half is going into the city screen and making sure the food tiles are getting worked when the city needs to grow.
* Berlin and Hamburg need a source of culture. Either build a monastery somewhere and send a missionary there (so that at least the religion generates one culture point per turn) or build a Library there. The lack of culture is keeping them from working good tiles.

A couple more tips

Hamburg doesn't need a market because it has no commerce tiles. But it would be a good place to run specialists and generate great people. You could give it a source of culture (say build a library), then a granary, grow, start 2 scientists, THEN a market only so that it can add 2 merchants.

When your empire is small the amount you have to spend to build anything with Universal Suffrage is too much compared to the research you could do with the same money. Any of the other 3 middle government civics would be OK.

* By the way: instead of cottages, you could switch to Representation, build just farms and mines (and plantations etc of course) everywhere, research Code of Laws, switch to Caste System, and run a lot of scientists (grow each city to its happy cap before running any scientists there). Then it wouldn't matter if your commerce slider was low. That's the "specialist economy".

 

[carl corey]

7. Switching to Universal Suffrage is a mistake. It gives 1 commerce per "town" (meaning improved cottage), which you don't have. And you also don't have the money to buy anything. Representation is much better, giving you free happiness in a few cities and boosting your specialists.

8. Building a Market in your new capital is going to help boost the finances. Good move.

9. Why build walls? You have them in your former capital and are building them elsewhere too. They will help you defend, but you don't want to let others get to your cities anyway. It would mean your terrain is getting pillaged.

10. You have two unhappy citizens in Berlin, yet building research. You should be in Slavery and whip them for something useful. That city still needs infrastructure anyway, Research is not an option.

 

[somebody19]

You should have Slavery if you have Axemen. (it's discovered by Bronze Working) Unless you're using lots of specialists you're better off staying in Slavery until Emancipation. You might want to switch to Serfdom after you get a bigger empire and you trimmed the cities down to happiness level so that you could improve your land.

Hey sorry what am I saying, I think I'm really still new to this game lol, getting confused with the terms. I mean I switched to serfdom because I wanted my workers to build improvements faster.. plus it had low upkeep too right? (not sure) And none of my cities were overpupulated at that point so it didn't seem right to use slavery.


Are you sure you're talking about Warriors? The very first units? They're very weak, it's not worth bringing them to attack. Swordsmen are the ones with 10% against cities and if you don't face any axemen you'll get decent odds against anything else. Use some chariots too to counter lone axemen and a few Impis to defend against chariots/horse archers. You could have promoted an Impi with Medic to heal your troops. Don't attack with it though, just keep it around as Medic.

Again sorry, confused with warriors and swordsmen. Yeah I used swordsmen, catapults and axemen mostly. I have one Impi with medic II if I recall, still alive and well in Berlin if I recall too. Didn't use chariots much this game though, thought they would be ravaged by axemen easily lol.

 

[somebody19]

Looked at the save.
* moving your palace was fine
* build more workers. More tiles should get improved. I'd suggest building five workers in Ulundi after it finishes the Colossus
* build more cottages. Choose some cities (half or more of them) as commerce cities and put all the cottages there.
* work all your commerce tiles (wine in the capital, silk in Cologne). If you're not used to going into the city screen and analyzing and changing what tiles are being worked, that's an good thing to learn to do. Play with the tile yield display turned on (Ctrl-Y).
* grow your cities to their happy caps, prioritizing working high-food tiles until they do. It will pay off. Half the job is making sure high-food tiles are available to them (placing them near food and/or building farms), the other half is going into the city screen and making sure the food tiles are getting worked when the city needs to grow.
* Berlin and Hamburg need a source of culture. Either build a monastery somewhere and send a missionary there (so that at least the religion generates one culture point per turn) or build a Library there. The lack of culture is keeping them from working good tiles.

A couple more tips

Hamburg doesn't need a market because it has no commerce tiles. But it would be a good place to run specialists and generate great people. You could give it a source of culture (say build a library), then a granary, grow, start 2 scientists, THEN a market only so that it can add 2 merchants.

When your empire is small the amount you have to spend to build anything with Universal Suffrage is too much compared to the research you could do with the same money. Any of the other 3 middle government civics would be OK.

* By the way: instead of cottages, you could switch to Representation, build just farms and mines (and plantations etc of course) everywhere, research Code of Laws, switch to Caste System, and run a lot of scientists (grow each city to its happy cap before running any scientists there). Then it wouldn't matter if your commerce slider was low. That's the "specialist economy".

