Help! No Gold!

What if you're done building everything that you want to build (I'm more inclined to stop building military units after a while) + all the city and cultural improvements? It happens to me all the time in my games and I don't know what to do but to just do wealth. Was Capitalization in Civ 2 better?
 
hbdragon88, if you have built everyting you want to build in every city, then walth may be a good option, but as cracker wrote, then you're playing on a too easy difficulty.

If you have built everything you want to build in some cities and really need to buy luxuries from another civ for more money than you have (and you don't wnat to take the luxury by war), then wealth may be a working option for a short time.

The normal scenario though is that you have much development left in the cities far from your capital. You then have two ways of hurrying their production (sans leaders):

1) Rush the production by using money. The money can (partly) come from other cities producing wealth.
2) Rush the production by disbanding units built in other cities.

Now the first method may be the most intuitive, but it is the least effective. If effectively gives 1 shield in the target city for every 16th shields produced in the high production city. The second method gives 1 shield for every 4th shield produced in the high production city and is therefore 4 times more effective.

So wealth is a waste of production that should almoest never be used.
 
Originally posted by mr_han_solo
Help Me Please I'm running out of gold!
HOw do I use Mine to get gold to my cities?
Can anyone give me tips on how to get money?
Thank You,
Brian James
Click to expand...

I think that there is some useful information in this thread for you, but if you could be more specific concerning your current situation and difficulty level, we can help you better. In the mean while, take some time to read the the faq and the war academy. The article written by MAJ might sum it all up for you.

Bamspeedy: I did know that there was something wrong with 'wealth', but you've got the wording pretty good! Is this in the faq? If not, it should.
 
Depending a bit on your situation, and if you are a religius civ, you might also, as a 3th option, swich to communism and build some stuff in the outer city's, then swich back! This also complements draft-disbanding! :)
 
Originally posted by Civanator
well democracy kills your military cause of the no free support.
So most of that doubled commerce is just going down the drain and you only get a 10-40+ gain unless you have big enough cities. Well that is how it is in most of my games.
Click to expand...

Maybe you haven't tried it at all. You haven't tried it? You haven't tried it. You haven't tried it!

How many units do you have anyway? If you can support 100 units for free then you would have had a whole lot of cities/towns to do that. Or big cities/metropolises if you have a few cities. (Monarchy supports 2 for towns, 4 for cities, 8 for metros).

So I've lightly proven that for Monarchy to be effective in the "army support" factor you need to have lots of towns/cities or a moderate number but huge cities/metros. You'd be fairly advanced then. Oh, of course you need to have a lot of units to support, duh!

Now look at democracy. If you have a lot of towns/cities then you'll be getting a huge benefit from those. For each size 6 city you'll be getting 6gpt more. But why stop at size 6? At fairly advanced ages you'd have size 12 cities easy. So that's 12 gpt more from those cities. How many size 7-12 cities you might have? Let's say two dozen - that's easy to put up. You would then be getting anywhere from 150 to 250 gpt more.

From those two dozen cities you can have a maximum army support of 96 units at Monarchy.

Democracy has no army support. So what?! Take away those 100 gpt and you'll still be getting a huge return of 50 to 150 gpt. And I still haven't gone through corruption and Demo owns Monarchy in that arena! And with the advent of Hospitals! OMG! Gold will flood your nation like molten lava. There won't be no stopping it!

So my (humbly put) tip is.

Beeline to Monarchy. Stay there and do all the Great Leader generation you might need. When you have enough cities to make Democracy worthwhile stop warmongering, go Democracy and build. Don't just stay on Monarchy because everything's been going well so far. Make it better! Your research should finally become competitive against the AI's. Ever noticed how the AI always comes up ahead in tech even if you have libraries and universities in all your 'good' cities? It's because of their democracy. At this point you should not see GLeaders as very necessary to make yours a great nation. You should already have built your Forbidden Palace and feel that you don't need a GL to build all the wonders you'll need.

