Tips/Help managing economy especially early game.

[Calicea]

So I often find I can't maintain enough gold to field a military capable of holding of the AI on king and build my buildings needed for my victory, usually culture as Polynesia. Sometimes because of starting places I can't field more than a unit or two without going into red. So I'd really appreciate any tips or tricks you professionals have learned. Thanks in advance.

 

[Noatz]

Sell sell sell! Offload open borders, luxuries you don't need (read if it won't take you into unhappiness, sell it), strategics (obviously don't sell Iron to a next door Augustus but most of the time its fine).

Don't overbuild units in preparation for an AI bumrush, instead save enough gold to rushbuy a couple of archers if you're really worried about a DoW.

Practise holding rushes with mimumal troops. A couple of ranged units and the Oligarchy policy will go a long way to holding off aggression - there's no need to try and field a swarm of trash to try and fight the AI on its own terms, its ******** at war, use that to your advantage.

 

[Tabarnak]

Rivers. Plant around them.

 

[leech.lamer]

Early game:
Don't spam roads. Don't even connect cities before they are 5+ popluation. For distant cities for clusters of cities, use harbors rather than roads.
Don't spam units. Adopt Oligarchy for free maintenance on garrisoned units.
Build the Colossus. Build Machu Picchu. Build the national treasury as early as possible, before the cost goes up with more cities.
Improve luxury hexes and sell to other civs. they seem to be worth 200 every time, if the AI civ has the money.
build trading post in every city
build another trading post in every city
build markets
temporarily shift citizen management to gold focus. esp. effective if there are extra trading posts in the city.

 

[leech.lamer]

Practise holding rushes with mimumal troops. A couple of ranged units and the Oligarchy policy will go a long way to holding off aggression - there's no need to try and field a swarm of trash to try and fight the AI on its own terms, its ******** at war, use that to your advantage.

Add a couple of well-placed road improvements around each city to facilitate archers and catapults, and to make counter attach more effective. I have choked my own defense by not having 2-3 of the squares beside a city improved with roads.

 

[Calicea]

Sell sell sell! Offload open borders, luxuries you don't need (read if it won't take you into unhappiness, sell it), strategics (obviously don't sell Iron to a next door Augustus but most of the time its fine).

Don't overbuild units in preparation for an AI bumrush, instead save enough gold to rushbuy a couple of archers if you're really worried about a DoW.

Practise holding rushes with mimumal troops. A couple of ranged units and the Oligarchy policy will go a long way to holding off aggression - there's no need to try and field a swarm of trash to try and fight the AI on its own terms, its ******** at war, use that to your advantage.

Sound advice thanks =) I'll be sure to try that. Also a good point about rivers

 

[Calicea]

Early game:
Don't spam roads. Don't even connect cities before they are 5+ popluation. For distant cities for clusters of cities, use harbors rather than roads.
Don't spam units. Adopt Oligarchy for free maintenance on garrisoned units.
Build the Colossus. Build Machu Picchu. Build the national treasury as early as possible, before the cost goes up with more cities.
Improve luxury hexes and sell to other civs. they seem to be worth 200 every time, if the AI civ has the money.
build trading post in every city
build another trading post in every city
build markets
temporarily shift citizen management to gold focus. esp. effective if there are extra trading posts in the city.

Also seems like good advice. I usually fail because I build too many trading posts so I don't have enough farms or well almost done. I'll work on the balance.

 

[The Pilgrim]

Also seems like good advice. I usually fail because I build too many trading posts so I don't have enough farms or well almost done. I'll work on the balance.

If you're pursuing peaceful culture with few cities, don't bother with trade posts. Grow, grow, grow. The bigger your cities are, the higher trade network income is. Cash is always somewhat tight when you play with few cities, so settling on rivers is very important. If you're pursuing 'culture by other means' (massive puppeting) spam trade posts on every tile in every puppet. Connect them with roads and get gold enhancing techs quickly. Puppets have automated gold focus, so they're gonna build gold boosting buildings first.

Just few remarks: lux costs 240g on standard speed, strategic 45g, open borders 50g if your trade partner is friendly. And selling iron to neighbor August isn't such a bad idea. Depends on what kind of defense you have. When you have some - not bad. If he declares on you, he breaks the deal and lose the iron you provided him. He might run into deficit, thus his units will get 50% combat penalty. If he doesn't run into deficit, it means he didn't even use your iron. On the other hand, if you don't sell him and he lacks it, instead of giving his gold to you he can give it to City State and acquire iron anyway, and there is no way for you to control this. Machu Picchu is valuable when you have lots of cities. If you don't unless there is positively nothing more beneficial to build - don't bother. Same with Colossus. Unless you have 3+ fish and whales/pearls tiles in city radius - don't bother. Only when you've already built all you wanted.

 

[Noatz]

On higher difficulties it can be difficult to get many wonders, so I tend to view Colossus and Machu and something nice to build if you have a clear opportunity to, but there are many wonders you should aim for first.

In the ancient era Great Library and Stonehenge (for culture) are both better priorities than Colossus, and the Oracle/Hanging Gardens/Hagia/Chichen Itza/Porcelain Tower/Notre Dame are all better options in Classical/Medieval than Machu Picchu unless you have an absolute ton of cities.

So I wouldn't recommend using either of these wonders as "standard" at all, get your economy stable in other ways.

 

[CultureManiac]

With Polynesia you can also spam moai. They're free and in big clusters can give you a lot of culture, so you can get quicker access to policies that help you financially.

 

[bcaiko]

I would also pay attention to what technologies you're tracking after. Getting to Writing to boost your science then beelining to trapping and currency can save some economic pain early in the game.

 

[Calicea]

More fantastic advice everyone =) Keep it up I'm learning a lot and I'm sure there are others reading this as well