Thanks for the tips too man, been playing around with the city management and I think I'm getting better at it but still need to improvise on my micro..hehe. Implementing that food thing for my capital now to get it to its happiness cap.

Also, why so many workers? I thought I've pretty much covered all the resources and improved the tiles I needed for each city.. what sort of improvements are you referring to? I've got a feeling I screwed up bad here again without even realising lol, still really new to the game.

 

[somebody19]

7. Switching to Universal Suffrage is a mistake. It gives 1 commerce per "town" (meaning improved cottage), which you don't have. And you also don't have the money to buy anything. Representation is much better, giving you free happiness in a few cities and boosting your specialists.

8. Building a Market in your new capital is going to help boost the finances. Good move.

9. Why build walls? You have them in your former capital and are building them elsewhere too. They will help you defend, but you don't want to let others get to your cities anyway. It would mean your terrain is getting pillaged.

10. You have two unhappy citizens in Berlin, yet building research. You should be in Slavery and whip them for something useful. That city still needs infrastructure anyway, Research is not an option.

Sorry didn't really understand Universal Sufferage..care to elaborate? I had thought I had a town with towns in it, and universal sufferage adds shield points to it right? Plus what did you mean by 'And you also don't have the money to buy anything'?

Lol about the walls, I didn't know what else to build so I just blindly built walls. Noob move on my part. Just got Berlin out of revolt, so I just left it on research for the revolting turns, was about to change it once it got out of revolt but decided to post up my save here first.

 

[somebody19]

* By the way: instead of cottages, you could switch to Representation, build just farms and mines (and plantations etc of course) everywhere, research Code of Laws, switch to Caste System, and run a lot of scientists (grow each city to its happy cap before running any scientists there). Then it wouldn't matter if your commerce slider was low. That's the "specialist economy".

Wow didn't know I could this, will definitely give it a shot. Seems like an interesting move.

Something's on my mind and I can't seem to understand it.. it's commerce. Let's say I have one city, and it's making 10 commerce each turn. If I put my research slider to 100%, this would mean the entire 10 commerce is going to research am I right?

And if so, 0 gold will go towards my income to pay for my expenditure.. so is it right to say that at 100%, I can never earn money?

 

[Jet]

# of workers: well, you're working several forest squares where farms and mines, or cottages, would be better. And some cities need to grow and then have more good tiles to work. And you need to get a bunch of cottages laid down (or lots of farms for the specialist style).

What you said about the slider is right.

And if you try the specialist economy, after Code of Laws research Civil Service so that instead of needing a river or lake to build a farm, you can build a farm next to another farm ("spreading irrigation").

If you feel like reading, there's a "Beginner's Guide to the Specialist Economy" in the Strategy Articles subforum.

 

[carl corey]

11. I just noticed that you captured the Parthenon! That means an additional bonus to running Specialists, as you can get Great Persons even faster. That also means you need Code of Laws asap.

12. Why so many warriors & archers? Leave one defensive unit (preferably archer) per city and delete the rest! They are useless and cost money.

13. You can trade for several hundred gold and Literature (Bismarck, Rangnar & Catherine), unfortunately you'll have to give the latter two military techs. Nobody built the Great Library yet and you have marble, so your former capital should build it in not time after the Colossus! Also, Literature opens up Heroic Epic (faster units in that city) and National Epic (boosts Great Person appearance). A very useful tech. Ulundi looks like the perfect Great Person farm, already having wonders built in it. I'm not sure which city should be the Heroic Epic one though... Either Nobamba or Hamburg I guess.

14. You need Code of Laws right now, not Guilds. With the gold from trades you can get it in 3 turns despite losing ~40 gold per turn. Then whip Courthouses everywhere (except new capital). Also, build Ikhandas, they're cheap and also reduce maintenance.

 

[Winston Hughes]

Something's on my mind and I can't seem to understand it.. it's commerce. Let's say I have one city, and it's making 10 commerce each turn. If I put my research slider to 100%, this would mean the entire 10 commerce is going to research am I right?

And if so, 0 gold will go towards my income to pay for my expenditure.. so is it right to say that at 100%, I can never earn money?

Yes, you've got the basic = or (or once you've got Drama) equation right. But there are other sources of research and gold - most obviously specialists (scientists give research, merchants give gold), but also foreign income (by supplying resources to other civs for x gold per turn) and shrine income (one gold per city with that religion - modified by the gold multipliers given by Markets etc.). None of these are affected by the sliders.