Resurrecting A Crashed Economy

[IagoAlberto]

I'm a long time lurker and Civ player and I ran into a situation I haven't had in a while last night. First off this isn't a 'help my units are on strike and I don't know what to do thread'. I haven't crashed my economy to the point of striking units since I started playing vanilla, but last night events conspired to take my Roman armies on a rampage of conquest, expanding my empire to an unsustainable point.

My situation is this: Monarch difficulty, Epic speed, standard pangaea map. I started on an aweful peninsula on the north-east of the continent, with only one good city site, being Rome. I got one decent city up and running a long ways to the west to give me a toe hold on the good part of the continent then added another to claim Iron. I researched the worker techs then iron working then went to war with the incas, finishing them off in about 15 turns claiming their capital with a shrine and one other city that allowed me to block an isthmus separating the two halves of the continent, it was also a quality site with rice, dye and good flood plains. Then within 5 turns the eastern half of the continent erupted in war. Shaka declared war on the Greeks, my best friends to this point, as did Hannibal. Hannibal was my neighbor to the south of my original empire and incan conquests. The Greeks asked for help, I obliged declaring war on both and grabbing one of hannibals cities razing another 3, fighting off a zulu stack of doom. Then with my legions surrounding Carthage poised to conquer, my economy goes on strike! So I make a quick peace, for monarchy disband a few units and am back in the green at 0% slider.

So, can we resurrect the Romans to win this game? We are surrounded by hostile neighbors, Hannibal and Shaka to the south-east and buddhist Izzy and Joao to the west. We are behind in techs. But we have construction, alphabet and are teching currency but its 30+ turns away. I also have the pre-req's of Code of Laws. Our economy obviously stinks, there are a good number of cottages that have planted, a few are hamlets but they have a long way to go. There are a few scientists running in Rome and the incan capital. We also have the Hindu shrine in the former incan capital and I am about to move my capital to the centre of the empire to reduce maintenance.

What are some good medium to long term strategies to catch up in tech and get back on track. The army is strong so we are fairly safe, but tech needs work. Thanks in advance for the advice. I apologize for the long winded post but I won't have screen-shots and a saved game to post until tonight.

 

[shyuhe]

Consider relocating your capital to a more central location. You'd be surprised at how much it'll shave off of city maintenance if you're very spread out. Otherwise, get CoL and build the FP near your more recent acquisitions.

Since you declared war, Hannibal and Shaka may attack you later so be prepared. What techs are available for trade?

 

[Daedal]

Sounds like you need CoL more than you need currency. I'd start researching that instead.

You'll also need to improve diplomatic relations with at least one of your neighbors to tech trade. Are the Greeks still around? How's their research going?

If your army is strong enough to take on another war that may be a good option right now. Razing + pillaging =

 

[UncleJJ]

You just need Currency and your problems will vanish. The cottages you have will soon become hamlets and hamlets become villages so it won't take 30 turns to get Currency . The darkest hour is just before dawn.

Once you have Currency, build Wealth in some of your production cities for a few turns. Build markets in your commerce cities. That will soon allow you to raise the Research slider and get Code of Laws. The combination of Currency and Code of Laws is all you need to solve these sort of problems. You really should have been aware of where your wars were heading and delayed expansion until you had Currency.

 

[UncleJJ]

Sounds like you need CoL more than you need currency. I'd start researching that instead.

Currency is much more valuable than CoL in this situation. You can ask (beg) for gold from friendly neighbours or ask (threaten) from enemies and you can sell techs to either. You can turn hammers into gold through building wealth, and then whip buildings and units later using food for hammers. You can build a market (25% gold bonus) in a commerce city and your cottages will be much better as they turn into hamlets and villages. Running merchnats in cities with excess food gives excellent food to gold in the early game. And you get an extra trade route that can be worth 2 commerce per city.

In all these ways Currency >> CoL, which just reduces costs by 50% in any expensive cities. Of course both these technologies are important but I fail to see how courthouses (which you have to build at 120 hammers in every city) is better than Currency that you only have to research for most of its benefits.

