How to save up gold v1

[Bibor]

Teh new CIV5 features:

Population growth is slower.
Hammer production is lower.
Gold production is lower.
Science is not about worked gold.
Unique resources (horses for example) are not always "best to be worked".
Buildings, puppets and units cost gold. Lots and lots of gold.

That said, city specialization is key. Also, don't get fooled by the 3-hex radius. Locations should be chosen by resources > riversides > strategic points.

If you have 5 cities, they should be specialized in:
- One in producing Culture and Wonders (production)
- One in producing land military (production)
- One in producing gold
- One good coastal city (possibly with 3+ sea resources) for trade routes and navy
- One focusing on production and food (and thus science).

My biggest mistake in my first game (although won on King) was to build everything everywhere. Simply don't. The only six universally applicable buildings that should go to every city are:
- Monument (that 2 culture is worth it, compared to 1 gold maintenance).
- Colloseum (best gold/hammer/happy ratio)
- Marketplace (costs no upkeep)
- Bank (costs no upkeep)
- Library (pays itself off after city reaches 4 pop)
- Granary (one more pop beats 1 gold maintenance).

Don't have 15.258 workers. One per two cities is quite enough. If you grab new ones from an enemy, disband them after they did their job (usually building a /rail/road to the new frontline). Workers add to unit maintenance. Two disbanded workers might be worth 7 or more GPT.

Build units that require resources first. These are the most powerful over all eras. Archers, anti-tank guns etc. are the poor man's choice. After you run out of resources to build units, think twice before building more, because units cost lots of mainenance.

Don't throw money at city states except on rare occasions. An upgraded trebuchet to artillery will do more good for your diplomacy.

Don't be dumb like me and do ignore liberty. The bonuses from that tree are laughable compared to benefits of other (later) trees.

When going offensive, be sure to bring a settler or two. If the taken city has no obvious wonders or if its culture radius is not exceptionally large - raze it. You just saved yourself 5 gpt, useless buildings upkeep in that city as well as 20-30 turs of unhappy people empire-wide.

Trade away strategic resources you don't use to civs on other continents for gold. 5 horses you don't use are 5 horses wasted in gold.

(by KingMorgan): Sell your spare happiness resources for 10gpt (300g for 30 turns). 300 gold in the BCs is worth 900g in the ADs.

Do research agreements with those who are at least semi-trustworthy. Unlocking unit upgrades and wonders is worth more those mere 250-350 gold.

Use tile improvements wisely. A single fort saving that (three-times-upgraded-for-gold) rifleman's butt is worth more than a 100 turns of trade camp activity on the same tile. Multiple roads around your chokepoints deserve the same praise.

Having two harbors (6 GPT) connecting two cities might be cheaper than building a long road between them.

Every 100 turns or so check your empire's (rail)road network and re-optimize if possible. Workers can destroy (rail)roads in friendly territory. If a former choke point with 12 hexes of (rail) roads is no longer a choke point, kill all the useless (rail)roads.

A single artillery unit (catapult+) garrisoned in a city is worth more than a city walls/castle/military outpost in effects of both damage and GPT expenditure. It's also mobile and upgradeable and can earn experience. These buildings are pretty much useless, except if you're playing a purely defensive game and you have just-this-one-lol-city that takes all the punishment.

A single caravel will pay itself off multiple times by discovering natural wonders and other civilizations. If the map allows it, send after the caravel a lone mounted or foot unit you can spare (embarking) to grab any possible subcontinent / island ruins or barb encampments. It might even be worth it to rush-buy the caravel.

If two cities can work either one or two gold (silver) mines, have onecity work both mines and have it build a MINT (as well as a marketplace and bank).

Having one city build all the land unit buildings (Barracks/Armory/Arsenal/Forge/Military academy) costs 1070 and 12 GPT when all finished. This city, building nothing else but basic buildings, military buildings and units (plus possibly having a militaristic city-state for extras) will take care of building all your units through the course of the game. There might arise a situation when you need additional units, but don't build buildings to make them. Rather, don't let this military city produce anything else. Keep pumping them out. It's much better to have surplus gold and to upgrade existing units.

