How do I stop losing money!?

[Seven05]

Grasslands and plains can be used for a few things so they're flexible, you can also get food from city states which can make an otherwise poor city grow well. Remember that science is determined mostly by city size and specialists so a science city needs a good amount of food. Gold works best on coastal cities, especially with 2+ fish/pearls, or cities with several luxury resources nearby. Rivers can work for either gold or science and you can get cities that are good for both. Production cities just need hills (or forests) and enough food to support the mine workers, they also benefit from having resources nearby but that's not critical.

Some building & improvement combinations are really good too. A riverside jungle with a trading post near a city with a university can reach +4 science with the right social policy (technically +6 with the 50% bonus form the university). That same tile will give you +3 gold but if you add in a market and bank it will need to be a pretty large city to be able to support an extra three specialists while still working those tiles. The market and bank have no maintenance though so building them in a bunch of cities won't hurt as much as it does with other buildings.

One thing to keep in mind is that to really get the most out of the city you need to be using specialists. But, if you're not hurting for cash like the OP you can get away with a few extra buildings. A library will give you a few extra beakers in any decent sized city so paying 1 gold for 3-5 beakers may be worth it. The problem there is that the AI governor likes to work science specialists so you may end up losing tile workers if you're not micro managing the city.

So, considering all that I would say 'focus' each city on something but don't worry about making them exclusively science, gold or production cities to the extreme that you would in Civ 4. Just be mindful of the building maintenance and even if you don't micro-manage your cities consider at least checking the box for manual specialist assignment.

 

[Grotius]

Thanks for those suggestions. OK, back at it!

 

[SirTurtle]

Disbanding two units reduced this by 12. ANY two units. Two workers, two MechInf, it was the same reduction either way. Considering how quickly I could replace the workers if needed, it became a no-brainer to disband half of those at least. For the first dozen or so units, it was a very consistent 12 per pair. (Again, note PAIR. Disbanding one unit does nothing half the time, it's an odd/even thing.)

This is a great observation. A corollary is that you should always have an ODD number of units, to get the best unit/maintenance ratios.

 

[pewbeng]

-nvm-

 

[Tennyson]

I like the idea of focusing my cities, but if I do manage to specialize, it's almost always by accident! I look up and realize that one city is doing well with gold, another with production, etc. What sort of terrain is best for each type of specialization? Hills for production, rivers for gold, I guess? What's the best use of grassland, plains, jungle, etc? I'm sure this has been discussed to death, but I'm still struggling with how to build specialty cities.

The difference between tiles is much lower than it was in Civ IV, so specializing a city is possible in most terrains.

You need hills for mines, but otherwise specializing for science, gold, or culture is pretty simple.

 

[cembandit]

trading post the heck out of everything and get maritime food. markets, banks...you dont need gold focus all the time...I often prefer default or production, but yea, if your in trouble gold focus can be nice.

dont be afraid to pop a great person for a golden age, to allow you to get markets/banks whatever in place and trading posts up. the golden age will take you out of debt most likely

WHEN DOING FOCUS PLAY WITH AND GET USED TO MANUAL SPECIALIST ON/OFF

this can be huge...The governor can do odd things on each setting. I run em off in most cities unless SoL wonder or something.

 

[bruntfca]

BAD idea; Wealth is absolutely horrible in Civ 5. It's now Production/10, while Research is Prod/4. Since even your largest Modern-era cities will only have 50-70 production (and remember, all those bonuses from things like Workshops don't apply to Wealth), you're only going to make a tiny amount.

You're actually better off building units and then immediately disbanding them for cash. It's ridiculous.

Haha, thanks for pointing this out. It's a bit worrying really, since it shows that the game designers clearly dropped the ball here.

 

[Lacerda]

Focus your cities. Don't believe the comments form people who haven't played yet that say otherwise. You will waste a TON of gold with a bunch of generic cities loaded up with a bunch buildings. If you specialize them you don't need to build half the buildings there. It's not possible all the time and sometimes you'll find cities that are good at more than one thing so be flexible. For one example if you end up with a city that has several jungle/river tiles around it will be good at both gold and science output if you put trade posts in the jungles rather than chopping them for farms.

This is interesting, but, and please, correct me if I'm wrong, isn't every city independent on its resources?

For example, if in one city I would specialize on Production and Gold, wouldn't that city be immensely flawed with the lack of food, therefore citizens?

Same for vice-versa, specilizing in food would lack production and resources.