 

[LlamaCat]

I agree with UncleJJ, I've found myself in these situations and actually tested this out before: courthouses vs. markets, and if you are running science slider very low, the bonus from markets has a huge impact (keeping in mind that its value decreases as the slider goes back up later, but by then you have so much more direct coming from a shrine or specialists that even then it's pretty good).

courthouses can come much later since they are expensive, and you can afford to be more selective about where to put them. moving the capital is better at this point if you want to reduce maintence (less hammers invested but bigger impact now on maintenance)

 

[IagoAlberto]

Just to add a bit more clarity to the picture. Yes my army is in good shape for another war, it will just go on strike if I move all of it out of my borders . . .

The greeks are still around and in a decent position. They only lost one border city cuz Shaka redirected his stack towards me and the Praets ate it for breakfast. I may be able to improve relations with Joao, since he sold me a couple of techs for gold and we have open borders. Shaka is pretty angry as are the carthiginians. But I think I could finish off the carthaginians quickly if my economy recovers fairly soon.

Thanks for the imput so far. I'm curious to see how well I can recover this situation, cuz normally I would just abandon the game.

 

[brades]

dont abandon, I usually expand around the time of rifles, but if I have to do it early it almost always winds up with my economy in the crapper after the war is over. But, you can definately recover it sounds like you have a lot of land and ultimately land is power. I usually use my first golden age in the situation you are in right now, with a lot of cities it will make a huge difference.

 

[futurehermit]

If I expand that much that early, I will only keep both enemy capitals, razing everything else, including holy cities. You can sustain your 3 capitals even if they are quite spread out. But once you add 1-2 more cities, things start going south. Once you have currency/col you can expand again at your leisure, either peacefully, or not

 

[SnowlyWhite]

if you're... don't remember which one is organized, never playing with romans - go for col. if you're the non organized one, go for currency. And yes, relocating capitol(by chopping the palace if needed, so it doesn't take an etternity) is usually a good move.

 

[arbarbonif]

In all these ways Currency >> CoL, which just reduces costs by 50% in any expensive cities. Of course both these technologies are important but I fail to see how courthouses (which you have to build at 120 hammers in every city) is better than Currency that you only have to research for most of its benefits.

You also get Caste System with Code of Laws, which means you have as many merchant specialists as you have food to support without having to actually build anything. Depending on the situation, that immediate boost may be more valuable to get the economy running again. Since researching is happening while running at 100% cash there must be libraries around, so getting some merchant specialists to enable a shift of the slider may be more valuable than one might expect.

I suspect that in terms of immediate effect, the trading situation is the big question (both in terms of the added route and the bullying/bargaining cash from AIs). If you can get enough cash that way, go Currency; if you can't, go Code of Laws.

 

[futurehermit]

I usually go CoL first because medit-priest-writing-col seems more techable when my economy is in the tank than writing-alpha/math-currency. However, if you're able to get to currency it can be very powerful for all the reasons mentioned.

 

[johnny_rico]

Currency + praetorians = extortion

Your economy will be fine.

 

[mike p]

If you have high population/low commerce cities, then whip a library and hire specialists too. This can lower upkeep and increase beakers, without impacting the slider. And gets you moving towards as Great Scientist, so I'd do it in at least one city, even if the others are all working cottages.

 

[oyzar]

Take cities to get plunder money and plunder improvements until you kill the whole continent. Also you should probably turned off research earlier...

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

For other ideas on recovering economies, you may be interested in reading the game reports from Adventure 9.

 

[Ibian]

Caste system and run merchants in your GP farm, setting the GM? Thats the method i use in my current Gandhi game, its much more manageable with a central gold source. Means you only have to build gold multipliers in one city to get the full benefit, and all commerce goes through your science building multipliers instead of only part of it.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

Currency also enables your UB - well worth it.

 

[CivMcNut]

I had a thread here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=262135

Where I ran into much of the same problem. My economy was at ground zero for a while in that game, but once I got those courthouses up, I got to where I could tech again. That distance maintenance can be a real killer on a city with no courthouse. It seems like the middle ages is where you can really pull out of these kind of funks.

 

[Feanor01]

Sounds familar. Usually I am drug into an early war I really do not want to fight. I end up keeping too many cities and maintance costs kill me. I usually wait and start building temples and courthouses and banks (when you get the techs. As well, spread the religion around as much as possible. After an early war my tech bar is usually at 20-30% and I fall behind a bit. Some good trading will get you a few techs. As your population grows those hamlets will grow and get you more income. Given a few dozen turns and the tech bar will go up and up. Your main threat probably will be another war against your rivels and they will bring knights!

Move capital and give it time. You will recover and with more land mass win in the end.