Gold late game : pointless?

[Question]

Inevitably you reach a point where you are making something like 500+ gold per turn and can buy anything you want. All your cities are maxed out on buildings. You cant use the gold on wonders. You can only use it to buy units, but buying units with garrisons in the city is an incredible pain in the ass (move garison out of city, buy units turn after turn, move them back when done).

And you usually dont need to mass buy units anyway..

So what's gold for at this point? Sure, you can throw 1k+ gold at CSes. If you wanted to. I usually find that it gets too annoying to manage CS influence at this stage...i have a core group of long term CS allies that i never spend gold on but still somehow retain influence, and then there's the CSes i fight for but the AI just spams coups on. Inevitably one of their coups suceeds and i lose a ton of influence.

I don't know, it just seems gold is so much less valuable compared to older titles, because you can no longer use it on wonders and there's so few buildings after the industrial age. Medical labs are pointless when your cities are near maxed out in terms of pop, i can't recall a single game where i had to use recycling centers...

 

[OmniPotent42]

I only get into these situations when I have become the runaway with 8+ cities with trading posts everywhere and Commerce Tree filled out. You've already won the game if you can get 500 gpt without Golden Ages. Just use your spies effectively and you can land a Diplomatic Victory.

You can always trade your excess gold for lux resources to get more happiness to get more Golden Ages to get more gold!

Sometimes I will gift my gpt to civs that I want to be stronger, like my small friends who are struggling with gold output. Or I buy units and gift them to my neighbors. You don't have to spend gold on yourself, you know. Try to be the greatest philanthropist the world has ever seen. And best of all, your citizens can't complain about what you do with the nation's money!

 

[Koiranputki]

Yes...the game can get tedious when you get to that point....I'm usually just marking time to move the game as quickly as I can to a conclusion.... If I feel like it, I'll usually try to hang on to get a cultural victory which I find the hardest to get....you just have to grind through the culture point accumulation until you get there.....

And apparently the AI coup spamming has been noted by the developers and the patch that is to come sometime "this fall" will address that....

If I fail in a coup attempt my spy dies...but apparently the AI spies can just keep on with their attempts until they succeed...it does get annoying.... It seems you have to try to build a high enough influence point spread so that coup attempts have a really high probability of failure.... I've also noticed that even when the AI is reduced to one pathetic little city they still seem to be able to carry on with their coups without, I presume, resorting to monetary gifts...???

[Aside: And while I'm thinking about it, in my current game I had been "friends"
with a far-off civ since very near the beginning of the game... ..probably more sentiment than rationality on my part...the civ is William and I guess I have a "soft spot" for the Dutch...I quite like playing as William, probably my favourite civ.. though in this game I'm playing as Ramses...

Anyway....late in the game he decided that he preferred to be "friends" with my arch-rival who I had reduced to the "pathetic little city" mentioned above, and he denounced me....it made no sense for him to do that...but that's diplomacy in this game, I guess...]

And I find if I have enough money I can usually "corner" all of the CSs ...and as boring as it is, then get a diplomatic victory....after the tedious wait for the UN and the ten turn wait for the UN vote....and if there is the slightest screw up, waiting for another ten turns and maybe longer...

 

[Question]

But i can usually get +500 gold per turn by the time of the industrial age, and i usually never own more than 4 cities. How is this different on higher difficulty levels, unless you get some sort of gold penalty?

It's not that difficult to get a city to get 100+ GPT, especially if you concentrate on trading posts. In one game i managed to hit 200+ in my capital with national treasury, colossus and finishing the commerce tree.

 

[Gamewizard]

Play a harder difficulty. On easy difficulties, all resources can be spent toward developing your economies (gold, science, culture, etc). This snowballs you into a powerhouse much quicker than on the harder difficulties where early and often you have to divert resources to building a military, which will also drain you long term from unit maintenance (unless you are bullying civs and CS, which is what you should be doing in this game and what the higher difficulties are all about).

 

[Question]

How large of a military are we talking about here? It seems quite easy to find defensble ground and just do the meatshield + ranged units thing to grind the AI down.

I tried playing king but it got really old being the last one to grab a pantheon (because the AI starts with pottery and builds shrines first).

 

[Syntax Error]

How large of a military are we talking about here? It seems quite easy to find defensble ground and just do the meatshield + ranged units thing to grind the AI down.

I tried playing king but it got really old being the last one to grab a pantheon (because the AI starts with pottery and builds shrines first).

If you're the last one to get a pantheon at that difficulty, you're doing something wrong. There are a lot of ways to scrounge up 250 gold early game for rushing a shrine.

Possible Openings (assuming you're in a large land mass):

1. Research Pottery. If you settled on a hill, you're gonna complete a Scout in 5 turns. Partially complete another building. Switch to Shrine.

