In a (common) limbo?

[rtil]

Bah. I thought I was pretty good at civ. I had CIV:CTP for years and I loved it. Then I bought CIV:III and they changed a few things and I had to start back at block 1. I mean I could play, but I had to get used to things.
I'm still not used to things.
Here's my biggest problem. Money and science. I always end up begging for tech advances through diplomacy because I can never keep up with them, yet they have 0 gold! How are they pulling this off? I'm afraid to go into deficits because it never does me any good, even If I was trying to pull off the big science funding that the advisor is always yelling for.
Help?
I miss being a civ master. *cries*

 

[MadScot]

Well, they have 0 gold because they are spending all their income on research.

What level are you playing at? As you've already discovered, prior experience transfers only in the most general sense. Plus, Call To Power isn't really the ancestor to Civ:III, it's more of a distant (and disowned ) cousin. So you may as well just think of this as a new game. Don't try the old tricks, chances are they don't work in the new world.

Sounds like you problem is money. A common problem.

1. Roads. Every citizen should be working a tile with a road. Roads=gold. If you can't build roads fast enough, then you need more workers. Don't be scared to invest in workers in the early game - the return on the investment can be colossal.

2. Government type. As soon as you can, get out of despotism. It's a dreadful government, the more advanced govs do wonders for your gold per turn.

3. Trade. As soon as you get connected, sell that extra luxury. It does you no good anyway, so get something for it.

4. Manage your cities. Especially at the start, the benefit of running the cities yourself can be huge. The AI givernors are a bunch of idiots basically; you can do much better yourself.

Once you have a decent commercial base, decide on one of two strategies:

1. Tech maniac. Go for the techs yourself. Build every library you can, run science at max %age. Go for techs the computer is less likely to get (ones without units, usually, there's a thread on it somewhere) and sell them for monopoly proces. Fund your civ on the profit from tech sales.

OR

2. Money mad. No research (or rather, one scientist in one city, giving a tech in 40 turns for very little expenditure). Save your gold, then buy the techs you want. Time it right and you can buy from civ A and sell to B, C, D etc and make a profit even. No need for libraries etc in this case.

 

[JazzToucan]

I, too, had to start at the bottom returning to Civ after being fairly proficient at Civ 1.

Some more tips:

Rivers are your friend! They add an extra gold per square. Even under despotism, building a road on a river square will give you two gold on that square.

Never irrigate early on unless it's a "plains" square and not grassland. Mine grassland, especially the shielded grassland which will yield you two shields.

Look for the cows and game. A good starting position is next to a cow that yields a shiled and extra food to help create more settlers. Game located in forest is great because it already gives you a two food/two shield square without any work.

If you see a gold hill, build on it -- you'll instantly get the bonus without any work.

As MadScot says, you might want to focus on creating more workers early on. Additionally, playing as an industrious civ helps because they work faster at making improvments.

The first city improvement I build is the temple, although this is less important on the lower difficulty levels.

The key is that gold = science. The number of gold icons you reap is your total income. The more of those you create on squares, the faster you'll be able to research by sliding the sciene rate higher.

The Colossus will double the gold output per square, so it's a great early wonder for tech. Commercials civs get an extra gold per square and seafairing civs get an an extra gold when they build on coasts -- adds to the Colossus appeal.

Again, make sure you switch out of Despotism ASAP as it limits the output of each square. What worked for me early on is limiting myself to the Monarchy branch (Polytheism, etc.) -- I found that the other civs didn't research this as much and when you get it first you can trade it for other techs.

 

[useless]

i hate it when u lose money on new improvements