Gold without trading posts?

[Crow, of Earth]

I'd like to try a no trading post game, such as the no cottage games played in civ4, but it seems that getting gold is a bit more difficult in civ5, or at least that's my impression so far.

I've read a very good advice about getting gold from the AI and it seemed to work great very early on; however, as with civ4, when playing king, the AI simply doesn't have that much to offer. I get 400-500 gold for selling them a resource, but when the deal ends, they have around 100 gold.

Of course, another problem for me is that I... didn't quite get the hang of no-cottage games either and gold for maintenance was my problem there as well, although it seems to be more important in civ5.

Did anyone manage to play without trading posts? Do you have some basic guidelines for how this works?

 

[pi-r8]

ironically this would be easiest on deity, where the AI always has tons of gold to trade you. Even on immortal they tend to run out of gold.

If you want to generate it yourself instead of milking the AIs, the best is probably building scouts and disbanding them for 10g each. Pretty tedious though. You can also run merchants in your cities, same as civ 4.

One way that might be more fun would be to create a huge wilderness reserve to "farm" barb encampments. That works best with Songhai of course. But really, trading posts are so crucial i don't see how you could play without them.

 

[dannythefool]

It seems to be hard to play without them, not only because of gold but also science if you are so inclined. +Gold buildings do provide merchant slots but they aren't available early enough, and I'm not sure the great merchants will compensate for the merchant slot having otherwise worse yield than a trading post. I do think that all the extra golden ages from your other great people would help though.

 

[aimlessgun]

I've played fine with no/minimal trading posts thus far. Not intentionally as a challenge really, I'm just stuck in Civ4 mode where my brain thinks 1-2 food > 2 commerce, must build farm.

Anyways I don't go bankrupt but obviously you don't get enough gold to rushbuy many things either. All your gold basically goes to maintaining city states.

The exception is Arabia. I play on deity, so they generally have money, and with arabia that money becomes my money. Was running 200 gpt with almost no TPs last game as Arabia on Deity, and that's with me prioritizing upfront payment over GPT deals. I get the impression that 200 gpt is pretty crappy for modern age compared to TP spam though hehe.

 

[alpaca]

Sounds like an interesting challenge. I think the way to go is mindless city spam (who'd have thought that I would make such a comment, eh?)

Let me elaborate: You want as many trade routes as possible with as little road upkeep as possible. This means, you pack them as close together as possible. Don't let your cities grow too much unless you can get a merchant or something specialist.

I think the best civ for this is China who get +4 gold per city on their library, another nice source of cash for your trade-post-derived empire, and another reason to found as many cities as possible.

If you play on a high difficulty setting, luxury-resource multiplying Arabia becomes an option (and this gives you a nice incentive to build those markets). Persia sounds nice, too. You want to stay as long in golden ages as possible to maximize rivers, and they have a special bank building which is not to sneeze at.

I recently calculated that building scouts and gifting them to city states is a lot better than selling them. Scouts yield +2 influence per item, which is worth about 16.7 gold (assuming 250 gold = 30 influence, which is only true at the start), so you get a hammer per gold exchange ratio of more than 2/3

 

[aimlessgun]

I recently calculated that building scouts and gifting them to city states is a lot better than selling them. Scouts yield +2 influence per item, which is worth about 16.7 gold (assuming 250 gold = 30 influence, which is only true at the start), so you get a hammer per gold exchange ratio of more than 2/3

Wow that is a great idea. And the influence gains never diminish!

 

[Cincinnatus C.]

You could just legendary start and hope for four gold sources in your capital, like I got with Washington one game.

But seriously, selling luxury resources is highly useful and efficient. I often do even with no duplicates so I can "save" the excess happiness for a time when a golden age is more profitable (when I have more cities).

