Gold without trading posts?

[Stanislaw]

I was curious if people can get by without building (almost) no trading posts, so I tried a Random Civ, Fractal Map, Standard Speed game for the sake of experimenting. The only trading posts I built were on the tundras and deserts since I couldn't build any other improvement (you can build Farms on deserts, but they are extremely pointless), but otherwise I maximized production improvements - so mines and lumbermills wherever possible. I even cut down Jungles for that one extra production from plains.

I was distracted by multiple wars and was trapped inside a pretty small area and hence had a less-than-ideal start so I couldn't spread my cities ICS style fast enough, but I'm happy and quite surprised by what I came up with:

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

I'd say 124 gold/turn from (almost) no trading posts even though I'm not in a Golden Age is pretty good, no?

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Could we see the Econ Screen?

How much of your output is Trade routes?.. and I'm Guessing you ran a decent # of Merchant Specialists.

 

[Pat007]

Another idea, cities sell for a ton.
churning out settlers to make small 1 pop cities that are then sold to an AI for huge sums well out of proportion to the effort required.

you can place them on the worst area's immaginable and with the cash buy at least 3 early game combat units..that would take way longer to produce, early on this would make a formiddable difference in theory.

Anyone wanna try it out ?

 

[Elliot]

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

Wow, you're right. Selling cities seems really exploitative. In my current game I can sell a size 4 city with no buildings to a civ on the other side of the world for 255 gold and 45 gold per turn + other benefits. That horsehockey city is not worth 1605 gold! This is turn 150 in an emperor game, normal speed, continents.

To really exploit this, play Deity where the AI has tons of gold. Build cities just to sell them to the AI. Then use the money to buy up military to capture more cities to sell. Get maritime food bonuses to grow the city fast since higher pop cities sell for more.

 

[Elliot]

Another idea, cities sell for a ton.
churning out settlers to make small 1 pop cities that are then sold to an AI for huge sums well out of proportion to the effort required.

you can place them on the worst area's immaginable and with the cash buy at least 3 early game combat units..that would take way longer to produce, early on this would make a formiddable difference in theory.

Anyone wanna try it out ?

You beat to it! I'm going to try out a Deity game where I exploit this. Once you get some maritime food, let the cities grow a little to get more money. Small cities grow so fast with maritime food.

 

[Stanislaw]

Update on the current (almost) no trading-post ICS style game I have:

Spoiler :

Almost all of my cities are above 15 population. Most of them currently hover over the 20 range as I kind of forgot to prioritize Hospitals/Medical Labs. Would be higher otherwise...

For the record, only Culture and Time victories are on hence why I haven't just gone all out and won the game. I like building buildings too much for my own good. Given how much culture I'm generating per turn, I think I can actually get Culture victory despite the fact I've built my cities ICS style (three trees complete as of now).

I know the Demographics aren't quite accurate due to the fact that I'm in a Golden Age, but the biggest thing I want to point out in the screenshot is just how much excess happiness I have right now. In fact, because I have such a high population due to my high food output, all of my cities are pumping out Great People like no tomorrow, and even if I'm run out of them I can enter into another Golden Age in 10~15 turns because I have such high excess happiness. Of the last 100 turns or so, I've probably been in a Golden Age for like 60~70 turns.

Oh yeah, I'm almost at a point where I'm getting Future Technology every turn too. *laugh*

 

[aimlessgun]

Wow, you really like building buildings.

 

[Crow, of Earth]

I don't understand how you people manage to do that.

I've just tried another game, conquered 5 civs and kept another civ to 1 city with 1 pop and poor snow tiles just in case I want to go with RAs. I have 20ish cities and a lot of space to settle cities in, but happiness is barely above 0, and it was even below -10 for quite some time. I'm getting very little gold per turn, and despite being halfway through the turn count, I am still in the renaissance era. Built/bought monuments, libraries and markets in most cities and some wonders here and there, although the war effort did take a slight toll.

 

[PestWulf]

I'm working this out myself, I tend to go for long conquest only games so I get the chance to build a large empire and fight some huge battles. I imagine taking the policy and wonder that reduces unhappy for city plants to zero is key. Along with some per-city happy policies like the honor one or the ...liberty? getting my policies confused. Anyway, with those policies, wonder and just one of the three standard happy buildings you are looking at a size 8 city that does not touch the global happy pool (meaning luxuries, trades, wonders, etc). I think the other two standard happy buildings will let you go to size 15 without touching the global. Then you have some happy buildings which are situational like the circus, but will probably average out to another 1 to 2 happy empire wide. So you should be able to get every city to around 17 to 18 size without touching empire wide happy generators.

In addition, it would seem that ICS style of play really augments this because several cities could swap resources around like horses to build the circus. I haven't tested, but I don't think once the building has been built that you lose it's benefit if you lose the resource that let you build it. If you do, no worries you can still get a 17 or so size city and maintain an enormous happy surplus. the caveat is you need to get to those policies, wonders and technologies to unlock the additional happiness before you spiral out of control and shut down. As long as you plan it out and hit the important points on your schedule you should be able to support large cities while maintaining a large happy surplus.

If you want an ICS style of play or hybrid, I'm finding that growing a little at first and nabbing 3 policies before really exploding helps. I'm grabbing the +1hammer per city policy as quickly with my first 3 picks, and while doing that making sure my tech gets me to Colosseum's so that even with early, small cities I can get one built in 25 to 30 turns in a bad case. Other things I look for are areas of high food that I can share with new cities. Get one to size 3 asap and switch off with another city to bring it up. Usually can nab at least one hammer square to help the early production as well as keeping me competitive in science.

Currently, I'm still screwing up as I'm trying to find my balance, but they are fun learning experiences. My current dilemma (i'm playing Songhai to make it easier for me) is trying to decide if I want to spend my first batches of money on expansion, happiness or military.

My current thought is to try and kill two birds and save up my money to do a 500 or 750 buy in to a culture city-state that has a luxury available. Would help me get my still get some policies despite a bit of expansion and would tide me over on some happiness until I can get productive enough to start pumping out some buildings. The trade network seems to be completely adequate to keep my afloat monetarily with the buildings.

My real problem is when I tried this on diety, I kept losing my city-states to the other civs, so i'm wondering if I should just invest the first 650 or so into putting down my mud pyramid mosque insteaad. Not as much, slows my expansion because i'm down some initial happiness, but is much safer and expands my city area quicker. bah, still so many options to look at!!!

Currently I'm looking at trying to go with max range city placement, huge populations and rely on specialist policies to keep my happiness under control. Not sure how it will do,or how high the cities can go this way, but it's going to be fun testing it

 

[SMA333M]

Try a farm economy.. I tryied and it went fine.