How far can you go into the "red"?

[BarryMcCackiner]

So I have a question. I apologize if it is newbish, but I have never really tried it. Does anyone know what happens if you are completely unable to pay for expenses even if your science is at 0%? I was thinking today about an extreme strategy soley based on production/military/extortion. I imagine that the game may start disbanding military units or something to try and even out the economy but that is pure speculation. Has anyone tried this?

 

[Excl]

If it's anything like previous version, they start selling off your city buildings to pay for any deficits.

 

[cleverhandle]

Your military units will go on strike and disband.

 

[Artanis]

Military units start disbanding when you run out of money, are at 0% Science, and still in the red.

 

[michaelwest777]

Does the science rate alter automatically when you exhaust your treasury? Or do you have to make sure you do it yourself?

 

[BarryMcCackiner]

Does the science rate alter automatically when you exhaust your treasury? Or do you have to make sure you do it yourself?

The science rate will drop to try and make up for the spending when you hit the end of your treasury. It will not adjust back up though.

Thanks for the replies everyone, I guess that strategy is not so hot, hehe.

 

[thordk]

with the change to city upkeep and city razing took out you're able to drive your empire into a starveness of which it will never recover. don't think about running in the red

 

[rickmc]

you can change civics and go into anarchy. during anarchy you civs will neither make or lose money.

while i do believe that do this over and over is just cheating, it is realistic to do it once or twice over 2,000 years if you need just a couple of turns to correct a runaway problem.

 

[Plug]

to rickmc, I don't think you can go in and out of anarchy at leisure anyway. I think you have to wait about 10 turns before you can go back into anarchy after it has finished. also, when in anarchy I don't think your culture increases and you don't build things either. I don't think you even make science. In other words, it wouldn't be cheating because it's not possible.

 

[shadow2k]

to rickmc, I don't think you can go in and out of anarchy at leisure anyway. I think you have to wait about 10 turns before you can go back into anarchy after it has finished. also, when in anarchy I don't think your culture increases and you don't build things either. I don't think you even make science. In other words, it wouldn't be cheating because it's not possible.

It's very possible. Moonsinger wrote up an article in the stratgey articles section about how she used the Romans to defeat Deity.

Basically, she built the Pyramids, which gives her all the goverment civics. Bronze Working gives you a Labor Civic to swap, and Monotheism was probably tossed in for a religious civic.

She chop rushed Praetorians, conquering everything in her path. When her economy tanked, she'd switch civics to stay in perpetual anarchy. How many turns of anarchy depends on how many cities you have, and how many you switch at once, and the difficulty level I believe as well. So with just the Pyramids, BW, and Monotheism on Deity, with a ton of conquered cities, you can switch 3 civics to create multiple turns of anarchy to get through the 5 turns it takes until you can do it again.

The whole time she's in anarchy, she'd continue chopping trees. Now she doesn't actually produce anything during these turns, but the production would "stack" into the queue, so that the turn she comes out of anarchy, the units would be produced. You also get a one turn grace period before units start disbanding, so she'd just swap civics/religion to go back into anarchy. You can do this virtually forever. I think the screenshot she posted showed her at -550gpt, or right around there.

I consider it an exploit, but it can definitely be done.

 

[AtriumComplex]

I think that exploit has been removed from the game. You uniformly have to wait 4 turns for another anarchy.

 

[Zombie69]

No it hasn't been removed. She did it under the current patch. Will probably be removed in the next patch though.

 

[walkerjks]

I think that exploit has been removed from the game. You uniformly have to wait 4 turns for another anarchy.

It's 5 turns from the start of the previous civics change. At marathon speed, you can do combinations of civics changes that will cause you to be in anarchy for 4 or more turns at a time (and as a result, the turn you come out of anarchy, you can go right back in).

I strongly suspect that Firaxis will do one of the following in the next patch:

1) Make it 5 turns to make a new civics change from the end of anarchy.

or

2) Scale the 5 turn limit to game speed. If it's 5 turns at normal speed, it really should be 15 turns for marathon.

 

[thordk]

and you shouldn't be able to stockpile production during phases of anarchy.

 

[Jonny211]

LOL... That is sooooooo cheating!

 

[Prince David]

I recently noticed that the pop-up info for economics (I think it was economoics) on the tech tree listed "deficit spending" as an unlocked ability. I could find no reference to this in the civlopedia so I suspect it was removed/never implimented. I do wonder how that would have worked though, though.

 

[Chibiabos]

I am FINALLY into the swing of Civ IV ... I've just won two domination games in a row, scoring 16k on the first and 18k on the second (Tokugawa, Normal size, Marathon speed).

I roll over my adversaries like a wave, taking over an entire civilization at a time. The first one is the toughest, and as fast as I was conquering cities, my science rate dropped to 20-30%, but after awhile of building courthouses and culturing out the borders, I was able to get it up to 50% ... and I was outpacing all of the computer AIs for science production! It seems that while, yes, 50% science rate looks abysmal when I rarely have it anything below 100% in a more peaceful game (using the Prophet-generating super cathedrals to generate enough gold to fund my cities), the vast number of cities made up for the low rate. I kept my science rate low even as my economy picked up, in order to save up and mass upgrade my attack units whilst building siege weapons when they came in.

I imagine it must be a lot tougher without Tokugawa's Organized trait. Science crawls at a snail's pace for awhile until I get courthouses in the conquered cities and build monestaries and libraries in them, but in the end I have a very robust civilization and after I conquer the first one and recover, my economy is well enough off that I can swallow other civilization whole without having to turn down my science rate (I get high negative gold rate for awhile sometimes, but my plunder pay for conquering cities is enough to offest it for awhile). Its just a matter of weaning yourself off the 90-100% science rate addiction ..... yeah that's good for a peaceful civ, but someone with a 50% science rate but twice as many cities as you will be able to keep up or even outpace you. I don't even have to worry too much about Wonders since I'll capture them anyway.