 

[the streak]

I war an AI, slap them around a bunch, raze a city and then sue for peace. Easily nets you 100gpt for 30 turns or however long before another war breaks out. On higher difficulties the AI makes so much gpt that you can milk it pretty hard.

re: city state gifting, by the time you walk your scout over to the state, you've probably paid at least 2 turns of upkeep, which might kill the value.

 

[Sumendar]

You can gift units to city states from anywhere on the map via the city state diplomacy menu (with the gold gifting options etc.). The unit disappears instantly and appears with a 3-turn delay.

 

[the streak]

Oh right. I'm really skeptical of donating units from far away (sometimes they just never make it to the CS), so I usually walk it into their borders.

 

[Bibor]

The easiest way to get money? Conquer cities and sell them to the highest bidder. Even a crappy 4-pop city (pop gets halved after capture) can go for several thousand gold. I presume capitals are worth considerably more. The only downside is that the new cities are just going to boost an already huge economy civ. The upside is that these will be puppets on your continent, which means you can easily recapture them if relations start deteriorating

 

[KrikkitTwo]

well ways to get gold
Cities: Trading posts, Merchants, Special Buildings (China)

Trade Routes: Require pop

War: Conquer Barbs, Cities, Pillage

Diplomacy: Sell things (Resources, Cities)

Production: (Currently Build disband Scout is the way to build Wealth)


Gold costs to cut:
Buildings (key for Happiness)
Unit costs
Roads, Railroads

Upgrading
Buying things
City-States

 

[Krall]

Sounds like an interesting challenge. I think the way to go is mindless city spam (who'd have thought that I would make such a comment, eh?)

Let me elaborate: You want as many trade routes as possible with as little road upkeep as possible. This means, you pack them as close together as possible. Don't let your cities grow too much unless you can get a merchant or something specialist.

I think the best civ for this is China who get +4 gold per city on their library, another nice source of cash for your trade-post-derived empire, and another reason to found as many cities as possible.

If you play on a high difficulty setting, luxury-resource multiplying Arabia becomes an option (and this gives you a nice incentive to build those markets). Persia sounds nice, too. You want to stay as long in golden ages as possible to maximize rivers, and they have a special bank building which is not to sneeze at.

I recently calculated that building scouts and gifting them to city states is a lot better than selling them. Scouts yield +2 influence per item, which is worth about 16.7 gold (assuming 250 gold = 30 influence, which is only true at the start), so you get a hammer per gold exchange ratio of more than 2/3

Just curious since I can't try this out while at work but:

Do scouts still produce influence if they are killed off?

And for the stupid question, if you gift 10 scouts to a city state with only 9 open hexes available what would happen? Assuming it's land locked with other civs.

 

[alpaca]

Just curious since I can't try this out while at work but:

Do scouts still produce influence if they are killed off?

And for the stupid question, if you gift 10 scouts to a city state with only 9 open hexes available what would happen? Assuming it's land locked with other civs.

You get the influence for gifting the unit, doesn't matter what they do with it afterwards. I think the CS sends its units some tiles outwards but it'd be interesting to see

 

[Crow, of Earth]

Thank you all for the information!

That's rather bad news, though, as it seems trading posts are very important in this game. I played another game last night, prince Ramkhanhaeng and decided to try for a culture victory. I didn't think enough about it, so I didn't get the Oracle, which could have saved me a few turns, and I didn't go with piety because I wanted rationalism a bit more, but I managed it in the end.

I only built farms, mines and lumber improvements, I forgot their name, but I still had some gold. I saw that in this game, due to the fact that building currency is at a rate of 10% of production, building currency buildings is very worth it, I was very impressed by the mints for my no-TP cities (I had 1 silver in 2 cities and 2 silver in capital) and more impressed by markets and banks.

I still got some gold every 45 turns from the AI for luxury resources, but all in all, I don't think I did too well. Washington was at +300 gold per turn, although he was the runaway warmonger of the planet and had a lot of cities, while I had 3 to keep SP costs down.