If going for a UN or Space Age or Cultural Victory it's imperative (except for tight circumstances e.g. constant war) to go for Democracy. I have a knack for stating the obvious but my words are not for the Civ gods. Heck, I know I learned from them! It's for you threadstarter and the like (and for my forgetful brain).:scan:

I find that civers hate democracy because of the 'civitizens' dislike for constant wars - the fall to anarchy being the ultimate negative factor. But maybe this may help:
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3acad_demo_war.shtml by moonsinger. I used a fair number of strategies he wrote in this

hmm... maybe I should try going for republic instead of monarchy for a change... as an experiment...the commerce bonus is the same it seems...I should give it a try although I do like 500-year wars in the early stages of the game.
 
I wouldn't underestimate how effective a civ mass 'producing' wealth can be. If you're starting to get behind on techs and have most or all the city improvements you want (and by that time a fully worked land) then putting wealth on can be. I'd rather be making gold than the 40th worker that won't do a thing.

Having a huge resource of gold allows you to buy any tech that you need (assuming you have the gold), plus you can rush build anything should you need to. Try telling me being able to build 30 modern armours in one turn is useless ;)
 
Shockwave,

I assure you that Bamspeedy and I are not underestimating the wealth function. This wealth tool is put in the game primarily to suck you into wasting excess production that could be used to win teh game more effectively and increase your score.

The logic for building wealth and then using it to rush units in cities demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of how the game works.

Shields to wealth is a 4 to 1 loss. (8 to 1 before economics) Then converting wealth back to shields is again at a 4 to 1 exchange ratio. This means that building a 120 shield modern armor unit relying on the wealth functions will cost you 4 x 4 x 120 shields or 1920 shields. (the exchange ratio for wealth to shields is actually 8 to 1 when the full balance is required).

If you build cavalry, longbows, and or swordsmen and use them to disband and rush the MAs then the disbanding function yields a 1 to 4 shield harvest compared to the original cost of the unit. (eg. cavs cost 80 shields but yield 20 shields) so this makes your MAs cost 4 X 120 or 480 shields each.

Furthermore, full rushing units and improvements wastes the current shield production for the city because the cash rush overlaps and duplicates these shields.

If someone wastes enough time to produce wealth and then pop out 30 MA all in one turn. I could take that exact same game and produce 120 to 140 modern armor using the same resources.

The game deceives you into making this sort of mistake, but when you play some test games of the concepts you will quickly see the light.

NEVER PRODUCE WEALTH unless it is to balance a short term cash emergency. NEVER
 
I don't play for score, I play for fun :) IMO I find it a cheap way to rush build (Build-disband-build-disband) the same way I found stacking 40 workers to build a forest then cut it down ad infinitum a cheap way :) YMMV but NO-ONE plays the game wrong if they are having fun :)
 
Cracker, I can see your point in how inefficant Wealth is if you're using it to rush-build things. But what if you don't need to build anything, or at least don't need anything enough for you to want to rush it, and you want some extra cash for another reason? For example, in my current game (a Chieftain game, BTW) I am going for a diplomatic victory, and I'm at the near end of the game. I have quite a bit of gold, and I plan on giving it, along with my techs, to some other civs so that they will probably vote for me. I might as well have some more gold, right? (It will probably give me an extra couple thousand gold.) Nothing else will ever be worth building, since I am probably going to win fairly soon, so isn't this an example of when producing wealth would be OK?
 
Well like somebody mentioned eariler then it's too easy for you. But it's not for me because I'm struggling to attempt to win culturally. I always build the first 7 out of 10 but then start losing the race; it eventually gridlocks until 2050 where "You have suffered an embarrasing defeat!"
 
willj,

First, chieftain is too low of a level for anyone to be playing the game at and expect any of the game parts to deliver a functional experience, this has nothing to do with you or your skill but reflects the fact that cheiftain has the cost of every event doubled for all your opponents. Its almost like the time warp movies that teleport a supercarrier back in time to WW1 or before Dec 7, 1941. The cost factor applies to everything on cheiftain including food, growth, wonders, units, and improvements and it basically incapacitates your opponents to an extreme level.

