Missing gold

[Metrin]

Well, well, well. We all know it: in ancient age we want to change techs with the AI. But wait: the greedy AI wants also gold for it! Alright, gold is useless until you reach repulic or monarchy; let it be then; But the question is: What is the AI doing with the gold? Trading with another civs? Putting research/luxuries on max? Anyone knows the answer?

 

[_ghost_]

the AI sucks in building terrain improvemnts. ...

then they also got military unit limit...
and the research at the possible maximum.

thats it

 

[Puppeteer]

I'm pretty sure the AI researches max, and that's how they burn through the money.

Some of them also love to build temples, and those are a drain on the economy, too.

You can test if they have any net positive income by proposing a trade with gpt from them. If 1 gpt produces "They would never accept such a deal" that means they have no positive income. Sometimes you can play around and figure out their current income. Sometimes the "never accept" is a result of a broken reputation, but in my experience the AI won't have any spare income until middle ages.

 

[Metrin]

Would this strategy also work for a human? I mean, research to max, trade a tech for gold and so on... It would help a lot in the tech-run. Especially on higher difficulties.

 

[Puppeteer]

Would this strategy also work for a human? I mean, research to max, trade a tech for gold and so on... It would help a lot in the tech-run. Especially on higher difficulties.

On lower levels you can out-research the AI, so yeah you can sell them techs and research at deficit spending and keep them poor to press your advantage.

On higher levels you generally can't out-research the AI, and it's hard to get good value trades for gold. However you can usually trade-broker between AI factions and stay more or less even in the tech race. But in the MA I can sometimes keep up with them in research if I want to, but usually my strategy is to suicide-galley the other continent and trade-broker my way through the late MA when the AI can finally cross the ocean and I lose my international trade monopoly.

But on any level I generally don't see the AI have any gold-per-turn to spare until late AA / early MA, so we're talking pile-of-gold trading.