How do I place my cities without going in dept?

Every time I place my city when I get like +2 glold a turn at the begining of the game, whenever I fast expand it shrinks to like -5 a turn. How do I get this gold to go up with out it droping?

 

-.- Work more commerce tiles than you have maintenance.

 

1) Currency to build wealth.
2) Code of Laws to build courthouses.
3) Establish trade routes with other civilizations.

 

don't expand too often, look for the most important sites that ensure you will probably get the other ones and expand into those when you can afford.

don't be afraid to turn the slider way down when you're pumping dudes out. 3 cities at ~1800 bc is decent benchmark.

 

Turn the slider down during the expansion phase. When you get to about 30% research, that's a good sign to stop expanding and work on consolidating what you have.

Also, workers workers workers.

 

20% is typically the killer. You can exist at 30-40% quite happily AS LONG AS YOU'RE RUNNING SCIENTISTS. If you're not then 30% is terrible

Work commerce, establish trade routes, build GLH/get a religious shrine, get libs and work a couple of scientists in each of your major cities. These are all relatively solid early game plans for dealing with the cost of expansion. Then follow that up with Courthouses and/or Markets. Calendar is also a good tech for unlocking profitable resources.

Currency is probably my favoured tech cause it gives you both an extra trade route in each city and allows you to sell tech and resources to the AI for gold.

OH also Gold. If you're early expanding and you find a gold/gems/silver spot, grab it. Working that tile will pay for a couple of cities.

 

Fast expansion is a key to success - land is power in this game, so practicing how to recover your economy can pay a ton of dividends as you get better at the game.

I think it's great practice to expand to the point where you're running 0% research, and try to crawl back out of the hole. As I was learning monarch & emperor levels, I played many games where I would expand or war early on, and be barely making money or even losing money at 0% research, and learned how to come back from it. I experimented a little bit, and sometimes played throwaway games where I would purposely go into strike.

You'll be a much stronger player long term if you can learn this skill. The most important points are getting to the key economic techs - alphabet (build research), currency (trade route), COL sometimes (courthouses), monarchy sometimes (higher happy cap), calendar (if you have key calendar resources). Also, trade extra resources for money after currency if you don't need them - every little bit of gold counts. War can also help if you have excess units from another early war - I remember a keshik game where I was losing money at 0% for about 50 turns straight - didn't matter because I kept conquering cities to take more gold.

You can slowly get your slider back up, and be running at 50-60% after awhile - with more land, that's a much better scenario than running 80-90% with very little land.

 

Hi. It looks like the other have covered most of ways to generate gold.
Depending on the map size, you will notice how many cities you can build "safely" before your research drops. In my games, it tends to be 3-4 cities. You really need to build a lot of workers to chop away the trees for cottages.
Building cottages next to rivers will earn you a lot of gold throughout the entire game.
Then, as SyntaxError said, you can set cities to build Wealth after you have researched Currency, if you still need more gold.

 

There is no way to do what you are asking in the early game. City maintanance and unit maintanance is part of the game and just need to accept it.

What is more important is the number of bulbs you get each turn. This is remedied by working cottages or commerce resources such as gold/gem, etc, connecting you cities to get trade routes opened and connecting your cities to AI cities.

So, as noted by others dropping to 30% may not be a big deal. Run some science specialist in the capital or other city with a library while your cottages become hamlets and beyond. Make sure you learn CoL, Currency and Alph. These are the recovery techs. Now build CH's in high maintanance cities, Market or two (mainly for happy faces if you have the right resources) in high food or high commerce cities. Alpha for trading and occationaly bulding bulbs. Typically you will find that building wealth is better if you have Libraies in main science cities. That way you can increase your science slide.

Finally at this point that you have currency you can start building wealth as you want. Also settled GP's, GM's and shrines will also go fine.

 

Oh nuts. Shaka is in trouble then!

Spoiler :

 

Its okay, he'll have currency in 197 turns then he can trade it for lots of gold.

 

700 BC, 6 beakers per turn... sounds about right . But if you can't get that up to 10 bpt by 0 AD, you're in trouble.

 

Alphabet and mids is a strong combo. 5 specialists and you have 30 base beakers a turn. Soon finish off Currency in 6-7 turns.

Of course if you have alphabet you could be building research anyway.

 

It looks like you are in a position to run the map for a DOM/ Conquest win without researching much else. But changing what tiles you work would help a lot. Switching from the horse in kwaDukuza to a sea tile would eliminate your deficit.

 

He'll have the horse pastured in time, then he can break even.