Need help with Maintenaince on Prince/Monarch

[Phoenician]

hi, I've been playing on the Noble level for quite awhile and wanted a bit more of a challenge. So I decided to play Prince and Monarch levels a lot lately.
I noticed that on Prince and Monarch- the biggest difficulty is not the AI, but the maintenaince costs~!!!
I just played a game as Dutch on a standard size map- Prince level.- I was aiming for a cultural victory and wanted to build a colony empire with East Indiaman naval power.
I just quit when I saw that I could not get my tech bar past 10 percent- and the funny thing is that I didnt even have that big of an army at all. I had courthouses in every single city (8-9 cities) and a market in most of my cities!
I was running a hybrid economy (I usually run hybrid or CE)/. I even had the Great Library, founded a religion with shrine, Temple of Artemis, and the Parthenon, and Hereditary Rule. Why was my maintenaince out of control still? What could I have possably done?

In another game- I played as Sumeria on Monarch level(Aggressive AI) against 2 AI. I won the game (conquest)- but my economy was terrible! I had courthouses in every city (6 cities)
and had the colossus. My army was averaging about 30-50 units throughout the game.
I had the same problem with Darius in a similar game, I won though (conquest)

Is it just me, or do levels above Noble have ridiculous maintenaince costs?
How the hell do you Prince+++ players deal with it???

 

[TRJS]

Slaze (I think) posted a good analysis of the current ALC. By ensuring all appropriate tiles were being worked Sis was able to move from 20% to 40% research in the same turn.

Another key area is the use of merchant specialists in low beaker towns. Strategy article I read once showed that this allows the slider to increase and thus the high beaker cities produce even higher.

 

[oyzar]

Work titles with commerce. It is very simple... post a savegame so we can see specifics. Why would you not have alot of cottages when you are dutch... if you are playing a SE tech slider on 0% is not that bad though... I almost never built courthouses before i got to emperor because in most cases most other buildings would give more return(markets/grocers/libraries etc). Just focus on building a strong economy. Easiest way to do this is to run loads of cottages.

 

[Phoenician]

Slaze (I think) posted a good analysis of the current ALC. By ensuring all appropriate tiles were being worked Sis was able to move from 20% to 40% research in the same turn.

Another key area is the use of merchant specialists in low beaker towns. Strategy article I read once showed that this allows the slider to increase and thus the high beaker cities produce even higher.

Yeah, I did that!! And then my research was able to hit around 40-50 for awhile and then when I started to build more defensive units to protect my cities, some ships, and a few offensive units my research was hitting back to the 10-20 level. The comps were in the early reniassance and I was still in the late middle ages- so I quit because I knew that at that rate I would not catch up.

Like I said, I didn't even have that many troops-8-9 cities- average 3-4 units protecting each city- maybe like 12 offensive units- and around 8 ships.

 

[oyzar]

Merchants aren't realy very efficient in comparison to cottages most of the time.. especially if you are financial.

 

[Phoenician]

Merchants aren't realy very efficient in comparison to cottages most of the time.. especially if you are financial.

I was doing hybrid economy- it works great in Noble level. In Noble level- I'm filthy rich- In above Noble level- I'm filthy poor. I don't get it.

I have also doe CE on monarch level- i'm still poor -even with financial.

 

[TRJS]

Yeah, I did that!! And then my research was able to hit around 40-50 for awhile and then when I started to build more defensive units to protect my cities, some ships, and a few offensive units my research was hitting back to the 10-20 level. The comps were in the early reniassance and I was still in the late middle ages- so I quit because I knew that at that rate I would not catch up.

Like I said, I didn't even have that many troops-8-9 cities- average 3-4 units protecting each city- maybe like 12 offensive units- and around 8 ships.

Might be you are using too many units to protect cities.

Inner cities only need one unit. These are the cities that will take the AI some time to reach.

 

[xanadux]

Sounds like you have too many defensive units. I usually build about 0. I've only made a CG unit a couple times ... when playing raging barbarians, and once or twice in desperate emergencies.

Also, do not underestimate the value of trade routes. They seem to be much more lucrative in BTS. A foreign trade route in a city is typically a minimum of 3 commerce. Trade routes are worth the most with civs you have been at peace with for a long time, so make sure to have a friend or 2 through diplomacy. If you have coastal cities, the great lighthouse is usually worth more than the colossus, assuming you have good trading partners. With the Great Lighthouse and Currency, a newly founded coastal city will often bring in 12 commerce a turn from trade routes alone. You get the benefit regardless of what tiles you work, and the GL can have a much longer life than the Colossus.

 

[v8_mark]

Ultimately it's all about numbers - it's not era-specific as to how far you should expand, but economy specific.

I'm assuming the date's 1200AD or so? With 8-9 cities, you should be spending, what, 25 gold/turn with courthouses on maintenance? Assuming half of your cities aren't colonies, that is.

So, simply, in order to have a reasonable amount of commerce to divert to research (usually 60-70%) you need to be generating about 100 commerce/turn. This is easily doable with just a couple of cities devoted to commerce production - cottage them up early on, let them grow, and by that point in the game these cities should be producing 50 commerce by themselves.

If you're not producing 100 commerce throughout your empire at that time and with that many cities, there's something fairly fundamental that you're not doing. Are you building (and working) cottages? Markets aren't too much good if your city is only producing a handful of commerce every turn. Where are your trade routes? If they're all domestic, you'll get very little benefit from the ToA (and therefore perhaps shouldn't have built it).

On the other hand, do you have cities on the other side of the world from your capital? Maintenance costs for a size 7-8 city can get silly very quickly, especially if part of a big colony.

Also, as others have mentioned, if you're basing your economy on Hereditary Rule, you'll quite often spend more on unit maintenance costs than you will get from the extra population. Especially if you're running pacifism. That's if you're not working commerce tiles.

