Too much gold?

[BlueTemplar]

This civic upkeep seems a bit high for Noble and only 22 cities... do you have a lot of high upkeep civics? (Is there a "turns elapsed" component in the civic upkeep?) How much inflation comes from rush building? Or maybe you've just not grown fast enough, so now inflation is going to kill you... I had reached Invention around 600-800 AD IIRC in my game, so my inflation was lower... certainly not 50%!

 

[BlueGenie]

One thing stands out at once: Crime. You have rampant crime in almost all of your cities. Since this is still being worked on it's hard to know how your game would look with the finalized Crime setup.
Either way it's probably better to remove a few of the buildings that give a lot of crime/turn. It'll take a while to get crime under control but there's up to 31 gold per city in your larger cities to be saved, minus the income from Assassin's Den, Bandit's Hideout, Merc Camp and Stables, and Jewelery since they add to the crime. There are more things that add to Crime that give income: River Authority, Trading Post, and some things that don't give income, like Barracks.
This IS a new thing in the revision you went to so not something you could have foreseen. *grin* Though it's interesting to see it in full bloom in a civ.
I'm sure the AI are struggling with the same.

Looking through the save again in more detail I find that you can cheat in a way that would be alright for you to do, that is remove the Crime Buildings. They might come back per turn but at least you can not have too high a deficit while battling the crime in your empire. Basically it's only Crime that's dug your hole.
I've gone through and removed a bunch of buildings to decrease the crime rate per turn in all cities, and set a few things in building queue. Some cities will need a Courthouse still, and there are still some +crime buildings in your cities. Just CTRL+A in city view to demolish both crime buildings and buildings you want to get rid of due to increasing crime rates.
I've also rearranged your specialists somewhat so keep an eye on those. In the tech tree avoid Drug Trade until you have crime somewhat under control and go for Constitution first of all, Jail and Maximum Security Prison with their crime reduction is what you want now before banks and other income things that just might add to your problem rather than fix it. I didn't change your research path though.

Hope you get it straightened out.

Cheers

 

[Koshling]

I'm sure the AI are struggling with the same.

I'm sure the AI is NOT struggling with it at all. It's just blithely ignoring it and dying. Top of my list today is to add AI evaluation for the new proprty sources. They are utterly invisible to the AI curently, so it's in a special kind of hell.

 

[Shogu]

What does crime do exactly ??

 

[BlueGenie]

I'm sure the AI is NOT struggling with it at all. It's just blithely ignoring it and dying. Top of my list today is to add AI evaluation for the new proprty sources. They are utterly invisible to the AI curently, so it's in a special kind of hell.

I meant struggling as in being hit hard over the head with it, rendering the AI senseless and in the hole... *grin*

Cheers

 

[Koshling]

What does crime do exactly ??

It has various effects, that Hydro can probably talk about best, but they all occur through the automatic creation of pseudo crime buildings when your crime level (in a city) reaches triggering thresholds. These (non-destroyable) buildings then have whatever effects they are defiend to have (increasing maintenance, taking away gold, increasing unhappiness, whatever...). If you get your crime down below a pseudo-building's trigger threshold it will disappear, taking its bad effects with it.

 

[BlueGenie]

@Joseph: I had no idea that it was +5 crime per population when I made my assessment of your saved game. With that it won't really be possible to right your country around. Wait until the Team has set a better crime per pop ratio before attempting to recover yourself from the crime spree your citizens are in. *wink*
Or change it yourself for the time being. In Assets/XML/GameInfo/Civ4PropertyInfos.xml change the 5 in
<AttributeType>ATTRIBUTE_POPULATION</AttributeType>
<iAmountPerTurn>5</iAmountPerTurn>
to a 2 or 3. I have no idea what it's going to end up at. Depends a lot I think on what reductions various buildings will give to crime property though I am guessing 2 will be the final number.

Cheers

 

[JosEPh_II]

I've been home sick today and only played sporadically. So is this crime wave the reason my gold and treasury are jumping all over? For ex.: one turn (before I hit the Eot button) my treasury was 4408 showing a +32 gold/turn. That should have given me 4440 at the start of the next turn. Instead as soon as the "running man stops running my treasury is 4601. I go thru the turn adding gold producing buildings and units where needed and before I hit EoT my Treasury is still 4601 (good) but now my gold per turn is -14. This should give me 4587 next turn. Instead I get 4515. It continues bouncing around like this. So I have no real clue what my treasury will be, how much I can spend, or how much what I've built will cost.

Then I started noticing that if I hovered over a tile it was giving so much (I think it was the crime sign, the bandit's mask?) per tile! How can a farm have 5 crime? Or a lumbermill? So this must be the 5 crime per pop you are talking about as these were working tiles.

I have been short on GPs so I only had 1 or 2 Holy cities since I've founded 10 religions so far.

