Rich Warmongers

[Öjevind Lång]

It seems that middle to late game, the only civs with money to burn are warmongers with a lot of puppet states. That rather annoys me since I am not as a rule a warmonger. How can I compete economically/scientifically with Oda and Hiawatha when I only have a modestly sized empire and don't desire anything more? I know about cultivating City States and entering into research agreements, but those things cost money too.

 

[elthrasher]

It seems that middle to late game, the only civs with money to burn are warmongers with a lot of puppet states. That rather annoys me since I am not as a rule a warmonger. How can I compete economically/scientifically with Oda and Hiawatha when I only have a modestly sized empire and don't desire anything more? I know about cultivating City States and entering into research agreements, but those things cost money too.

The short answer is you can't (depending on your difficulty level of course). More cities = more power (wealth, science, military might). This has been basically true in every version of Civ I've played. IV handled it fairly well, but if you got your economy under control it was still true that more cities would just make you stronger. V doesn't really limit this too well because you get to a point where you can rush a new Coliseum every few turns or use things like Meritocracy for a lot of bonus happiness. And of course a bigger empire means more luxuries.

I guess if you want to have a modest empire you have to work real hard at checking the runaway civs and get the gold buildings in fast. It's probably a far more challenging way to play than just being a warmonger.

A lot of people have already commented that vertical growth is much slower than expansion and the quickest and most effective way to expand is with the sword. Rather than fresh 1 pop cities you can get larger cities with some tile improvements and maybe some buildings and take out the opposition at the same time.

You should maybe start by playing archipelago maps. The AI is really bad at naval combat, even against other AI, so that will slow them down some. This is probably the best way to go for a pure builder style. Just keep your navy up to date and you really don't need land units at all.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

The short answer is you can't (depending on your difficulty level of course). More cities = more power (wealth, science, military might). This has been basically true in every version of Civ I've played. IV handled it fairly well, but if you got your economy under control it was still true that more cities would just make you stronger. V doesn't really limit this too well because you get to a point where you can rush a new Coliseum every few turns or use things like Meritocracy for a lot of bonus happiness. And of course a bigger empire means more luxuries.

I guess if you want to have a modest empire you have to work real hard at checking the runaway civs and get the gold buildings in fast. It's probably a far more challenging way to play than just being a warmonger.

A lot of people have already commented that vertical growth is much slower than expansion and the quickest and most effective way to expand is with the sword. Rather than fresh 1 pop cities you can get larger cities with some tile improvements and maybe some buildings and take out the opposition at the same time.

You should maybe start by playing archipelago maps. The AI is really bad at naval combat, even against other AI, so that will slow them down some. This is probably the best way to go for a pure builder style. Just keep your navy up to date and you really don't need land units at all.

Thanks. At present I'm playing as Elizabeth on a large Terra map - not Earth but the one with one or more huge continents exclusively inhabited by barbarians. The AI civs seem completely indifferent to this New World, which is of course a weakness in the game but nice for me. I'm expanding there at my own pace, acquiring luxures and befriending City States who have never encountered anyone except me. This is of course a weakness in the game - the AI cvs should be more active settling overseas, as many have said - but again, it's nice for me. First I sent out settlers and troops to the New World, but now the resources and even the troops have started to go the other way. Actually, I had no horses in my empire and had to go overseas - a long way overseas - to find a ncie spot with horses nearby.)

Even so, Ramesses, who is the top dog in this game and has swallowed almost half of the mother continent, is obscenely rich - he never has less than 5,000 coins in his coffers. Gewnghis Khan, big time aggressor and REXer number two, is he only one who can compete with him. And they have motrized infantry whereas I aoly now about to discover Infantry and in the meantime am uogarding my units to Riflemen every ime I get enough money for it. I do get al lot of money from barbarian camps and ancient ruins in the New World.

By now, Ramesses has swallowed up all my other neighbours and surrounds me. I thought he would go for me next, and for a while there was a lot of mechanized infantry around my borders, but my foreign advisor for once seemed cool about everything, and then all the units disappeared. I think Ramesses if gearing up for the big showdown with Genghis Khan or Askia, now that Hiawatha and Darius and Augustus have been almost wiped out. (The Siamese guy and Lady Wu mever amounted to much.)

 

[timtofly]

If you do not want to see any warmongering, you will have to go to an easier level. Settler is a good title if you want a large empire. The higher levels above king, you have to stay small or go to war, since the AI have more units to do something with.

The AI will not atack you if they think that you are not worth it. Have you checked the stats? You may have the most pointiest sticks, even if they are on the other side of the world. If you want more gold, then you need TP's, gold producing buildings, and luxuries.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

If you do not want to see any warmongering, you will have to go to an easier level. Settler is a good title if you want a large empire. The higher levels above king, you have to stay small or go to war, since the AI have more units to do something with.

