Newbie question

[Wobbly Rail]

Hello everone. I am new to Civ III and have only played Civ I previously.

I played CIV III for the first time last night and kept getting "treasury running dangerously low" message. After looking through the manual. I thought perhaps
1) I was had to many workers and was unable to afford them
2) I should have aimed to reach Monarchy sooner - to increase production/wealth
3) I did not have enough mines

Can anyone comment or give advice on this rather basic problem.
Thanks

 

[rdomarat]

Your treasury running low typically means that your tax rate is not set high enough. The things that cost money are (might not be complete) :

1) Supporting units. Go to your military advisor and check the number of "free" units you can have versus the number of units you do have. This varies based on the type on government you are in.

2) City improvements. All your temples and libraries and barracks also require upkeep and cost you money per turn. I thikn your domestic advisor can tell you this.

To increase your tax rate, go to your Domestic advisor screen and lower your science rate (the slide bar with the little beaker). This will increase the amount of tax money you bring in, but will slow down the rate at which you aquire new technology. You can also increase the amount of tax revenue without changing your science rate by :

1) Building more roads. Go into your city management screens and see if you are working on a tile that doesn't have roads when you could be working an euqivalent tile that does have roads. When working a tile with roads, you increase the total commerce for your civ, thus increasing the amount of tax, science and luxuries your civ will produce

2) In the city management screen, click on some of the people to change them from general labourers to specialized workers, specifically tax collectors.

HTH.

 

[Grotius]

Roads are the best way to increase your cash flow. Each worked square with a road produces at least one gold, and often more. Whenever you improve a tile (with, say, a mine or irrigation), you should routinely add a road as well.

In addition, your tax rate will affect cash flow. Set this by hitting F1 to go to your Domestic Adviser. There's a slider that allows you to strike a balance among science, tax, and happiness spending.

Yes, government types can affect cashflow. If your cities are generally over population 6, it probably is time to think about monarchy or better. To really increase revenue, Republic and Democracy are the way to go, but those gov'ts also do charge you more for unit upkeep, so there's some tradeoff: higher revenue and growth in exchange for higher costs.

Mines affect cashflow only indirectly -- either by generating cash in an associate road, or if the owning city is producing "wealth". In a pinch, you can ask cities that produce lots of blue shields to make "wealth" to increase your cash.

Hope this helps.

 

[Megalou]

Just a slight addition: Only start "building wealth" when the box of shields is empty, if you don't want to lose the shields the city has collected. Civ3 is a game of timing, and the hardest bit is to look ahead.

 

[Wobbly Rail]

Thanks for the info, very much appreciated - Civ III has quite a steep learning curve