The concept is interesting, and curious, but I don't really understand how that would work.
(I'm new to Civilization games btw).

 

[Gozert]

Yeah, you can't have it all... you have to make choices. Of course you need some food to allow a city to grow but having trade posts on grasslands still makes 2 food for example. You will still need a well placed farm or two and having an allied maritime city states certainly helps, but for the rest one can focus on gold. The same goes for production, science and culture, of course.

 

[WuphonsReach]

Yeah, trading posts are a bit overpowered given how dependent everything is on gold production.

Two more gold on a hill is often better then one additional hammer from a mine. And lumber mills are in a similar state of "not good enough".

Gold (and happiness) are the big limiting factors in Large maps.

 

[LastMoccasin]

How does the AI do it? Im playing a game where im losing a lot of money at the same time as Im being taunted by the AI's incredible good fortune. My main example would be the Iroquois who keeps on topping every list (happiness, number of sp's, research etc) at the same time as they are in possession of a huge empire of at least 20+ cities (being on another continent which i haven't explored completely i have to estimate) and a big enough army to fight a winning war against that continents other superpower, all this while, according to the diplomatic interface, they're cashing in 209gp/turn!

Is the AI cheating or is it just maximizing on everything posted so far? Or is there perhaps some other golden path to excel at everything while still being extremely proffitable?

 

[DrwHem]

i think the AI gets benefits or something cause i noticed that they do better with money as well.

 

[DarkSchneider]

I wonder if they even playtested the game far enough to see how things scaled.

 

[DrwHem]

they probobly had people play different eras or something.

 

[Seven05]

How does the AI do it? Im playing a game where im losing a lot of money at the same time as Im being taunted by the AI's incredible good fortune. My main example would be the Iroquois who keeps on topping every list (happiness, number of sp's, research etc) at the same time as they are in possession of a huge empire of at least 20+ cities (being on another continent which i haven't explored completely i have to estimate) and a big enough army to fight a winning war against that continents other superpower, all this while, according to the diplomatic interface, they're cashing in 209gp/turn!

Is the AI cheating or is it just maximizing on everything posted so far? Or is there perhaps some other golden path to excel at everything while still being extremely proffitable?

I always play on large or huge maps so your mileage may vary

Large empires will make a TON of gold from trade routes alone. Markets, banks and stock exchanges cost no building maintenance and are worthwhile even in cities with only a single gold from tiles and they will seriously amplify your income during a golden age. Outside of one or two specialized production centers NONE of the production buildings are worth building. The grannary and similar food buildings are not worth their maintenance and libraries should only be built in cities that are size 4+ (I prefer 6+ for libraries and 8+ for universities). Beyond the monument none of the culture buildings are worth their cost in maintenance. Hapiness buildings are worthwhile everywhere you can build them, that circus in the distant tundra locked size 2 city will let your gold farm grow so you can work more trade posts.

Obviously you'll change some of the building rules depending on your civ. With Russia I end up with a Krepost in almost every city early in the game because the benefit to border growth is huge, particularly cities on the edge of useless land like tundra/snow/desert which potentially hold valuable late game resources.

My current game as Russia I have the largest army (double the average according to the demographics), 22 cities, 6 allied city states, active research agreements with 6 of the 7 remaining AI civs, close to 10,000 gold in the bank and about 150GPT. I'm pulling in about 80 GPT from trade deals. If I disbanded a chunk of my army my GPT would certainly skyrocket but I'm currently using them to pillage ever last tile in Rome's massive territory and when doing that they are making me a TON of gold that isn't figured into my GPT.

What has helped immensly is that a lot of my cities are packing in pretty tight but they're still mostly 8-10 pop due to maritime city states. This means I have many of them running merchant specialists so not only are they provind 8-10 GPT each in trade routes most have gold income of their own around 20 GPT each. If you look at those high income AI civs you'll probably find they have their cities packed in a lot tighter than you do so they're paying substantially less in road maintenance for those valuable trade routes.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

They need to up the military cap. I'm fine with maintenance other than that.

 

[LastMoccasin]

If you look at those high income AI civs you'll probably find they have their cities packed in a lot tighter than you do so they're paying substantially less in road maintenance for those valuable trade routes.

yes, they are in fact built quite a lot closer together, I spread my cities pretty far apart trying to get my hands on as many resources as possible, not counting on that the road-maintenance cost would become such a burden.

