Is Producing Wealth Worthwhile?

[JessRobinson]

I've had Civ III for about 5 days now and have succumbed to a massive addiction. It's the most complex game I've ever played - my learning curve will last a long time.

One question I can't seem to find a good answer to is the following (pardon my newbie-ness):

Is producing wealth worth it? How much does it actually produce per shield converted?

In some of my cities I've built everything available (until my research advances a few clicks). I am using a culture strategy and don't want to build new units. In cases like this should I just leave production on wealth?

Any help would be appreciated.

Jess

 

[Ferd]

You start out getting one gold for 8 shields. After you research a particular tech advance--Economics I think it is--it doubles to one gold per 4 shields. Pretty sad rate if you ask me.

 

[Xunziir]

What else, other than wealth is worth producing? Obviously military units and such are worth producing if you need them but what about cases where there is nothing needed.

Does anyone have other strategies? Ie. do you make more buy creating and then selling a building over and over? Or perhaps making military units and sending them over to cities that are slower in shield production and disbanding them there....

 

[clubpetey]

In the late game there's nothing wrong with wealth building. When your cities get large you can get some decent income from them, although I still use the following method.

In the early and mid game, never waste shield production. There's always something really big to build that you can stockpile shields with. Palace, ICBM, etc. Just set your city on that, until your next city improvement, then change to the improvemnt, you'll have a jump start on it. in the bigger cities you may get it in 1 turn.

 

[tetley]

Agreed, wealth is just fine in the late game, when you really have nothing else to produce. But only as a last resort. I'd suggest plopping out a bunch of battleships first. High shields, low maintenance, and they sure beat up future opponents good. And also do the Palace-ahead-of-the-new-tech thing when you can.

 

[Ferd]

One other point might be worth mentioning. You ALWAYS get one gold if you produce wealth, even in a max corruption city. Producing wealth will give you two gold instead of one gold and one shield. If you don't need the shield, you might as well use the gold.

Or, if you don't mind nanomanagement, and you plan to use population to rush a unit or improvement, anything more than one shield is wasted. You may as well produce wealth until the turn before your population increases, then switch to shield for one turn, then rush the job.

 

[Sam_Catchem]

Wealth is OK if you got nothing better to build or your army is getting too expensive and you need to get out of the negative or slow it down til you sack some cities.