Funds keep running low?

[SweetScore]

I am a new player and just going through all of the Civilization games starting with 1. But the problem is I keep losing money for some reason and I don't understand the reason. I play on the chieftain (easiest) setting. I make roads, irrigation and mining and found new cities as soon as possible (5 cities generally) and some military to defend these cities as well as improvements like granary, marketplace, aquatic, city walls etc. Why am I losing money? Even if I increase the tax rate to the max, I still lose money.

 

[Mize]

Sounds like bad planning and low trade. Taxes are only a percentage of a city's total trade income (arrows) that is converted into money (coins). If your cities aren't generating enough trade, you will not make much money no matter how high you set the tax rate. Building roads is not enough, you have to put your citizens to work on those tiles (and also on river and ocean tiles) to get trade. Later, you can build caravans and send them to foreign cities to bring in more trade to their home city. Also, it is a bad idea to build improvements before they are needed. For example the marketplace, if your city is not already producing at least two coins, building a market is a net loss. You only need aqueducts to grow cities beyond size 10, walls if cities are threatened or in crucial positions, etc. All of these buildings have upkeep costs and if you can't cover them they will automatically be sold off one by one every time your treasury dries up. Check the F1 screen to see how much trade your cities are generating. Check the F5 screen to see how it is allocated, how much cash you generate and what are your expenses.

 

[dom111]

Hey, welcome to the game! Nice to see more people still picking up this classic!

Whenever you build city improvements they cost maintenance which can be tracked on the Trade Screen (I think it's called that, F5 anyway!) So here you can check if you're bringing in enough taxes. If you're not, it might be that you need to 8ncrrase trade, building (with Settlers) roads on grassland, plains and desert will increase trade output when those tiles are worked. Main thing is tracking incoming Vs outgoing though!

I kinda wish I remembered my first plays better when the game was relatively new and I was a kid!

 

[dom111]

have to put your citizens to work on those tiles

On this, clicking on an unworked tile on the map on the city screen will often be enough to target roaded tiles over unimproved ones.

 

[GPR]

already explained a bit. I will add:

List of buildings in Civ1

Back to Sid Meier's CivilizationThis page lists all city improvements from Sid Meier's Civilization except for all the Wonders and Spaceship parts.

civilization.fandom.com

For example:
city walls costs 2 gold naintenance every round/tour

On end of F5 (Advisors - Trade Advisor) you have summary how much you get taxes and how much costs you maintenance of buildings.
Tax is of course from altitude tax rate but this tax is from you city and number of trade (white arrows) from your terrain type in city - build road is important.

Building should be built as little as possible and only where absolutely necessary (they pay off). For example:
You build Aqueduct only if you city have 10 and need to grown and only when city earns to maitenance
Courthouse only when city is far away from you first city and have too many black arrows (above 4)
Granary - depends on the style of your game - it is often unnecessary
Library, University - as above
Marketplace - only when city have above 2 trade (white arrows)
Temple - neccesery, first building to build
City Walls - better not to build
Cathedral - is important building but only in big cities with amount taxes (white arrows)
Colosseum - is cost a lot of gold

 

[Spaceglitch]

I am a new player and just going through all of the Civilization games starting with 1. But the problem is I keep losing money for some reason and I don't understand the reason. I play on the chieftain (easiest) setting. I make roads, irrigation and mining and found new cities as soon as possible (5 cities generally) and some military to defend these cities as well as improvements like granary, marketplace, aquatic, city walls etc. Why am I losing money? Even if I increase the tax rate to the max, I still lose money.

1. You need to set the tax rate while keeping scientific research in mind
2. The government you have makes a difference on the big picture. For example Republic and Democratic governments tend to cost you more due to building Temples, Colosseums, and Cathedrals due to civil disorder.
3. Every city improvement has a maintenance charge per turn (Including the Palace)
4. Once you discover Trade, you can build caravans to make trades with other civilization. The bigger the city's population the more the trade revenue, this can be a neat way to have a +10 cash flow every turn with a 0%-10% tax rate
5. You can always build improvements and sell them while keeping the cash flow in mind.

 

[pankratz]

Hi there. I won my first civ game, but at the end it was very tedious, because my income was so poor. So I found this thread and I obviously did many mistakes . I build far too many buildings in every city. I got that, but my question is: What should I build instead, when I already have enough settlers? In Civ3 I remember that one can save the money instead of building. But it seems this isn't possible in Civ1.

 

[Mize]

Caravans are almost always a good investment. They can make new trade routes, get you cash and rush wonders.
If it's just down to converting shields to coins, you can always keep building and selling structures you don't need.

 

[pankratz]

Ah, that makes sense. I did build caravans, but those three routes we're quickly done.

 

[MiGaNuTs]

Don't build building. Built chariot and conquest your neigbourg citys.
When you got 15 citys or more you can start to make marketplace, switch to democraty gvt (with 30- to 50% luxury) and boost your population.
But the first objetive is to get more citys than your opponents.

 

[pankratz]

In my last game I tried to play friendly and win the space race. Building less worked good, but I think I lost way too much time "terraforming" all the tiles around my cities. Anyway, suddenly the Zulus came and ...

 

[Mize]

In my last game I tried to play friendly and win the space race. Building less worked good, but I think I lost way too much time "terraforming" all the tiles around my cities. Anyway, suddenly the Zulus came and ...

Unless you have some unsupported NONE settlers, it's usually a fine balance between 'do I spend 20 turns cutting this jungle down now?' and 'do I found a new city (or build this settler back into an existing one) right away?'.
Time your tile improvements well. You don't need to irrigate 20 cells if the city isn't going to max out soon. Better build a new one or grow an existing one by 1 pop point with the settler and save the support, speed up your growth, increase your production and trade output, etc.

The major exception is, of course, growing with WLTP day under democracy and republic, that's when you want to have all improvements ready or almost ready. But it still has a few bottlenecks, like construction for growing past 10, religion, railroad and trade routes. Ideally, you want some cities that can grow to size 10 at the same time when you switch to republic/democracy. A temple, a market, a few trade routes and some luxuries are enough. When you hit size 10 you can build more settlers in the cities with high food surplus. They will celebrate back to size 10 on the next turn if you keep the luxury rates high enough. Then you start preparing the ground for the next round of growth, which is building aqueducts, banks and cathedrals/colosseums to grow your cities to size 15-ish. If you time it right you'll have railroad at about that time. You want to first start railroading the tiles near the cities that cannot max out without rails, so that you spend less turns and trade on high luxuries to grow to 20 or whatever size your cities are meant to grow to.

 

[Bobo31]

1. You need to set the tax rate while keeping scientific research in mind
2. The government you have makes a difference on the big picture. For example Republic and Democratic governments tend to cost you more due to building Temples, Colosseums, and Cathedrals due to civil disorder.
3. Every city improvement has a maintenance charge per turn (Including the Palace)
4. Once you discover Trade, you can build caravans to make trades with other civilization. The bigger the city's population the more the trade revenue, this can be a neat way to have a +10 cash flow every turn with a 0%-10% tax rate
5. You can always build improvements and sell them while keeping the cash flow in mind.