Warlord will at least get you close to a functional competition at a cost factor of 12 versus your 10.

Wealth is still not a functional use for your production when you can do other things. If you have all eight luxuries then you can give the extra units away. You can give away your extra strategic resources since in many cases your power will be so great that the enemies cannot possibly use the resources to harm you.

You can build extra workers and then park them in your capital and give them to the other civs as gifts. A worker costs 10 shields and 1 pop point and then has a trade value of 27 to 30 gold units. If you take the same shields and turn them into wealth they are only worth 2 gold units so you get 15 times as much good will. (don't do this on higher difficulty levels because workers and pop points are too valuable, but on the chieftain difficulty level your opponents are so incapacitated that it cannot hurt you).

If you are desperate for good will, found cities for your opponents and then give them away if your are on good enough terms.

You can also pick one of the weaker civs who will probably not vote for you and then enlist your expected friends in an MPP to destroy the nonsupportive nation. Just give all your conquered cities to your expected friends. Your friends will be happier when they think they are winning in the world even though you control their every move.

Finally if you totally run out of things to do, you can form a human wall of units and cut off trade to any of your expected non supporters who do not have the flight technology. This will create more opportunities for you to trade your luxuries and resources.

NEVER BUILD WEALTH, even if your only objective is to drag out a chieftain level game.
 
hbdragon88,

I think you sound as though you coulkd use a little strategy help.

If you have read some of the strategy articles here on CFC and this did not provide you with any help, then I suggest you start a help thread of your own and focus on one of your games but focus on the beginning of the game. If you are having difficulties like you describe then the cure will likely be found in how you play the game prior to 1000BC and not in how many tanks or nukes you might build.

Take some notes as to choices you are making in the build queue of your first 3 or 4 cities and then post a save game ahnd ask for help.

You should not be struggling with the game with all the resources and knowledgable people that we have here to help you.

I should emphasize, you need to start your own thread asking for help because this will veer far off the subject of this discussion.
 
Originally posted by cracker
NEVER BUILD WEALTH.
Click to expand...

I'm curious about the dictum to never build wealth (especially since cracker generally knows what's what with the game). In close games, towards the end of a game that is coming down to a spacerace when city improvements mean nothing, I've often found that setting core cities' production to wealth (those that aren't working on a SS part pre-build) will allow me to increase my science spending rate without sacrificing my treasury. If I need to develop outlying cities, it is pretty straightforward that build-and-disband is a more efficient (and monotonous :)) shield transfer mechanism, but if all I'm looking for is available cash, isn't wealth a viable alternative?
 
Catt,

Your familiarity with the game is strong enough to help you differentiate between the few exceptions to the Never Build Wealth edict.

If you look closely, that edict is usually framed by the words "except to balance short term cash needs".

An example of a good use of wealth is when you bang up against the integer values of the research slider at higher percentages. When a tech costs 3000 gold and you are actually forced to spend 3216 gold because of 10% increments of your economy, you can gain turns on the research and actual save cash by using wealth to push a slight increase in your economy.

If you are researching a tech at say 60% and your economy is almost balanced at no defecit and you can get the tech in 5 turns then you might look at the case where adding two or three cities into wealth will push your economy up just a percentage point or two and allow you to research the tech in 4 turns.

You still might try the selling workers trick first though because the yield is higher if that works. 4 slave workers converts the equivalent of 40 shields into 100 gold while you would need 400 shields to get that amount of gold out of wealth.

One thing I have started doing almost every time, is to over-research on the first turn or two and then tune back down on the subsequent turns. This gives me more flexibility to match the research percentages to get the outcome total to match the cost of the tech. You can see some of this integer match problem when you increase the research slider and the research turns may not change. The game does not help you to do this easily because of how it displays costs. I know the cost of some of the key technologies by heart and then I use the zero base net economy output that you can find when the research and luxury sliders are set to zero.
 
