Losing money early game

[Kalmah]

Apologies if there are other threads on this, I couldn't find anything when searching.

I recently bought G&K and with trading posts being moved to Guilds I've found it hard to make money pre markets. In two games with Celts and now Byzantine I've been hemorrhaging a lot of money early and have had to constantly sell off resources and raid barb camps just to avoid going bankrupt. Now that I have markets and trade routes linked up it's not a problem but I couldn't build an army at all and was really undefended (luckily for me Russia, England and America have been too busy warring each other). I'm playing on Prince so I can get away with it for now but not if I move up.

In my first game with Celts, I built roads early and it completely killed me as I couldn't afford them. This time around I left it a lot later but to me it doesn't seem ideal to wait 150 turns (playing on Epic) to establish roads.

I've been switching focus in my capital from food to gold just to stay alive but at +20 GPT I can afford to switch back to food, though I do drop down to +8 (+1 if I change focus to food in Antioch as well). Am I doing the right thing by changing focus or should I be fully focusing on growth? Is 7 pop in my capital far too low?

As for policies, I generally always go for liberty first to get the early worker and settlers out. I know tradition will help with gold loss, should I focus on finishing that instead? I'm went into piety second to get the temple policies.

Anyway here's a screenshot of the empire so far http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/596991188564054120/54DBA522C3F21082E0BD0B7ADD7A7E2C1D7462EF/

 

[Halcyan2]

Building roads too early is not very good due to their gold maintenance. The general rule of thumb is that you shouldn't connect a trade route until the population of the connected city is about equal to the number of road tiles it will require.

Selling resources (luxuries/strategics) is generally the best way to make lots of money.

The Byzantines do have the additional option of doubling up on gold generating Founder beliefs (Tithe and then either Church Property or Initiation Rites), which makes religion potentially a good way to rake in the dough.

Settling on rivers (if available) also helps in the start.

 

[The Pilgrim]

Delaying roads till your capital hits size 7 and other cities 4-5 is fairly common. It's also common to have a relatively low gpt early on due to lack of markers, trade routs and limited size of your empire. 475AD however, is not so early, so I'd say yes, your cities are too small for this date. The bigger your cities, the bigger the income from trade routes. On top of that you work more tiles and thus cities themselves generate more gold. One more thing: when you build roads try to minimize their length. Right now the road from your capital to Antioch is 6 hexes long, which costs 6gpt. If you connect it through Adrianople, it'll only cost you 4gpt.

 

[joncnunn]

Settling on rivers (if available) also helps in the start.

Or restarting until there is a river start.

 

[Kalmah]

Three of my four cities at that stage were on rivers, the other was settled next to the wonder.

@The Pilgrim

Should I have just continued to suffer a -7 GPT loss to continue growth in capital and rush market tech asap? My three core cities have all grown to 20+ pop not long after my income stabilised but I can't help wonder where they could be at now.

My reasoning for building the road on the diagonal was to get missionaries and prophets from the capital to Antioch quicker to spread religion asap, though I didn't consider that it would've saved money to connect it to Adrianople.

Do you guys think it would have been a good idea to settle out west to grab up some more silk? I've run out of duplicate luxuries to trade with the new continent, though that area seems a bit barren in terms of growth. It also seems quite a distance from Antioch.

 

[The Pilgrim]

Three of my four cities at that stage were on rivers, the other was settled next to the wonder.

@The Pilgrim

Should I have just continued to suffer a -7 GPT loss to continue growth in capital and rush market tech asap? My three core cities have all grown to 20+ pop not long after my income stabilised but I can't help wonder where they could be at now.

My reasoning for building the road on the diagonal was to get missionaries and prophets from the capital to Antioch quicker to spread religion asap, though I didn't consider that it would've saved money to connect it to Adrianople.

Do you guys think it would have been a good idea to settle out west to grab up some more silk? I've run out of duplicate luxuries to trade with the new continent, though that area seems a bit barren in terms of growth. It also seems quite a distance from Antioch.