2. If there's a mining lux, Settle on lux, research Mining. Sell lux. Rush Shrine.

Or some such. At that difficulty, you should have no problems getting a religion unless you intentionally ignore it.

As fir the OP: You can trade excesses for WLtK's. The pantheon bonus lets you get faith (even if you don't get a religion, that faith will allow you to buy great people.)

 

[Gamewizard]

How large of a military are we talking about here? It seems quite easy to find defensble ground and just do the meatshield + ranged units thing to grind the AI down.

I tried playing king but it got really old being the last one to grab a pantheon (because the AI starts with pottery and builds shrines first).

No offense my friend, but if you are complaining that there is no use for gold in the late game on PRINCE...well, I don't think there is much of an argument to make. Prince is super easy...I don't think you even need 1 military unit to win at that level if you handle your diplomacy right.

If grabbing a pantheon first or second is your problem then there are deeper problems with your gameplay. Please do not get insulted, but you are doing something wrong...are you micromanaging your tiles? This is essential early game where every hammer is precious.

When you make it up to Immortal level, heck even Emperor, then come back and try to argue that there is too much gold late game.

 

[Priah77]

Maybe I read this forum wrong... but did you just complain about the game being too easy when youre playing below king?

Play deity and get back to us. Ive never once in a single game had "too much gold." I dont even understand what that means. The AI will usually dow you around turn 35 to 40 on deity with at least eight units. We are talking chariot archers, probably a catapult or two.

My latest game Bismark somehow hit civil service at turn 60. Fighting off a never ending swarm of pikemen with archers... not fun.

 

[The_Quasar]

Inevitably you reach a point where you are making something like 500+ gold per turn and can buy anything you want. All your cities are maxed out on buildings. You cant use the gold on wonders. You can only use it to buy units, but buying units with garrisons in the city is an incredible pain in the ass (move garison out of city, buy units turn after turn, move them back when done).

And you usually dont need to mass buy units anyway..

So what's gold for at this point? Sure, you can throw 1k+ gold at CSes. If you wanted to. I usually find that it gets too annoying to manage CS influence at this stage...i have a core group of long term CS allies that i never spend gold on but still somehow retain influence, and then there's the CSes i fight for but the AI just spams coups on. Inevitably one of their coups suceeds and i lose a ton of influence.

I don't know, it just seems gold is so much less valuable compared to older titles, because you can no longer use it on wonders and there's so few buildings after the industrial age. Medical labs are pointless when your cities are near maxed out in terms of pop, i can't recall a single game where i had to use recycling centers...

It seems quite obvious you should move up a level or two, as then the issues you have would not occur.

 

[smallfish]

My latest game Bismark somehow hit civil service at turn 60. Fighting off a never ending swarm of pikemen with archers... not fun.

Pikemen is still alright... those are landsknechts. Really cheap to spam (1 per turn in a city, especially Deity AI cities) and since Pikes are real strong in GnK...

:nightmare:

 

[NukeAJS]

Wha ...

It definitely has uses. Discover a new tech that enables unit upgrades, a new kind of unit, or a new kind of building and put them immediately in all your controlled cities.

Or buy-off CSs or other Civs if you're going for a diplomatic victory. Heck, buying off Civs is often a key to an effective conquest game. You typically don't want to be fighting more than one civ and paltry 1k gold gifts go a long way towards temporarily repairing relationships with the "You are a warmongering menace!" haters.

Maybe the real question is, if you're amassing so much gold/city buildings/units, are you sure you're on the correct difficulty? Try bumping it up by a level or two?

 

[Question]

My point is that by a certain stage of the game you have more than enough money to do whatever you want because you already have your cities developed and a core group of CS allies + spies to keep them for you.

Rush buying units when you already have a sizable army doesn't serve any purpose unless you are trying to inflate your military score.

Only thing left is to buy up every CS on the planet.

 

[Moriarte]

Sounds like you should conquer the world to make the game less boring for you .

 

[nokmirt]

Is this GnK or vanilla?

 

[smallfish]

Is this GnK or vanilla?

Given that it was posted in GnK fora before the merge, it is GnK

 

[Socratatus]

You can never have too much Gold.

Although i`ve never done so well to have 500+ per turn. i`ve made about 124+ per turn max. I thought that was good.

 

[Nargluj]

Buy nukes? You can never have enough nukes. If you can't, buy uranium and then buy nukes.

 

[nokmirt]

Given that it was posted in GnK fora before the merge, it is GnK

Except there was no way to know that. I don't memorize all the threads myself, do you?

I like having a lot of gold in the late game. It makes me feel successful somehow.

 

[loki75]

In my immortal games, I just never ever had 500gpt. Getting enough gold and happiness is a constant struggle until I launch, I barely make it over 1000 gold in treasury until I need to buy something. At the same time, most AIs are swimming into cash and Austria is oinking CSs after CSs making my life miserable because I can't get luxuries to keep my happiness afloat. Now, that's a challenge.