What you do is you "over-research" as you called it all the way, when you only have 2 turns left you decrease the research slider as low as you can while still having 2 turns left to discover the advance, when it is 1 turn left you do the same.

You could of course just decrease the research slider on the last turn (1 turn left to discovery) but you might not get as much money because if you reduce it to 10% (the least research possible without turning it off) and it still is just 1 turn to discovery than you could have squized a few more pennies out if you had started to decrese the slider when there were 2 turns left.
 
Originally posted by hbdragon88
What if you're done building everything that you want to build (I'm more inclined to stop building military units after a while) + all the city and cultural improvements? It happens to me all the time in my games and I don't know what to do but to just do wealth.
Click to expand...


What do do with all the wealth? Easy! When I'm done with conquering the world, I would turn happiness to the max. Every day in my kingdom is WLTKD day.:)
 
Originally posted by cracker
Catt,

Your familiarity with the game is strong enough to help you differentiate between the few exceptions to the Never Build Wealth edict.

If you look closely, that edict is usually framed by the words "except to balance short term cash needs".
Click to expand...

Yup - I just wanted start a discussion on the very valid exceptions to the rule in the interests of creating a broader knowledge base. "Never build wealth" is an excellent rule of thumb, but like most every rule there are exceptions.

Good example of exceptions, BTW. :)

I haven't tried the 'over-research on the first couple of turns' technique yet, but can see how it might make tech research management more efficient.
 
A good example of the research balance choice would be if you had a tech that would cost 400 beakers (same as 400 gold dedicated the research) and you economy is producing a zero net gain of 99 gold. In this case it would cost you 5 turns to research the tech and you would waste somewhere between 5 and 95 pieces of gold depending on how well you managed the slider.

If you could cabbage just one extra gold per turn from wealth conversion or deficit research then you could gain a turn on the tech tree. For most people this is too much math and it is complicated by the fact that the game does not display helpful things like "you are 1 gold short" or "you are overspending by 123 gold". You have to be familiar with the game and know what techs cost in order to make prudent use of any special tricks to cover the tech/wealth gap.

The "never build wealth" rule has really evolved more to address standard game play mistakes on levels of regent and below. For most of these players, the decision to build wealth just dilutes their power and slows down their progression to more advanced levels in their game.
 
Originally posted by Homie
What you do is you "over-research" as you called it all the way, when you only have 2 turns left you decrease the research slider as low as you can while still having 2 turns left to discover the advance, when it is 1 turn left you do the same.
Click to expand...

-snip-

Sometimes I actually like doing the opposite: when there are 2 turns left to discover the advance, I RAISE the slider until there is 1 turn left to discover. Your income will be negative, but since you'll discover it next turn, this essentially becomes a one-time cost in order to get the advance one turn earlier. Then I can decide whether or not I can afford to do this (most of the time, I can). If not, I do as you suggested and lower the slider while still maintaining the 2 turns left and again at 1 turn left.

It goes without saying that this technique will not work if you're discovering advances at the maximum rate (4 turns), and thus cannot opt to quicken the research by 1 turn. Also, if your slider bar is already high, it may not be possible to produce enough beakers to quicken the research on the last turn.
 
Originally posted by GFandango
-snip-

Sometimes I actually like doing the opposite: when there are 2 turns left to discover the advance, I RAISE the slider until there is 1 turn left to discover.
Click to expand...
Maybe I'm misunderstanding him, but I think what Homie was saying was that when the least amount of turns left possible is 2, lower the science rate all the way down as far as it can go while still having 2 turns left.
However, it doesn't just start at 2. If you want to earn the greatest possible amount of gold, check every single turn since you start researching to see the lowest the bar can go while still having the least possible amount of turns left.
 
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