Purely Theory, the Gold Economy/Strategy?

[Dudecles]

I'm not sure it can even be called an Economy, based on some definitions of what that is in Civ. So if you disagree, just replace the word 'Economy' with 'Strategy'.

I'm looking forward to trying this out when I get home from work today. The basic premise is 2-fold:
1. Get GOLD; any way you can.
2. EXPAND; gold can support a larger empire.

How do you get the gold?
-Prophets
-Merchants
-Great Prophets
-Great Merchants
-Great Artists
-Religious Shrines
-Trade from resources, techs, peace-settlements
-Pillaging
-Wall Street
-Corporations
-Certain Wonders
-Building it (Hammers)
Try to AVOID getting most of your Gold from commerce. (We want a high science slider to convert the total commerce from your many cities directly into science.)

After looking at these options, I think the best course of action is the Super Gold City (SGC), producing the vast majority of money for the empire, while your many smaller cities cottage up and/or run merchants/priests, and claim resources for trading for gold/turn.

The SGC should ideally have at least one religious shrine, all gold-modifying buildings, especially wallstreet, and as many gold-producing specialists/traderoutes/commerce it can get, plus corporation HQ's later on. ALL great merchants, priests, and artists should be settled here.

The SGC should support a large number of cities, so take advantage of this and expand either peacefully or militarily. These many cities will convert commerce into science, or build Gold, or run merchants/priests for supplemental income. Each one will be less effective at producing beakers than a standard cottage economy, or GScientist SE, but the sheer number of cities should make up for it.

With your larger empire, you should also have more resources to trade for gold per turn.

The other possible main component of Gold income could be military conquest, pillaging and razing opponents who are more towards the bottom of the scoreboard. I'm not sure how much income is possible from this, so I won't conjecture about it until playing a test game or two.

So basically, play with a strong focus towards securing GOLD, and expanding when you can afford it, aiming to have the science slider at 60% - 90% when stable.

Desirable Traits: (1-10 Scale, 10 being best)
Organized 9 Better able to support a larger empire, faster courthouses, banks, no worrying about expensive civics.

Financial 8 Increased commerce means better science, more gold.

Philosophical 8 More great prophets and merchants; fast universities

Imperialistic 5 Faster settlers for fast expansion, and GG for expansion through conquest.

Industrious 5 Better prepared to lock down key Wonders

Spiritual 5 Faster temples for priest specialists, and more flexible with civic changes.

Charismatic 5 Slightly larger cities for more commerce, and better warring for expansion

Aggressive 4 Good for expanding militarily

Creative 4 Strong blocking abilities to enhance early expansion; fast libraries for more science

Expansive 4 Slightly larger cities for more commerce; fast workers speed peacful expansion and cottaging

Protective 1 Pretty much nothing; Fast castles for an extra traderoute.



Desireable Wonders:
Pyramids
Angkor Wat
Spiral Minaret
Statue of Liberty
Temple of Artemis
Great Lighthouse
Colossus
Stonehenge
Oracle
Any other Priest/Merchant producing Wonder



Possible Sub-Strategies: (These are NOT exclusive)

Super Gold City: Preferably use a religious shrined city, build market, grocer, bank, wallstreet, with corporations optional, settle all priests/merchants here; build science-modifying buildings in OTHER cities.

Rapid Expand: Oracle --> Code of Laws for religion, shrine, courthouses, and caste system; found a large number of cities, whip courthouses, switch to caste system, run merchants and priests, spread shrine religion to all.

Priests Galore!: Pyramids for representation, caste system, and angkor wat/pacifism; run preists en masse.

War Bounty: Find a weaker target, prepare a number of mini pillage-stacks, with a healer, defensive unit, and a few 2-move pillagers. Circulate around the territory, pillaging all improvements as they are rebuilt.



Best/Worst Leaders?

I don't know all the leaders' traits off the top of my head, but I would assume any leader with a combination of Organized, Financial, or Philosophical would be excellent, as well as Mansa for the Mint, Charlemagne (?) for the Rathaus, and possibly Shaka for the Ikhanda. What do you think?



I know this probably isn't new, but I think it might be a fun thing to try, maybe as a RPC?

 

[Artichoker]

One very specific case of using Gold I have discovered is right before starting a war.


If you plan to declare war on an opponent that is far behind technologically, you can trade a technology to him for all the gold he has left. This will prevent that opponent from using the gold to upgrade units. Meanwhile, you can use that gold to upgrade your own units, right before the war!

Of course, it's useless if that opponent has no gold left...

 

[madscientist]

Dudlecles, welcome to the forums!

You nring up alot of information which may not be totally related to getting gold. Such things are traderoutes are important but if talking strict gold as your stating they are unimportant. Gold is always important, but sounds like you are talking about a super Gold City which could support the entire empire by itself or produce excess gold that be used to rush by units/building in other cities.