Again, losing a little gold at the beginning is not extraordinary. I wonder why this happened though. If you had your infrastructure set up, like libraries, granaries, monuments, shrines - it's ok. If your cities were at size 2 each, working low food tiles (production/gold focus) and you had and idle army of 10 units, it's not.The bigger your cities are the bigger is your cash flow. Thus early growth is very important. It makes very little sense that your second and third cities are larger than your capital.
I would definitely expand. There is a good spot on gems, dyes, cows, stone and fish, another one to the north with marble and horses, one more on western coast by silks and the last by iron, cows and more fish to the south. Nicaea's placement, to be honest, is not that good. One fish and one sheep are not enough to make it a worthy location. And the wonder isn't worth it at all.
As for that road, it will take to missionary the same two turns to reach Antioch from your capital. But even if it took one turn longer, it's still would have been better than paying +2gpt for the entire game. Roads have a very big strategic value, but you can't afford getting too creative with them early on. Later in the game you have more breathing space, early on stick to minimizing their length. There are some extreme cases when longer roads early are justified, mainly when you're at war and you must bring your troops to front. Not want them there, but must. Which is not the case here.
BTW, on your screenshot you have a nice treasury. As long as its not empty, you won't experience any negative impact of losing gold. Selling luxuries and unnecessary strategic resources (like 8 horses you don't use, for example) pay for whatever you need at the start and lets you not to be worried about negative gpt.

 

[Greslin]

As for policies, I generally always go for liberty first to get the early worker and settlers out.

What solved the money problem for me was finally just saying no to settlers. It's really easy to just do what every other civ is doing in the early game, spamming settlers and putting out tons of weak cities - and driving themselves broke in the process (open up trade discussions and see how much gold they can put on the table - big empires, but not enough resources to adequately defend them against a focused aggressor).

Instead, my early game now is focused on a single strong and growing city (i.e., lots of food production), one or two scouts to quickly find anything worth finding in the area, and rushing military tech that I can use to overwhelm those weak cities. I usually have Tradition filled or nearly filled before I even start other policy trees, followed by bits of Commerce and Patronage. I go hard on Order in mid-late game.

Once I get a significant advantage (i.e., Composite Bowman), I start taking over neighboring weak cities and installing puppet states. They all automatically set to gold focus, making great profit centers for more military spending. I only annex strategic seaports and high population production centers, much later on when I have the happiness to kill, money to buy quick courthouses and a very large territory under control. Meanwhile, I more or less remain in a state of war for the rest of the game, periodically pounding other civs to take away cities and keep their armies from growing.

Settling will kill you, or at least it was killing me. Let the other civs waste their turns building settlers and then take away their cities. I don't make many friends that way, but hey, rather be feared and rich than loved and dead.

 

[The Pilgrim]

What solved the money problem for me was finally just saying no to settlers. It's really easy to just do what every other civ is doing in the early game, spamming settlers and putting out tons of weak cities - and driving themselves broke in the process (open up trade discussions and see how much gold they can put on the table - big empires, but not enough resources to adequately defend them against a focused aggressor).

Instead, my early game now is focused on a single strong and growing city (i.e., lots of food production), one or two scouts to quickly find anything worth finding in the area, and rushing military tech that I can use to overwhelm those weak cities. I usually have Tradition filled or nearly filled before I even start other policy trees, followed by bits of Commerce and Patronage. I go hard on Order in mid-late game.

Once I get a significant advantage (i.e., Composite Bowman), I start taking over neighboring weak cities and installing puppet states. They all automatically set to gold focus, making great profit centers for more military spending. I only annex strategic seaports and high population production centers, much later on when I have the happiness to kill, money to buy quick courthouses and a very large territory under control. Meanwhile, I more or less remain in a state of war for the rest of the game, periodically pounding other civs to take away cities and keep their armies from growing.

Settling will kill you, or at least it was killing me. Let the other civs waste their turns building settlers and then take away their cities. I don't make many friends that way, but hey, rather be feared and rich than loved and dead.

It's quite the opposite. Wide empire (many cities) brings in more cash than tall empire (few large cities) does. If you have many little cities with lots of unnecessary buildings in them in addition to long roads, of course it kills you. The trick is to balance early development of the infrastructure with its upkeep costs in order to benefit from sprawl and strong empire later. Playing with only one city is also a valid strategy, although a very limiting one. You don't want to do that in every game and most definitely can't do that in every game on higher levels.

 

[Ajuga]

I don't generally have money issues. I always try to go for rivers as they increase gold a lot and sell of resources.
My GPT doesn't go very high in the beginning though, maybe +20 at best.
Keep in mind that I keep my armies fairly small (usually being at the bottom of demographics), which attracts many (possibly unneeded) wars, I can turtle pretty well so until 500AD I don't really care about it.