Help! My finances are in disarray!

[Galumphus]

Help! I kind of suck, I would like some advice!


Late classical
Warlord
I'm Aggr/Creative
7 cities

Terrain improvements: farmed where possible, left forest alone, couple of mines, and around 1 village/town per city. Lots of resources - I'm getting about +4 hammer, +2 commerce because of resources.

City maintenence = 29
Civic upkeep = 13
Inflation = 4
Gross income = 88


Now, I'm at 50% research, so I'm only at -2 coin per turn. I'm trouncing the AI technologically, but it feels like 50% research is really low. Feels like I should be far higher. I assume if I were playing a human they'd be thrashing me in research, because the AI thrashes me in research on Noble.

Given the data above, what would you do? Have I built too much crap, making my maintenance too high? Or am I actually in the right place, and most human players would be about where I am?

Thanks...

 

[Shillen]

If you want to post a save file I could have a look. It's hard to tell without knowing a lot of little details about your game. How many cities, how far is each one from the capital, whether you spread your religion enough, if you have all your trade routes, if you've build courthouses in high maintenance cities, etc.

 

[Qoric]

When i got probelms with money i send missionarys to all my rivals citys

If that doesn't work... Check your civics try to find the one that will support your civ best atm not what you want to be. then change it when you get to the point you need it.
also- make great people jion your citys... well except great artist which you can use on border citys to push thoose pesky borders back.

 

[alva848]

Have I built too much crap, making my maintenance too high?

City improvements don't ad to maintanance.

Open your borders, trade with the AI, build more cottages, markets etc...

 

[lordomni]

Build cottages! I hardly ever farm in this one, cottages are everywhere though. Its got to be done early though, so idon't know how well it will work to start converting things.

Religion! Found a religion and stick it to everyone else! The more of their cities have your religion, the more their cities ar epaying at your great temples once you have a prophet create them.

Those are my two big tricks. Stateproperty helps as well.

 

[Erusama]

Specialists, specialists, specialists.

Each scientist will give you +3 beakers. Whenever I get a city that's even on the health/disease or happy/unhappy scale, I just add scientists to stop the growth until I get improvements. With enough of these, you can turn down your science slider without losing a turn on your tech. Either that or you could assign merchants (for +3 gold/turn) to absorb the cost of your research. Cities with lots of food should be easily able to take one or two specialists and still grow.