The AI will not atack you if they think that you are not worth it. Have you checked the stats? You may have the most pointiest sticks, even if they are on the other side of the world. If you want more gold, then you need TP's, gold producing buildings, and luxuries.

Well, due to some really benevolent ancient ruins, a musketman I had was first promoted to rifleman, and then to infantry, and then to motorized infantry. (Unfortunately, such multiple upgradings of the same unit won't be possible when the upcoming patch has been published.) I sent that unit back to the Old World, where it stuck out a bit at first among my other troops, which were a melange of longbowmen, trebuchets, longswordsmen and musketmen. But then I discovered rifling, and most of my units are riflemen or cannon now -I upgraded old units and built new ones. And soon I'll have discovered Infantry. In the meantime, a rifleman unit in the New World has been promoted to Infantry by som ancient ruins... Heh. Maybe my lonely but very experienced Motorized Infantry discouraged Ramesses. Also, he might have decided that crushing Genghis Khan and Askia (Ashia? Asharia?) was more important than killing little me, who could wait. Now I am quite confident that I couldk repulse an invasion.

I appreciate all the advice, which I have committed to mind, but right now I have tremendous fun settling the New World (which is full of ancient ruins and barbarian camps to plunder) and deciding where to settle next to get hold of more luxuries. And bribing City States none of my AI rivals are aware of, being too busy fighting each other in the Old World.

Of course, Ramesses is a bit cranky because I "assemble troops at his borders". Well, they have to be *somewhere*, and my realm is, as I said, fairly small. But I've pulled back a lot of them to the London area, and that seems to satisfy him for now. As I said in a previous post, his motrized infantry units, which some turns ago encircled my borders on all sides, have now taken off, presumably to exterminate Genghis Khan.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

I have now played a reckless expansion and conquest game (as Napoleon), and it was fun, but it's a disgrace how easy it is to win if you constantly attack and puppet anything you see. I'm a builder and seldom or never go for conquest or domination victories, so I hadn't realized before how the game favours that kind of strategy. You get as rich as a troll and research practically takes care of self. No one can keep up with the biggest and most warlike empire. Now I understand why Sullla was so annoyed at Civ V. They must address that imbalance, and be serious about it.

 

[elthrasher]

I have now played a reckless expansion and conquest game (as Napoleon), and it was fun, but it's a disgrace how easy it is to win if you constantly attack and puppet anything you see. I'm a builder and seldom or never go for conquest or domination victories, so I hadn't realized before how the game favours that kind of strategy. You get as rich as a troll and research practically takes care of self. No one can keep up with the biggest and most warlike empire. Now I understand why Sullla was so annoyed at Civ V. They must address that imbalance, and be serious about it.

There's definitely a rich get richer aspect to the game and part of the problem is that even if you don't rampage around, one of the AI will and then (on the higher difficulties anyway), you'll be left trying to fend off mech infantry with muskets.

Civ IV did an okay job of limiting how much conquest you could do without your economy tanking, but it was still often the right play to get a big stack and double your territory.

Maybe this will be addressed in a patch. As things stand right now, war and ICS are by far the best strategies. Used together they are even better.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

There's definitely a rich get richer aspect to the game and part of the problem is that even if you don't rampage around, one of the AI will and then (on the higher difficulties anyway), you'll be left trying to fend off mech infantry with muskets.

Civ IV did an okay job of limiting how much conquest you could do without your economy tanking, but it was still often the right play to get a big stack and double your territory.

Maybe this will be addressed in a patch. As things stand right now, war and ICS are by far the best strategies. Used together they are even better.

That's what I did. I won a diplomati victiy with just about every city state voting for me. I have never got so high a score. Now I'll get back ot some *serious* gaming, i. e. winning without being a warmonger,

 

[arjaaaine]

I have the same issue that you have. I don't like to warmonger until I am ready to Take over the world.

I like to stay at around 10-11 cities and always run into low gold.


Tips to get high gold:

1) Get coastal/island cities... they are a GOLD MINE.
2) In the beginning make sure your cities are all focused on population ONLY. Hence only make farms, then as cities close to 14-15 population.. start converting the focus from pop to gold. This gives a HUGE BOOST.

3) Keep selling extra luxury resources.

I usually tend to still stay behind the leader, but it also means I have a stronger base than him. I can handle new cities into the empire pretty easily and my base cities are stronger.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

There's definitely a rich get richer aspect to the game and part of the problem is that even if you don't rampage around, one of the AI will and then (on the higher difficulties anyway), you'll be left trying to fend off mech infantry with muskets.

Civ IV did an okay job of limiting how much conquest you could do without your economy tanking, but it was still often the right play to get a big stack and double your territory.