Larger city doesn't automatically mean "better city". Happy resources work only to a certain limit. For the extra pop you need buildings. After the Colloseum and Circus, every next pop costs slightly more than 1 GPT to keep happy, which basically means -1 gold per worked tile. Thus, working tiles with less than 4 yields becomes questionable. Or, in other words, maybe it's better for another city to work that silver mine with mint then this sheep or horses in this city right here.

 

[KingMorgan]

Sell your spare happiness resources for 10gpt (300g for 30 turns). 300 gold in the BCs is worth 900g in the ADs

 

[Necro-]

great tips!

i have a question, how do u decide which cities to specialize as what, and what do you usually specialize your main city as, and when your doing it right, how much money do you make?

i've only played on warlord - so i don't know how accurate this is, but with building pretty much everything everywhere i usually have 60-100gp/t

also wouldn't it be worth getting say all happiness/culture in all cities? since happiness and culture are empire wide, having a city with all the culture buildings will get the same amount regardless of it's size will it not?

 

[J-man]

Don't throw money at city states except on rare occasions.

A rare occasion where it's worthwhile to do throw money: If you're Alexander (Hellenic league UA) and have those social policies that increase the efficiency of gold gifts and lessen the amount of influence lost per turn.

Larger city doesn't automatically mean "better city".

So true!

 

[Bibor]

great tips!

i have a question, how do u decide which cities to specialize as what, and what do you usually specialize your main city as, and when your doing it right, how much money do you make?

i've only played on warlord - so i don't know how accurate this is, but with building pretty much everything everywhere i usually have 60-100gp/t

also wouldn't it be worth getting say all happiness/culture in all cities? since happiness and culture are empire wide, having a city with all the culture buildings will get the same amount regardless of it's size will it not?

Specialization of capital depends on it's tiles. In the last game I had it as a hybrid city with military and gold production.

I'm playing on king and with 12 cities (I was forced into wars by my neighbours constantly attacking me) I was barely able to keep my GPT above zero.

Total culture from all cities is added to your social policies pool. Individual cities need culture to expand borders "naturally". However, it's better to produce culture and happy buildings in cities that have a high output because you get the effects sooner (and thus you can get social policies and happy faces sooner). Total cost for all happy/cultural buildings is 1740. A reasonable medieval city will produce around 15-20 per turn, which means it will take around a 100 turns for this city to "fully specialize" in happy/culture buildings (and can do other stuff in the remaining 200+ turns). This city will have plenty of time to build wonders and other stuff. That's +15 and +15 from one city alone (not counting radio tower and wonders) for 20 GPT. At the same time, a decent gold city will produce around 50 GPT. So you need 1 full GPT city per every two Culture/Happy cities you want to run.

 

[Necro-]

yea, i still dont get it, i mean say u get +20 culture from your culture city, you have 5 cities, wouldnt it be better to get them in every city to get +100 culture

 

[J-man]

yea, i still dont get it, i mean say u get +20 culture from your culture city, you have 5 cities, wouldnt it be better to get them in every city to get +100 culture

If you build culture buildings in every city it takes valuable production or gold you can use for something, for example military. It would also add up to maintenance.

 

[Bibor]

yea, i still dont get it, i mean say u get +20 culture from your culture city, you have 5 cities, wouldnt it be better to get them in every city to get +100 culture

Sure, yes. It costs around 13 gold per turn to get 15 culture. Thus, 86 GPT for 100 culture. That's two decent gold cities producing nothing but gold going into culture.

 

[Necro-]

well, the way i envisioned it was, you wont be building military out of your military city constantly due to upkeep, and when your not, you could be building those culture/happiness buildings

for example in my nub like way i genereally have built everything in most of my cities (warlord diff only :<) and while i only had a few cities i prioritised the military but other than that i built other buildings.

 

[Necro-]

i should ask how do you make gold cities, i understand making them near water elements like whales which are good cash crops but then one, you build the banks and the like and thats it? also how do you get past the icon where it asks you to build osmething and cant go to the next turn if you dont

 

[Bibor]

well, the way i envisioned it was, you wont be building military out of your military city constantly due to upkeep, and when your not, you could be building those culture/happiness buildings

for example in my nub like way i genereally have built everything in most of my cities (warlord diff only :<) and while i only had a few cities i prioritised the military but other than that i built other buildings.