@BT,
I don't normally "rush" build Unless I am at war. And poor old Sleepy Eye, next door neighbor, I don't think can field an effective army right now.

My Civics are a mixed bag. Republic, Proletariat, State church, Interpreter, Guild agriculture, Landfill, Written, Banditry,...I'd have to look to give the rest.

As for growing too slow....I've never been accused of that here. I have 24 cities to Sleepy Eye's 16. We've not met any other AI's yet. I just got Caravels to start exploring the oceans in this Fractal Giant map. I'm a Professing City Spammer that does Not use City Limits or Fixed Borders options anymore, much less REV.

So Crime is my new #1 enemy now. Poor Hydro's not gonna like me much for awhile.

JosEPh

 

[Hydromancerx]

So Crime is my new #1 enemy now. Poor Hydro's not gonna like me much for awhile.

Its ok. Any feedback is good feedback. Just means we will need to adjust the crime stuff. I think I will move the pop from 5 to 3 since jumping from 1 to 5 seems like it might be too much for everyone.

 

[Koshling]

Then I started noticing that if I hovered over a tile it was giving so much (I think it was the crime sign, the bandit's mask?) per tile! How can a farm have 5 crime? Or a lumbermill? So this must be the 5 crime per pop you are talking about as these were working tiles.

That's deliberate. Currently crime spreads from cities to nearby plots (at a low seepage rate), and from plots to cities. Also spreads by trade routes. Not sure if also by units, though I think we're not using that currently since it has too many implications for AI unit usage.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Why aren't your Mil units able to reduce crime? If I've got 10 mil units in a city my crime should be zilch. If I have some on adjacent tiles those tile should have no crime either. Right now it doesn't matter and that I think is wrong.

JosEPh

 

[ls612]

Why aren't your Mil units able to reduce crime? If I've got 10 mil units in a city my crime should be zilch. If I have some on adjacent tiles those tile should have no crime either. Right now it doesn't matter and that I think is wrong.

JosEPh

I personally think that only City Guard upgrade chain units should have crime-fighting abilities, or at least have good ones. Most other 'normal' military units are not the best at police duty, especially in a modern society.

 

[BlueGenie]

Hydro is already planning on that. Crime property is still in the works and will be balanced out more during the freeze.

Cheers

 

[JosEPh_II]

I personally think that only City Guard upgrade chain units should have crime-fighting abilities, or at least have good ones. Most other 'normal' military units are not the best at police duty, especially in a modern society.

C'mon man! You only play a part of the game in a "Modern" society. What do you use for the rest? Pickles?!! ?!! I know I'm being silly, but so was your statement. Not trying to be offensive but your statement wasn't thought out to well. Sorry.

JosEPh

 

[Hydromancerx]

Why aren't your Mil units able to reduce crime? If I've got 10 mil units in a city my crime should be zilch. If I have some on adjacent tiles those tile should have no crime either. Right now it doesn't matter and that I think is wrong.

JosEPh

Military units can cause as much crime as they prevent. So I am deeming them neutral. However the Law Enforcement units (Police Squad, Town Watchmen, Guard, etc) were trained to keep the peace in the city (not so good in battle though).

 

[CIVPlayer8]

Hey, just an idea. How about an option to make units and buildings cost $$$ as well as production? For example, a unit costs 100 production, and the gold requirement is 20% at 20 gold. I can see many advantages to this, as it is "realistic" in a sense that stuff costs money, and it helps some of us put that money lying around to good use. This would probably have to be a option, seeing how some of us have trouble keeping positive gold, but this, at least in my opinion and from my point of view, balance se issues, and give gold a bigger importance.

 

[ls612]

C'mon man! You only play a part of the game in a "Modern" society. What do you use for the rest? Pickles?!! ?!! I know I'm being silly, but so was your statement. Not trying to be offensive but your statement wasn't thought out to well. Sorry.

JosEPh

Hydro put it better than I did. Basically, military units can supress crime, but they can also cause revolts and other crimes, both directly and indirectly, thus negating the positives. However, with a Law Enforcement promotion they could be trained, in any era, the basics of how to effectively supress crime.

 

[Hanny]

I personally think that only City Guard upgrade chain units should have crime-fighting abilities, or at least have good ones. Most other 'normal' military units are not the best at police duty, especially in a modern society.

By modern you mean democratic, because the role of the police is to protect citizens, while the role of the military is to wage war against other states citizens, when you use the military to wage war on your own citizens, you get civil wars/revolutions. And is why democracies seperate the role of police from the Military in law enforcement.

Communist and some other forms of states Governemnts otoh, tend to kill there own citizens by use of the nations mil muscle.

This edu hasa nice collection of data.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/MURDER.HTM

 

[Hanny]

Double post.