 

[Phoenician]

Ultimately it's all about numbers - it's not era-specific as to how far you should expand, but economy specific.

I'm assuming the date's 1200AD or so? With 8-9 cities, you should be spending, what, 25 gold/turn with courthouses on maintenance? Assuming half of your cities aren't colonies, that is.

So, simply, in order to have a reasonable amount of commerce to divert to research (usually 60-70%) you need to be generating about 100 commerce/turn. This is easily doable with just a couple of cities devoted to commerce production - cottage them up early on, let them grow, and by that point in the game these cities should be producing 50 commerce by themselves.

If you're not producing 100 commerce throughout your empire at that time and with that many cities, there's something fairly fundamental that you're not doing. Are you building (and working) cottages? Markets aren't too much good if your city is only producing a handful of commerce every turn. Where are your trade routes? If they're all domestic, you'll get very little benefit from the ToA (and therefore perhaps shouldn't have built it).

On the other hand, do you have cities on the other side of the world from your capital? Maintenance costs for a size 7-8 city can get silly very quickly, especially if part of a big colony.

Also, as others have mentioned, if you're basing your economy on Hereditary Rule, you'll quite often spend more on unit maintenance costs than you will get from the extra population. Especially if you're running pacifism. That's if you're not working commerce tiles.

Dude, trust me. I had LOTS of cottages- almost every damn square had a cottage and I left about 1-2 farms for each city to encourage growth. I was doing hybrid economy-but I had a bigger emphasis on cottages than I did on specialists. I was on a small continent with only Pacal (who was an aggressive little bastard). I wiped him out in two fairly quick wars, burned down his cities and build my own over his so that I could maintain my theocratic dominance of my religion. Unfortunately I had no foreign trade routes. Maybe I should have focused on building both the Great Lighthouse/ Temple of Artemis and beelined Astronomy much sooner? ( I never reached astronomy by the way).
Maybe I should just stick to a strictly cottage economy with big emphasis on trade routes? What do you think?

 

[Phoenician]

Sounds like you have too many defensive units. I usually build about 0. I've only made a CG unit a couple times ... when playing raging barbarians, and once or twice in desperate emergencies.

Also, do not underestimate the value of trade routes. They seem to be much more lucrative in BTS. A foreign trade route in a city is typically a minimum of 3 commerce. Trade routes are worth the most with civs you have been at peace with for a long time, so make sure to have a friend or 2 through diplomacy. If you have coastal cities, the great lighthouse is usually worth more than the colossus, assuming you have good trading partners. With the Great Lighthouse and Currency, a newly founded coastal city will often bring in 12 commerce a turn from trade routes alone. You get the benefit regardless of what tiles you work, and the GL can have a much longer life than the Colossus.

Yeah, I'll try to emphasize trade routes more. I'm gonna try a strictly cottage economy with huge emphasis on trade routes and beeline astronomy much quicker. I will try to keep my army very small and limited until I hit astronomy.
But eventually I will need a large army and a large navy to be dominate in the renaissance/industrial age with my East Indiaman naval fleet, and I want to make a colony empire. So how will I deal with that? construct banks early maybe to cover those maintenance costs later on?

 

[v8_mark]

Good that you've got cottages - but how much total commerce were you producing, and how much were you spending on maintenance? If you've got a save, it would be good to have a look if possible.

 

[Phoenician]

Good that you've got cottages - but how much total commerce were you producing, and how much were you spending on maintenance? If you've got a save, it would be good to have a look if possible.

I don't have a save unfortunately - my comp crashed.
I will play another game and post some screen shots later so you guys have something better to look at.

 

[Sjaramei]

Double post? whoops

 

[Sjaramei]

Basic questions, do you have courthouses in every city? (100% sure? )
Built Forbidden Palace among the cities farthest away from your palace?

If you have enough cities one small courthouse can make your slider jump from 20% to 40%. (happens a lot during my early conquests) Similar effect from building a well positioned Forbidden Palace

I guess since you are running hybrid, either your capital or another decent city is specialized towards research and has an Academy in it. If not find one
soon
Sometimes a good research city can contribute up to at least 50% of your total research early in the game

Finally Civics, are you running something like Vassalage, Bureaucracy and Organized Religion at once? High upkeep civics can eat your money away

Stay away from OR and Vassalage and other high upkeep civics if you don't really need them. Or if you are insane enough to have a huge standing army and Pacifism, that would explain a lot

I really doubt you can have enough units to make your economy cringe so i would look for other reasons. (i always have to few compared to the AI, and never had a problem with too many units unless it's the super early axe rush )
Hope this helps

 

[Phoenician]

HAHA. I'm filthy rich. I'm in a very good lead in research. I am about to enter the renaissance and the comps are still in early Middle Ages.
Check this out guys.
I'm playing Prince game; Big and Small; Standard map; 9 players
My religion spread everywhere, like crazy! In this screenshot, I just researched Paper and about to cash in even more on my exploration missions. I followed some advise here to stick to strictly cottage and focus on trade routes. Obviously most of my income is coming from religious shrine, but I am making substantial amount from Trade routes too. Thanks for the advise, guys. Trade routes and Cottage economy and Religious economy owns.

 

[TRJS]

HAHA. I'm filthy rich./QUOTE]

Now for the small matter of our fee!

 

[Phoenician]

It doesn't get any better than this:

 

[Phoenician]

HAHA. I'm filthy rich./QUOTE]

Now for the small matter of our fee!

LOL. Check this out dude, I am so pwning

 

[Phoenician]

I am way ahead in tech, going for a culture victory. And as you can see, my very advanced army and navy are going to colonize the non-believers to assure dominance for the next few centuries.