Also when I wrote my previous post i didn't take into account that the AI also has golden ages -after a couple of turns their gpt fell to half of what it was before so I guess that explains the 200+ income.

 

[Rittmeyer]

And there's REALLY no point to building railroads; the speed boost they give over roads is small (x3 instead of x2). I'll occasionally build a single rail line across the length of my empire just to shuffle units between fronts, but even that's probably not worth the +1/tile cost.

Learning example of why people should not post in a too affirmative manner, and especially never use expressions like "really" or "never", when everyone is still new in the game.

You just make yourself look completely stupid.

Yes, I'm obviously talking about the production bonus, that is in fact insane in a game in which production is so scarce compared to the previous one ( and which late wonders just seen very very nice).

 

[Spatzimaus]

Yes, I'm obviously talking about the production bonus, that is in fact insane in a game in which production is so scarce compared to the previous one ( and which late wonders just seen very very nice).

No, I still stand by that. Railroads were no-brainers in previous Civ games, they're now not only not a no-brainer, they're now not even a GOOD idea in many (most?) cases. It's not even close to an "insane" bonus, and depending on map type it's often not worth the cost. (As evidenced by my original comment: on a water-heavy map, I'd never even NOTICED the +50% for the few cities connected to my capital, because it made so little difference.)

If you've got a core of four or five production cities for wonders and such, all clustered on a single landmass, then sure, railroad them together. The production bonus helps, although not by THAT much; +50% sounds like a lot, but by that point you should already be at +100% or so from other structures, SPs, etc., and these percentages are additive, not multiplicative. And since your capital (usually your best city) doesn't get the +50% but has to be on the network, the cost is a bit inflated for the effect.
(Simple rule of thumb: if it's one of the cities you'd use your first 7-batch of Coal to make a Factory for, railroad it.)

But the rest? You're going to have a bunch of cities on the fringes of your empire. They won't have the whole array of +research and +money buildings, they won't have time to grow large enough to construct all of those, and they won't make enough money to offset the increased maintenance cost it'd take to connect them to your railroad network (unless you found them right next to an existing line). You'd have to ask yourself: what, exactly, would those cities be doing with that extra production? Building a Market that adds +25% to a whopping 1gpt income? Building Wealth that gives a horrendous 1 gpt per 10 production? Until a city gets to a decent size and is surrounded by improved hexes, it's just not worth the money (and time) it'd take to connect the city to the network... unless, as I mentioned before, there's a military reason to need to move units into/out of the city quickly.

Think about it in comparison to a Factory. One adds +50% production for a maintenance cost of a few gpt and a Coal. The other adds +50% production for a maintenance cost of 2 gpt per hex (really, 1 gpt since you'd want a road regardless), and can be blocked/destroyed by an invader. If the city is more than a couple hexes away from your existing rail lines, then it's clearly not as good of an investment.

To make it worse, ask yourself: in the late eras, what are the major limiting factors? It's not food; Maritime CSs cover that nicely. It's not research. And other than cities trying to build wonders, it's not production. No, the main limiting factor is MONEY. Spending an extra 50gpt to replace your entire road network with rails will bankrupt you if you're trying to maintain a decent army. (Happiness is the second limiting factor, but since happiness is primarily managed through money by way of the +happy buildings, it all comes back to the $$$.)

This is where "conventional wisdom" has been hurting people. They connect every city to their rail networks, even the ice fishing village that'll never produce much of anything, and then wonder why they have no money to spare. I just did it in my last game; My capital and first city were separated from the rest of my empire by a long Panama-style isthmus lacking in resources (and so never settled). So I had to make a 10-hex railroad line just to connect most of my empire to the capital, and that cost a fortune. Looking back, I'd have been better to not use the railroad and forego the +50% bonus, given that my most productive cities were my capital and first colony.

 

[effexop]

This is interesting, but, and please, correct me if I'm wrong, isn't every city independent on its resources?

For example, if in one city I would specialize on Production and Gold, wouldn't that city be immensely flawed with the lack of food, therefore citizens?

Same for vice-versa, specilizing in food would lack production and resources.

The concept is interesting, and curious, but I don't really understand how that would work.
(I'm new to Civilization games btw).

This might be true at the beginning of the game. Later you don't need food because:

a) maritime city states give you food, so just make them happy, and focus on gold /hammer.

b) Your conquering spree made your empire unhappy, so there is 75% less growth, so food is almost useless. In fact you don't want growth at all, or else it you dry your happiness to less than -10, which hurts your war machine.