Maybe this will be addressed in a patch. As things stand right now, war and ICS are by far the best strategies. Used together they are even better.

The food trick is new to me; I have habitually favoured production until money or research becomes feasible. Neat. I'll try this. By the way, when (if ever) do you tell a city to specialize in research?

 

[Gazurtoid]

2) In the beginning make sure your cities are all focused on population ONLY. Hence only make farms, then as cities close to 14-15 population.. start converting the focus from pop to gold. This gives a HUGE BOOST.
.

When your cities reach that level of population do you convert your farms into trading posts?

 

[Civsassin]

It looks like the developers realize the difficulty of running an economy with fewer cities. In the upcoming patch they are adding a national wonder similar to wall street from Civ IV. If you keep your empire small, it will be easier to put the requisite building in all of your cities to be able to capture this national wonder. It will probably require banks or stock markets in all of your cities, which will be difficult to accomplish if you're war mongering and especially if you are annexing some of your conquered cities.

 

[elthrasher]

It looks like the developers realize the difficulty of running an economy with fewer cities. In the upcoming patch they are adding a national wonder similar to wall street from Civ IV. If you keep your empire small, it will be easier to put the requisite building in all of your cities to be able to capture this national wonder. It will probably require banks or stock markets in all of your cities, which will be difficult to accomplish if you're war mongering and especially if you are annexing some of your conquered cities.

I am hopeful that the patch will help equalize the playing field (and if not this one, future patches), however, it's not really that tough to get banks and stock markets up in all your "real" cities when you are on the warpath. Typically you start with swords or horses, then run up to rifling fast. Now you can go for artillery if you need it (if the enemy has rifles) or go grab banking. Your units are built, so your cities are at liberty to work on gold buildings or whatever else you need.

Also, annex? No need to annex. Puppets are better.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

I am hopeful that the patch will help equalize the playing field (and if not this one, future patches), however, it's not really that tough to get banks and stock markets up in all your "real" cities when you are on the warpath. Typically you start with swords or horses, then run up to rifling fast. Now you can go for artillery if you need it (if the enemy has rifles) or go grab banking. Your units are built, so your cities are at liberty to work on gold buildings or whatever else you need.

Also, annex? No need to annex. Puppets are better.

Absolutely. You don't need monuments in puppets to build the National Wonder for that; you don't need universities in your puppets to build Oxford University and so on.

 

[neilkaz]

Puppetted cities seem to run Gold Focus. I often replace most if not all of their farms with TP's and this slows their growth somewhat, reducing my happiness issues and leaves me swimming in gold when I have a big puppet empire.

.. neilkaz ..

 

[Öjevind Lång]

Puppetted cities seem to run Gold Focus. I often replace most if not all of their farms with TP's and this slows their growth somewhat, reducing my happiness issues and leaves me swimming in gold when I have a big puppet empire.

.. neilkaz ..

Hey, neat tip!

 

[elthrasher]

Puppetted cities seem to run Gold Focus. I often replace most if not all of their farms with TP's and this slows their growth somewhat, reducing my happiness issues and leaves me swimming in gold when I have a big puppet empire.

This is fine if you just want to use the puppet for gold. If you want the puppet to run specialists, you sometimes need to be more creative. The dumb gold focus means each citizen will head for the maximum gold output, even if that starves the city or if specialists would be a much better choice (as they often are if you've gotten any Freedom social policies). You can micromanage your puppets almost as much as you can your controlled cities by paying careful attention to your tile improvements.

So the advice you're giving here is good advice, but there are times when there is better advice to give. If you have a medium-sized city with several specialist buildings available and have gone very far down the Freedom path, probably the best thing to do is just pillage most of your tile improvements. Trading posts are sub-par compared to merchants in this case.

Maybe I'll try to collect some more data and start a new thread (only to have all my findings rendered obsolete by the upcoming patch, I'm sure).

 

[Öjevind Lång]

Maybe I'll try to collect some more data and start a new thread (only to have all my findings rendered obsolete by the upcoming patch, I'm sure).

I hope so. Oops! That doesn't really come across the way I meant to. Ahem.

 

[swordspider]

You know, the simple solution here is to just be a warmonger!!!

 

[Civsassin]

Puppetted cities seem to run Gold Focus. I often replace most if not all of their farms with TP's and this slows their growth somewhat, reducing my happiness issues and leaves me swimming in gold when I have a big puppet empire.

.. neilkaz ..

Puppets actually produce what you need from my experience. When I've had happiness issues, my puppets have headed towards happiness producing buildings. If they need culture, they'll build monuments and/or temples. Barring other needs, they usually produce gold enhancing buildings. Overall, puppets are pretty useful IMO. The only reason to annex is if you need another city to produce units or wonders. Those can only be produced in your core or annexed cities.