How to afford a large army in the early game?

[steveg700]

Back from a long break. Decided to try the Huns for the first time. I was blessed with a nice high-production capital (salt mines, horses, marble, plus rivers and wheat to keep everyone fed). I was able to crank out units very fast. But I kept running into the red with my GPT. I wasn't able to achieve any degree of correction until I'd researched currency and guilds, built multiple markets, took the Commerce sopol opener, and have started spamming trading posts.

There a couple of thing that bother me here. The first is that I specifically limited my initial settlements to being along rivers specifically so I could have lots of gold-yielding tiles. But it wasn't enough. The second was that when the "pointiest sticks" list appeard, I was only at about the middle of the list, with my neighbor Spain having twice my "stick size" despite only having fewer cities. So, does the AI get some massive upkeep discount?

This is only a King-level difficulty game, btw. So what's the deal here? If I'm producing units, am I supposed to cut back on producing buildings?

(usually, I push religion hard and go with Tithe as the founder belief; didn't realize what a difference it makes)

 

[futurehermit]

Conquering helps and, yeah, you have to be careful not to building spam too much while unit spamming because the buildings cost upkeep and it adds up quickly. Basically, if you're gonna have a large army, you gotta put it to use to pay for itself.

 

[Waverunner]

You can also change the distribution of people to focus on wealth instead of the default. It normally ends up saving me a lot whenever I'm running into trouble and still want to produce something. But yeah, I find that I'm usually saved when I start up a new settlement next to resources. It's a bit tough to have a large army at the same time, but I was able to do it sparingly.

 

[apocalypse105]

You can't so you have to make it worth a while which means you need to conquer more cities quickly you are giving up economic builts like more cities more growth and more buildings to units to get more cities

 

[michaeljhuman]

If you don't care about anything but making units, you can likely support a decent size army.

Build very few buildings except gold helping buildings
Focus your tech on getting gold helping buildings and TPs
Micromange your citizen assignments to focus on gold yielding tiles
Look at your religion options for gold (not sure what they are, I go happiness)
Sell off anything you don't need to other civs

Whether this is a good approach I am not sure. I prefer a more balanced approach. A smaller higher tech army is a more common approach for me.

 

[Bandobras Took]

Also, bully City-States. Gives you a cushion when you're in the red.

 

[Lord Dante]

I've played Atilla once, and for me his prime time is the extreme early game. You gotta settle a few cities, crank out the unique units, and conquer everything in sight. Infastructure can come later once you own the conitnent.

As a matter of fact, Atilla's unique units are so boarderline OP that even when they are technically "outdated" you can still destroy with them. I once played a game (on king) where I took out 5 other nations well into the Medieval Era using just the basic Unique Horse Archer and Battering Ram units. Once you accomplish this, Atilla will be sitting rather pretty for the rest of the game. (Though after all that blood shed, you might as well go all out for Domination Victory)

 

[Heretiv]

You can also run a budget defecit for a short while and maybe sell luxes for cash until you conquer enough extra cities to get positive cashflow.
Also the time before trade routes are in place and markets kick in your income can be very tight.

 

[KGPurrs]

When your military advisor says that you crush them in military declare war on them, regardless if you will attack them or not. Over time they surrender, offer gold, cities, luxuries, etc. Just keep declaring on them non-stop. Go full honor, and you get gold per kill, etc. Pillage and raze.

 

[Buccaneer]

I recall pre-G&K where I spammed enough units early, waited till I got to Chivalry, used all of my gold to upgrade and with the large upgraded army, had no gold and ran a deficit. Science took a big hit but I got the research I wanted to allow a significant conquering spree (Chivalry UU).

 

[steveg700]

Good advice, thanks everyone. I had actually decreased the number of CS's down from 20 (on large map) to 14, which seems to have resulted in them being non-existent on my continent.

 

[dopingman]

Something people often forget is building roads is not entirely beneficial, a 4 tile road only pays itself if it is connected with a 6 citizen capital and a 4 citizen city, this usually killed my early game until I just stopped building roads until I started to conquer enemies farer away or my city were large enough. Also put your army to good use, if you are only in the middle of the military score board, conquer weaker enemies or bleed out larger ones by grinding their units in easily defensible positions.

About upkeep: The AI receives large gold bonuses from king and upward, same goes for happiness, don't count on them of running out of either of it. In my latest King game Washington settled a bazillion cities (ca. 15) very fast (>20 turns) and captured approximately the same amount, with some being occupied and his happiness was still 42... He didn't had a happiness increasing religion, nor was he able to build the happiness wonders (I built them). His gpt also skyrocketed to 260 in the trade screen while he had the largest army at that point. Basically the numbers given in the trade screen are just made up, the AI receives entirely different gold/gpt, this is only the amount they are willing to trade. Their economy and everything related to it is about 1/3 to 1/2 stronger then yours on King and off the charts in higher difficulties. Also sell your luxes, everything you don't need, make cash out of it, the AI happily buys it, even tho they can't make anything out of extra happiness and if you revoke your strat deals, their army gets weaker.

These are the numbers: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ5/difficulties