So maybe I'll go over what I view as a supergoldcity (SGC)

1) You want at least 1 shrined religion here. The more the better but that is essentially beyond your control. Also you need that religion VERY well spread.
2) You want at least three if not 4 corps headquarters here, which means saving a GM, GE, GS, GA. That's Sid's, Creative, Jewelers, Aluminum if I got the magic 4 correct.
3) You want teh basic three buildings here, bank/market/grocer. If you American you want the Mall, and Malinese you want the Mint.
4) You want Wall street and probably the National Park (if you retain forrests). wall street is obvious, the NP would allow you to have free merchant specialists, up to 7 in the wall street city. Production is not that important, so the loss of coal is irrelevant.
5) After you exhaust the merchants you want to run as many priests as you can.
6) Settle all the gold producing specialists here that are not saved for the corps.
7) Wonders: Spiral Minerat if you decide to keep a state religion. All the others deal with commerce which we should keep separate.

As far as a RPC (thinking my own, feel free to start one anytime you want) this would be more of a supplemental task to a leader. I am thinking Mansa Musa maybe title GREED! although I would think it needs more of an angle. The SGC would be a strat/economy.

 

[ese-aSH]

lets talk about real gold economy, with science slider down to 0% (as for the spy economy).

note :
commerce multiplier :
library : 25%
university : 25%
observatory : 25%
monasteries : 10% (obsolote with Scientific method)

market : 25%
grocery : 25%
bank : 50%

that means you got a better multiplier for gold than for science.

will the AI make the tech deal : 1 beaker = 1 gold ? I guess so, with good diplomatic and trading skills you may be able to stick in the tech race (depends on who's on the map, and you will HAVE TO be friend with a natural tech leader).
a very simple way I often use is to buy a tech from the AI, and then sell it a bigger tech to get all my gold back + all its gold.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Obvious troll topic is obvious

 

[madscientist]

Additional Comments

@ Dude: Notes, banks are not half-priced for an ORG leader.

@EE: the FR civic get's +10% to science. You forgot the Academy from a GS. Also labs post superconductors (late I will admit).

Also I have the same problem as the espionage economy, you are always behind the AI tech leader. IMO always better to be ahead if possible, or at least one tech they don't have for trade benefits.

 

[ese-aSH]

Additional Comments

@ Dude: Notes, banks are not half-priced for an ORG leader.

@EE: the FR civic get's +10% to science. You forgot the Academy from a GS. Also labs post superconductors (late I will admit).

Also I have the same problem as the espionage economy, you are always behind the AI tech leader. IMO always better to be ahead if possible, or at least one tech they don't have for trade benefits.

in the early game (from currency - the moment when you can go 0% science - up to liberalism), lightbulbing should be enough to get valuable techs.

and gold economy means war, constant war. huge army, more cities.

I think a gold economy game will rely a lot on diplomacy : being able to bring the AI into war, to trade gold vs techs.

I may have a try on it, i looks fun

edit : youre right about laboratories... I forgot them

 

[Ibian]

The best gold city is your GP farm. The more food you have the more merchants you can run the more merchants you can settle the more merchants you can run.

Lategame if i have a small empire, the settled specialists can often pay everything on their own. If there comes a point where running merchants is not needed anymore, then it can be turned into a good hammer city thanks to the extra food from merchants.

Also dont worry about having a shrine there, its nice if it happens but not really important.

 

[Artichoker]

lets talk about real gold economy, with science slider down to 0% (as for the spy economy).

note :
commerce multiplier :
library : 25%
university : 25%
observatory : 25%
monasteries : 10% (obsolote with Scientific method)

market : 25%
grocery : 25%
bank : 50%

that means you got a better multiplier for gold than for science.

Not entirely true...

Although Wall Street and Oxford both provide an additional 100%, an Academy provides an additional 50% science, and there is no corresponding building for gold.

Also, Monasteries provide +10% each, but you can have one for every religion in the city.

Finally, another factor is specialists, which tend to produce more science than gold, especially when Representation is adopted as a civic.

 

[madscientist]

Not entirely true...

Although Wall Street and Oxford both provide an additional 100%, an Academy provides an additional 50% science, and there is no corresponding building for gold.

Also, Monasteries provide +10% each, but you can have one for every religion in the city.

Finally, another factor is specialists, which tend to produce more science than gold, especially when Representation is adopted as a civic.

I agree but I think the point was beakers converted off the slider, so specialists and representation are not an issue.

 

[Ibian]

if you only have one gold city academies wont make up for the difference between banks and labs. Not unless you got one in every single city.

 

[Artichoker]

The best way to accumulate gold is through sound economic strategy--primarily, wise use of the gold and science sliders to find the right "sweet spot".

Since the "true value" of gold vs. science is variable, it's only a matter of correctly assessing the correct conversion factor between the two, at any point in time, in order to decide where to put these two sliders.

For instance, for a 4000-beaker tech to be researched in 5 turns, it takes 800 beakers per turn to do so.

Let's suppose those 800 beakers/turn are available with a 60% science rate. This means the gold rate is at most 40%.

We can consider adjusting science/gold to 50%/50%. For example, this might give us 700 beakers/turn, but would mean an extra +200 gold/turn.

It's then a question of whether 100 beakers/turn or 200 gold/turn is better, for that situation. If gold is more valuable in that situation, then 50%/50% would be a wiser choice. And vice versa for science.

