i'm having a problem with gold ...

[vitalgirl]

Hi

I'm new to this forum, and in fact haven't played civ for a while - my computer died not long after i bought civ 4 and then with vista couldn't play it (though i realize you can now - but I have civ 5 so will leave it i think)

I used to play alpha centuri and totally loved that game, which is what got me on to civ in the first place. But back to gold ...

The first game I played was fine (a randomly generated one, right after the tutorial so it was probably easy). I won, though I'm certainly no expert. The next two games I've promptly lost

Basically, I wasn't trying to win a certain way, and probably just played with some balance. But now, when I've been playing on Standard, I keep running out of gold, the ai then starts deleting my military units, and then I become a sitting duck and squashed like a little fly

I do tend to like expanding (perhaps too quickly??) - I just see a juicy luxury tile and have to have a colony there! But yeah, even though I get the currency tech and build those, and build lots of trading posts, it doesn't seem to be enough. I think the first time I just built too many buildings in every city and the maintenance just killed me. And the second one (of the two i lost), I was following the Advsiors even when I wouldn't normally, just to see what the effect would be (won't do that again )

I don't tend to like invading city states or doing the conquer path. And I'm not really in to the whole diplomacy thing (when it involves paying lots of money to a city state on a regular basis), so maybe I need to look at these things.

Any advice anyone? What's the sweet spot with pumping out colonies? Do you guys focus on developing a branch of techs or go for a broader approach (ie do all the early techs, or nearly, then all the next techs etc or mostly focus on going foward in one area?

What's the best way to deal with the gold issue?

thanks
Rebecca

 

[Lord Tirian]

I used to play alpha centuri and totally loved that game, which is what got me on to civ in the first place. But back to gold ...

SMAC really thrived on one thing, infinite city sprawl, so the following is not surprising:

II do tend to like expanding (perhaps too quickly??) - I just see a juicy luxury tile and have to have a colony there!

...yeah, it's probably partly fast expansion, it does mess with the economy.

One important thing about the gold issue is: Buildings cost maintenance. If you're running into gold trouble, chances are: you're building too many buildings. Specialise your cities - don't build e.g. science building in a city with high production. Don't build the unit-XP buildings in cities that are mainly there for gold.

Have a clear purpose for a city and select the tile improvements and city buildings accordingly (though building the market/bank/mint/stock exchange buildings is rarely wrong): See a good spot with lots of hills/iron resource? Mark that as production city, focus on these things. See a spot with lots of food resources and river? Might be a good science city (because large cities = large science), build farms around the river focus on science buildings. Spot with gold-improving resources and lots of plains? Gold city (this will be common... spam trading posts).

If you have build all buildings supporting the main focus of the city, you can either churn out units (in case of production cities) or either go for some wonders or the conversion processes (i.e. "building" wealth or science). Resist the temptation to build more buildings "just because", unless you clearly have a high net income per turn (and in that case, I'd suggest going for the culture buildings - helps you with unlocking the "Commerce" social policies faster, as these help a lot with gold).

Cheers, LT.

 

[vitalgirl]

Ah, thank you LT, that makes a lot of sense!

thanks
Rebecca