Upgrade or Rebuild?

[SimonSays]

Playing Continents on Prince at Standard speed. Just wiped out Arabia and now have the continent to myself. Meanwhile, on the other continent with 5 civs, city states and civilizations have been falling like crazy. I think Domination victory might be a little too much, thinking of going for Science instead.

Do I leave my army to upgrade later or would I save overall resources if I deleted them for gold and built higher tech units from my couple of specialised production cities?

 

[alpaca]

If you really have enough production to produce a new army within a reasonable amount of time you probably have too much production. Modern units are very expensive and take something like 7-8 turns even in excellent cities.

Upgrading is very cheap but you pay the money for maintenance, of course. On continents, you don't actually need a strong army if you control your whole continent: I've never seen an AI naval invasion.

 

[Mustakrakish]

Delete them all (or gift to ally CS), but a couple of units. 2-3 good units so you won't pay unit maintenance in vain, since AI will probably won't attack you from another continent. Instead hoard some money... make sure to have at least 3000 gold in your treasury. IF there is a threat and IF it's something you think your 3 units can't handle... Then my God I was probably playing a whole other game so far
But seriously IF there is a threat your 3 units can't handle, you just buy the additional units you need.

This way you'll get extra cash flowing (considering your economy is OK) without dumping gold into maintaining units you probably won't need anyway and you'll be able to get those units ASAP if need arises.

Worked very well for me so far... even with civs on my continent.

But beware... you might end up buying yourself a diplo victory rather than wait for the space ship with all the cash.

 

[SilverKnight]

But beware... you might end up buying yourself a diplo victory rather than wait for the space ship with all the cash.

Not if you're buying every science/culture building you can, as early as possible. Culture towards Rationalism SPs, and the maintenance on your buildings will reign your economy in to more manageable heights. Gift the rest to every CS you can get your hands on.

SilverKnight

 

[IgnatiusTBarfat]

(or gift to ally CS)

I tend to do this from time to time when I have too many units that are an era out of date. The CS might not give a whole lot of love for it. I don't know the math for rep gained through this mechanism.

Deleting the unit in your own borders gives some gold, which is nice too.

 

[Mustakrakish]

Not if you're buying every science/culture building you can, as early as possible. Culture towards Rationalism SPs, and the maintenance on your buildings will reign your economy in to more manageable heights. Gift the rest to every CS you can get your hands on.

SilverKnight

No? In my recent game as Siam I had 4 original cities and about 4 puppets, buying all the buildings in question + buying (not by completing quests, BUYING) All the CS I get my hands on with patronage, then buying my own little personal military to kick Alexander's ass at one point, kicking his ass, then disbanding and gifting it all away to CS, then buying 4 GDR's to stand there looking pretty and buying 1 for CS while still having 15000 gold in my treasury by the time I happened to accidentally build UN, while I was actively building SS parts... and all that while going for cultural.

Accidentally I won the diplo...

 

[IgnatiusTBarfat]

Does anyone know how much rep you get for each unit type gift?

 

[Mustakrakish]

Does anyone know how much rep you get for each unit type gift?

Not worth it by any means if you're doing it for rep...

 

[bryanw1995]

only +2 I think, at least on normal/standard size.

 

[alpaca]

Not worth it by any means if you're doing it for rep...

I think it's a fixed amount for every unit, though, so bear with me here for a minute: How about building scouts in your cities and gifting them to CS? A scout at 25 production is 12.5 hammers/influence. To get 30 influence you'd need 375 hammers. This is the equivalent of 250 gold in the worst case, so this yields an exchange rate of < 1.5 hammers per gold. If you're building them to sell them, gifting them to a CS seems to be a better choice