 

[Catan_Settler]

Don't forget the brits! Their 2 female leaders are financial and they have the Stock Exchange which is 65% more commerce vs the bank's 50%. My current game is with Elizabeth and I am raking in the cash.... The only thing that kind of screwed me is that the two religions I founded didn't end up in my main commerce city. Even so, it's pumping out around 95 GPT @ 50/50 science/commerce and I'm only in the 1600s. Coincidentally both religions ended up founding in one of my production cities, so I'm in the process of retooling it a bit to get the financial buildings in it as well, since it is just passively spitting out 60 or so GPT from the shrines. I suppose if I ever decide to take a break from intercontinental warfare, I can convert its 30 hammers/turn straight into wealth and see if it will surpass the settled merchants/double gold/cottage spammed city of Toronto... Which it likely can, once I get the infrastructure in place. It may be a tough decision as to where to put Wallstreet.

 

[Dudecles]

Well the idea started when I tried to investigate how many beakers you essentially from gold allowing you to run at a deficit. (The best example is in the early game when you pop gold from huts).

It turned out that 1 extra gold allowed ~1 extra beaker in almost all situations. So if you pop 30 gold from a hut and run at 100% science until you hit 0 gold in your treasury, you gained 30 more beakers than you otherwise would have gotten if you had never popped the gold from the hut.

So I wanted to test this out and try substituting scientist specialists with merchants and priests, and focusing on getting gold.

 

[Ibian]

Note: Building gold or beakers goes through production multipliers, not gold or science multipliers.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Well the real advantage of a Gold (only) strategy is its the Flexibility of Gold, as it can get you Empire Support, Buildings, Units, and Techs.

Food-> Buildings, Units with slavery/caste.. but you need specialists to turn it into Science/Gold to get techs/Empire support (and all multiplier buildings still apply for production, flasks, and gold)

Hammers-> useful in that you can eliminate all other multiplier buildings (since building Wealth/Research doesn't use the gold/flask multipliers) but it has a very low output per tile, and its multiplier buildings are far off

Commerce/Specialists-> Flasks or Espionage for Techs, Gold for Empire support (you need both forms of buildings... unless you go Trully pure Espionage and get your Gold by Stealing it from others... but you still need hammers to build spies)

Commerce/Specialists->Gold, and Gold alone... you need no more Hammer/Science multipliers once you have Alphabet, Currency, and Universal Suffrage... Still somewhat low efficiency v. Hammers and less Multipliers v. Research, but once towns get going... a definite advantage (especially for the English ladies.. Financial and a +15% extra).


PS there is an article on the Beaker-Gold conversion, basically it depends on what buildings you have. (the more science multiplier buildings and less gold multiplier buildings you have, the more Gold in your Treasury is worth to you in terms of Deficit research)... as for specialists it depends on the multiplier buildings where the specialists are compared to the rest of your empire. The AI Trading ratio I believe is generaly pretty close to 1:1 (assuming they like you enough)

 

[Ibian]

Hammers-> useful in that you can eliminate all other multiplier buildings (since building Wealth/Research doesn't use the gold/flask multipliers) but it has a very low output per tile, and its multiplier buildings are far off

Actually, with state property turning hammers to gold or beakers is better than running specialists. And before that you need them for buildings and troops anyway.

Next to food, the hammer probably is the mightiest unit in any economy. It represents buildings, military, and eventually gold and beakers as well. You also get 100% hammer multiplier before science multiplier.

And finally a HE allows you to use the happy slider as much as you want. I lost my first monarch game by one turn, and i blame it on the UN resolutions that forced me to change civics. If i had been running HE instead of CE i could have defied the resolutions, and built my spaceship faster at the same time.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Actually, with state property turning hammers to gold or beakers is better than running specialists. And before that you need them for buildings and troops anyway.

Next to food, the hammer probably is the mightiest unit in any economy. It represents buildings, military, and eventually gold and beakers as well. You also get 100% hammer multiplier before science multiplier.

And finally a HE allows you to use the happy slider as much as you want. I lost my first monarch game by one turn, and i blame it on the UN resolutions that forced me to change civics. If i had been running HE instead of CE i could have defied the resolutions, and built my spaceship faster at the same time.

Well, the problem is the Hammer multiplier is always lower than the Science or Gold Multiplier until Assembly Line, and while it maybe better than specialists, it is Not better than Cottages.

 

[Ibian]

Your tech rate early on only really matters if you are isolated. If you plan to expand, all you need is to get to the next type of unit and then churn them out until the other guy dies.

Its the lategame after you have all the land you want where techrate really matters, and thats also where hammers become competitive. Especially since a bunch of newly conquered cities dont have time to build up infrastructure and then work the cottages up to towns. Workshops give their full return right away.

 

[pfo]

I think acquiring wealth through any means should be part of any strategy if you want to be able to place your sliders where you feel they are necessary, or be able to support civics / an empire or an army. How I do this on a game per game basis varies. Sometimes it's cottages, sometimes I lax on science slider and go specialists, some games I pop lots of GMs for trade mission, sometimes it's taken through war, and sometimes I get religions and shrines. I find I can never plan any of them in advance, and so take whatever is available.