I think I'll try TPs and more cities in my next game, no TPs feels more suited for those who need the extra science early on for some key military tech to take over the world.

 

[crazymarco]

I am not always a rich people in the game. I just manage not to be bankrupt thoughout the game.

IMO, even you built TP, you can hardly run it. For a city, it is always more profitable to run tiles with improvements other than TPs. Like different kinds of resources which will have more yields. Even it is not resources, if you build farms or mines or lumbers on tile, you will get Food or Hammer other Gold, which sounds more important for the game. And even I do fully utilize my Pop., I will switch to specialist other than running a TPed plain with only 1F1P2G.

Of course, it is better to have revenue for any kinds of game. Like buying buildings, armys and even maintaining relationship with CS. But I guess Food and Hammer are more important.

 

[alpaca]

I am not always a rich people in the game. I just manage not to be bankrupt thoughout the game.

IMO, even you built TP, you can hardly run it. For a city, it is always more profitable to run tiles with improvements other than TPs. Like different kinds of resources which will have more yields. Even it is not resources, if you build farms or mines or lumbers on tile, you will get Food or Hammer other Gold, which sounds more important for the game. And even I do fully utilize my Pop., I will switch to specialist other than running a TPed plain with only 1F1P2G.

Of course, it is better to have revenue for any kinds of game. Like buying buildings, armys and even maintaining relationship with CS. But I guess Food and Hammer are more important.

Nope, they're not. What do you do with the food? You let your cities grow. That's only useful in certain cases, like when you're not going for a golden age, want to improve science and have enough happiness.

What do you do with the hammers? Create buildings or units. Buildings only make sense if you get something useful out of them, for example money, which requires you to work gold tiles. Units are not useful to build a lot of the time, either. Most buildings even cost maintenance which you need to get from somewhere.

Add to this the great uses of gold: Gold can buy things where you need them, when you need them. If you have some stockpile you can buy a colosseum immediately in that newly-founded city and you can buy three or four units if an opponent surprisingly declares war on you and you need to boost your army in a hurry (so you can save on maintenance costs a bit). You can also convert it to science by buying universities and such.

A trade post also adds 2 gold while a mine only adds 1 hammer. In Civ4, food and hammers were more important than gold, in Civ5 food is situational and hammers are only useful if you have enough gold to do something with them.

 

[EverNoob]

Tried playing once without trading posts using Romans and a specialist economy on immortal. I was running scientists and merchants with Freedom policies. Managed to build the Hagia Sophia as well. It was actually not bad considering it was my first time playing them. The trick was to build many smaller cities so you could run more specialists. I think if I tried it again I would get better results.

 

[bluedevil99]

I actually, quite unintentionally, have an essentially no trading posts game going right now. I'm playing Arabia on Immortal/Large Archipalego and between using Bazaars and selling the excess luxury resources to the 9 AI players, the extra income from trade routes, and the fact i'm running scientists and merchants in every city, I haven't needed TPs (I've built a few but I don't think I've worked any). On archipelago especially, the larger map is easier since you have more trade partners, more city states to ally with, and it's pretty easy to keep everybody happy. Of course you're not getting many if any wonders, but frankly except for ChItz I'm not that big a fan of wonders in CiV anyway.

 

[Krieger66]

Originally Posted by PieceOfMind
You might find some relevant tips in this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=390901

For example, note that the gold earned from trade routes of a city with the capital is 1.25 * (size of city), so growing cities larger is one way to help increase funds to support those buildings.
Also, minimise the number of high maintenance buildings you build. Build more trading posts, perhaps.

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sadly, I have more trading posts than anything else maybe Ill try that ai milking thing
I should ixnay on some of the trading posts and build farms then??

there is something seriously wrong here, my ally who was making about 30 gold per turn, 6 turns later is now LOSING 45 a turn conveniantly coinciding with my economic problem. we have a defensive pact and Ive seen arabia massing a few troops on my borders

could a pact of secrecy be doing this?