What I did in my last game was that I had a backup military production city that started out as a Happy/Culture city (didn't have marble so I built wonders elsewhere). Using the workshop as a bonus, I built the barracks and armory and in the end it served as a happy/culture/units city. On the other hand, building a 600 building in a gold city is a waste of time. You would be better off putting a stock exchange to queue and wait for those 65 turns it takes to complete

 

[Bibor]

i should ask how do you make gold cities, i understand making them near water elements like whales which are good cash crops but then one, you build the banks and the like and thats it? also how do you get past the icon where it asks you to build osmething and cant go to the next turn if you dont

Gold cities are best to build, indeed, near sea resources (fish, perals, whales), along rivers (a trading post on a grassland river gives 2 3), and near gold or silver resources (because Mint is just awesome).

 

[milk steak]

I generally build commerce cities by rivers. Each riverside or grassland tile is food-neutral (provides 2 food, requires 2 food to be work) and riverside also comes with 1 gold. Since your city always starts food-positive (growing), you can easily just work riverside grassland/grassland trading posts and grow (albeit slowly) without farms.

That's where I think the huge benefit of maritime city-states comes in. They provide +2 to +6 food (even more with certain SPs) and really boost city growth, especially for gold cities. If your cap is your commerce city, then you're going to get a huge boost to food with maritime city-states.

Once you get that other SP that also gives +2 science per trade post, that commerce city doubles as a science production city.

Just my 2c.


I also run into the problem of having extra production in my specialized cities. There's a lot of turns where I don't know what to build in, say, my gold city (already built Market/Mint, etc), so I just build wonders (even for a few turns just to get failure gold). Sometimes I'll just build scouts to delete them (better hammer to gold than producing straight gold I think -- someone posted their findings in a different thread on here...).

 

[pewbeng]

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[Describer]

I did 2,5 playthroughs already and was never able to get more than 3 gold per turn deal from AI. Its either sum of gold right away, or another resource.

 

[aisle5]

How do you determine how large you need a city to be in terms of population?

 

[Spark026]

This was a good post except for one thing: giving gold to ally yourself with city states is easily the best use of gold in the game should you choose to go down that SP path.

You can beat King practically blind folded, with one arm tied behind your back by allying yourself with multiple city states.

This strategy has already been written up so I won't give all the details.

It works best with the Egyptians and French imo because they get the wonder bonuses. Allowing you to build Stonehenge, then Great Library to get the Theology tech beeline, opening up the city state SP path around Turn 50.

Note: Civil Service beeline is better but not possible on King diff. and above. It's just not quick enough.

Because the French get the culture bonus early, they can afford to choose Tradition, and then Aristocracy for +33 Wonder prod. and still zoom thru the city state SP tree.

Many other civs can do this strategy, but its much harder to get both Wonders built before Turn 50 with them. If you don't get them built by turn 50, the AI players will beat you to the Great Library, which kills the strategy, or at least makes it much less efficient till you get to the Medieval Age the old fashion way.

 

[adrianj]

If you don't get them built by turn 50, the AI players will beat you to the Great Library, which kills the strategy, or at least makes it much less efficient till you get to the Medieval Age the old fashion way.

I would consider it an exploit, but it is possible to build the Great Library as early as you can, and still get a useful late tech.
See this thread.

 

[Thyrwyn]

Because the French get the culture bonus early, they can afford to choose Tradition, and then Aristocracy for +33 Wonder prod. and still zoom thru the city state SP tree.

This is too true. In the game I am currently playing (as France, Lg Continents, Prince, Epic), I founded Paris 2 hexes from Marble. Early Aristocracy + Marble bonus = any early Wonder France wants.

Time to try King.

 

[Bibor]

I did 2,5 playthroughs already and was never able to get more than 3 gold per turn deal from AI. Its either sum of gold right away, or another resource.

Click off the offers (usually iron or horses plus some minor lump sum of gold, blah). Then either select a lump sum or a GPT option. Start with 300 gold or 10 GPT and then work your way down until he/she accepts.

How do you determine how large you need a city to be in terms of population?

As long as its working +4 yield tiles (or the number of specialists you desire) I'm pretty sure it's safe to grow it. Just always be sure to constantly monitor and upgrade your gold cities (and make them grow fastest).