And it was Not me.
Let that be clear now.
I don't care who it is. This is not about playing blame games to me. It's about making the game work well. It's good to see we agree that at least it should cost something. I think a review in the code on the formula that calculates civic support costs could be in order just to sort out what's taking place there. Maybe a minimum amount of 1 enforced on low could at least help.
It's always been my contention that from Game start up to Tribalism your only City should not be burdened with huge deficits
Well, what do you mean by deficits? At first, as you observe, your national gold totals IS your first city totals. So unless it goes under 0 per turn at 100% research, there's no deficit, right? Or are you using the term differently and you mean no penalties? If some penalties are necessary to bring thing down to pretty much that golden 0 per turn at 100% average ideal, then that's good, imo, for a few reasons. 1st, it gives you room to grow numbers or reduce penalties on improved civics to show that these civics are improvements and thus were well earned by the techs that unlocked them. 2nd, it gives meaning to making gold a priority selection to boost. What's the point of worrying about techs, civics, buildings, traits that improve gold if you aren't being a little stressed by it?
I know there's not a lot of room before the AI starts to find things unmanageable but it's far more forgiving than the target of 0 per turn at 100%.
So I guess to put it another way:
And since both of these Civics come into play right before and at Tribalism you only (generally unless you capture a rivals Capitol) have 1 city. So you want that lone City to be running at a deficit? That can be arranged If that is really what you want.
If by 'deficit' you mean that it's running at less than 0/turn total at 100% research, and this is what's necessary to keep that from happening due to other penalties taking place here, then I agree that we need it. If we're in the positive at 100% and all the units we want, then we have room to eliminate it. It's ok if +1 gold doesn't mean a full +1 gold until civics improve. Doesn't stop buildings from accumulating gold nevertheless since the decimal totals from buildings are tallied into the end total, which is where it is then rounded down. A building giving +.5 plus one giving +.5 = still gives a total of +1 in the city the way it pans out in the end.
Making it impossible to research because you have no gold for the research slider would elongate the Preh era.
When it gets too stressful, that's true. But to upgrade or afford some room for insurance against events, you should either have had to have some good things happen during exploration - goodies often give some cushion gold and being first to find natural wonders helps too, or be willing to slow your research to save up a little - or spend some time generating wealth in the city, which I've been known to do when it was a bit more stressful. Sure it can easily swing too far the other direction and require building wealth every few rounds to compensate natural losses, and it sucks when it's TOO straining, but if it's not straining at all, that's a total lack of tension we're allowing and making entire strategies moot.
Spending some rounds at less than 100% just means it means something if you were able to find some gold from goodies to avoid having to drop your research for longer.
You definitely would not be hitting Ancient Era (Sed Life) at 10,000Bc or even 6,000BC if that was the case
I hit it at around 12k BC this game.
not the preferable way to control gold in the earliest part of the game
What do you propose is the best way to control gold at this stage?