Okay, here's my predicament. I've been playing Civ ever since Civ1. I loved Civ2 and Civ3, played both on the intermediate diff settings and sometimes even the harder ones, and could win on them too. I bought Civ4 when it came out, but haven't had the time to start playing until recently. (Don't ask! 
)
Anyway, I have one real glaring problem with doing well in Civ4, and it happens in both vanilla and BTS: City upkeep. I've read a lot of the newbie help posts and I already know a lot about the very early game tactics. I build a few cities, I defend those cities, I work the tiles around them, I build barracks and walls, I avoid riots.
Somewhere about the fourth or sixth city though, things start to get really f-ed up. My city upkeep costs begin to skyrocket with every new city, meaning I have to keep knocking down the science slider. Eventually, that expansion ends up pulling my slider down to around 20%. I don't have to explain why 20% and ~60 turns for Iron Working is bad, do I?
Oh, and I can't solve it because I don't have banks, grocers or courthouses at this point in the game. If I keep working through it, don't get attacked, etc etc, I can eventually just build up a massive ton of improvements, build wealth, etc etc, that all fixes the money issue and then go on to crush my opponents in the late game. But usually, this issue is so crippling that I can't get past it.
Any advice?
)Anyway, I have one real glaring problem with doing well in Civ4, and it happens in both vanilla and BTS: City upkeep. I've read a lot of the newbie help posts and I already know a lot about the very early game tactics. I build a few cities, I defend those cities, I work the tiles around them, I build barracks and walls, I avoid riots.
Somewhere about the fourth or sixth city though, things start to get really f-ed up. My city upkeep costs begin to skyrocket with every new city, meaning I have to keep knocking down the science slider. Eventually, that expansion ends up pulling my slider down to around 20%. I don't have to explain why 20% and ~60 turns for Iron Working is bad, do I?
Oh, and I can't solve it because I don't have banks, grocers or courthouses at this point in the game. If I keep working through it, don't get attacked, etc etc, I can eventually just build up a massive ton of improvements, build wealth, etc etc, that all fixes the money issue and then go on to crush my opponents in the late game. But usually, this issue is so crippling that I can't get past it.
Any advice?
