Originally posted by Sparty
I've just started playing and have read thru the manual. I'm constantly running out of money. Am I just spending way too much on science (my advisor always tells me I need to spend more) or do I just need to make cities everywhere? Can too many cities, overlapping, be a bad thing?
First off, welcome to CFC.
Ignore your advisors. Cruel but realistic advice. Rarely do they tell you anything useful.
The more cities you have, the more money you'll make (usually) because more cities grow faster than a few big ones, and it's total pop that counts.
Every pop can generate income if they work a tile with a road (1g), next to a river (1g), a coast (2-3g) etc. So you want lots of pop working lots of road tiles, esp next to rivers. That maximises your income.
Next, some governments are more wasteful. You want a gov that either gets a lot of gold (democracy and republic get bonuses) or gets stuff for free (e.g. monarchy which gets free units). Despotism sucks because you lose a lot of potential due to corruption and other penalties.
Finally, only spend what you can afford. Be aware that if 30% on research will take 40 turns to learn a tech, so will 20%, or 10% too. 40 turns is the max time. So if you aren't making much progress at a sustainable tech spend rate, turn it down to 10% and save the extra cash.
