What do you spend your money on?

[PoweredBySoy]

This may seem like an odd question, but in my current campaign around the 1800's, and after a long war with Ghandi (that bastard), I now find myself making more money than I can spend.

This game takes an usual approach to money, in that building improvements and units doesn't directly cost gold. To me, it seems the hot commodity in this game is time. Because it's a race up the tech tree... it's a race to build more military units... and the only limiting factor to this race is how fast your cities can churn out production.

Sure, once you build a large army, there are upkeep fees associated with them. But there are still no upfront costs in terms of gold.

So my civilization is now sitting on about 2500 gold, and with research at 100%, I'm still making about +15 gold a turn. I'm second overall in the tech race, and Elizibeth, who is first, won't trade the techs that I really need. I'm building city improvements and new military units as fast as I can... but this doesn't cost any gold. I thought about upgrading my old military units, but this comes at such an astronomical price (~500g an upgrade!), I quickly wrote that off as lunacy.

So, how do you guys spend your money?? I just feel like I'm missing a huge aspect of the game by not knowing what to do with my gold.

Love.

 

[eewallace]

In that situation, I would do 2 things: First, I would set a bunch of cities to producing "research." Second, I would open up the diplomacy screen and start offering Queen Elizabeth a gift of cash every few turns. She will soon be your best friend.

 

[Dragoul]

there is a civic that always you to spend gold for completing production. You could wait till you have lots of gold and change to that civic. (especially if you are spirutial)

 

[Rhymes]

there is a civic that always you to spend gold for completing production. You could wait till you have lots of gold and change to that civic. (especially if you are spirutial)

Indeed! Thats what I'de do...

Bribing powerfull civs is an other options depending how strong your army is.

 

[Kolson]

Actually, if it is 1800AD and you have 100% science and are still making +15 gold per turn then you should probably graduate to a harder difficulty level.

 

[Garand]

I concur about having money and nothing to do with it. I'm playing on warlord level (first game so I wanted to get acclamated), and have discovered two religions and so I have the Hindu and Christian holy cities. I have tons of trade with the computer, and I am making tons of cash every turn even at 90% research. I have about 2000 saved up and nothing to do with it - although that is nice because I like having a cushion.

However, my army is small and outdated. I just discovered gunpowder and am building musketmen, but I went to try to upgrade some units and the prices were outrageous! What would have been a 15-30 gold upgrade expense in Civ III is now 130. Does anyone have any idea why they made the upgrade costs so high?

 

[PoweredBySoy]

If there are no more viable city improvements (I only build the ones it needs), then I do in fact turn it's production to Research.

I am aware of the civic that allows gold to 'hurry' production. But that seems more like a side benefit for that particular civic, not as a fundamental game mechanic to spend gold. I just feel I'm missing a bigger part of the overall picture.

Kolson probably has a good point, in that I should raise the difficulty for my next campaign (this one was played on Noble). But that still doesn't do anything for my current situation: My civilization is in second place. I'm building tech and improvements as fast as I can to catch Elizabeth. But while doing so, I'm sitting on all this surplus money that I don't know what to do with. I feel that if I truly am pushing my civ as fast as I can, shouldn't I be broke?? Isn't there a way I can pump this money directly (read: no diplomacy or bribing) into my civilzation to help improve it???

I don't know. Perhaps the civic to hurry production is the key I'm looking for, and I'm just not giving it a fair shake. I just think it's weird that the game forces you to switch to a particular civic in order to spend money.

Thanks for helping me brainstorm, guys. I'm bored at work.

 

[Kolson]

There could be many reasons why you have so much money but are still not winning the game. One reason could be that you spent too much time teching for religions. My guess is that you have alot of shrines, since as far as I know that the only reason you are making money with 0% taxes. Maybe it is from trade routes, but I would bet it is probably from shrines. While you were getting techs for religions, the AI may have been getting techs to improve its empire in other ways.

Another reason is that you do not have enough cities and/or enough troops. They are what are going to incur maintenence costs. If you dont have many cities then you arent paying much into maintenence, so you are making alot of money.

It may be too late in the game to fix these problems, but one way to compensate for them is to switch civics so you can spend your gold on production. It isnt that Civ IV has made that civic necessary, it is simply that in your specific situation it is necessary. With all that money and technology you should be able to go to war just fine, expecially on the Noble difficulty level.

 

[m15a]

my feeling was that you may be relatively poor on cities, too. i haven't yet played a game where i had many cities, but that is supposed to be a major factor in costs. maybe you should consider conquering other civs cities? assuming there's nowhere to settle.

so far, i've spent most of my money on gifts and upgrading units, btw. i feel like i'm playing on a too low level as well, though.

 

[PoweredBySoy]

There could be many reasons...

I only teched into Hinduism early, but I have been spending time sending out missionaries to get homage for my shrine. I'd say in the entire game, there's roughly 12 cities with Hinduism.

I have a total of 9 cities. A couple of which have just come online recently, and are about at a pop. of 5 and growing quickly. Also, every city is about 5-6 spaces from the next. Given the land I started with (as well as what I took from Ghandi), I wouldn't be able to fit that many more in. I suppose I could get them a little closer, but then I'd have to start worrying about overlapping city tiles.

I might be a little behind on my military. Within the past 10-15 turns I've been focusing a lot on building a modern army with infantry, destroyers, etc...

It's not that I'm looking to "fix" this campaign. I'm not that attached to it. I'm just trying to understand the game better. From your guys' advice so far, I get the feeling that my military might be a little on the weak side, and I should also play at a harder difficulty next time. But, from what I ended up with, my only real choice is to use the civic that can hurry production. Or, bribe Elizibeth.

 

[MosquitoE]

Upgrading units is a good way to spend a lot of gold. You say you dont want to do that because it is too expensive, so maybe you dont have quite as much money as you thought.
You can set the city governors to emphasize growth/production over gold (or manually adjust). Maybe your workers built cottages instead of farm/pasture/mine whatever else?

 

[skeller]

To answer the general question asked by PoweredBySoy, I don't think you're doing anything wrong. A surplus of gold has no particular use beyond upgrading units, hurrying production or bribing the AI. There's nothing else you can do with it.

If you have a surplus and you're running science at 100%, it probably means that your empire is fairly small or you're running it very well.

 

[PoweredBySoy]

Upgrading units is a good way to spend a lot of gold. You say you dont want to do that because it is too expensive, so maybe you dont have quite as much money as you thought.
You can set the city governors to emphasize growth/production over gold (or manually adjust). Maybe your workers built cottages instead of farm/pasture/mine whatever else?

Yeah, believe me, I too considered that perhaps I'm not nearly as rich as I thought. It's hard to know though when I have no frame of reference. I'm new to this game, so 2000 gold during this time period might be nothing, or it might be a **** ton... I'm just not sure. All I know is that I had no clue what to spend it on.

It just seemed to me that upgrading was unproportionate compared to my expenses up until that point. Although, part of that may be due to my missing upgrade cycles along the way. The ~500 gold was to upgrade a Praetorian unit to a Machine Gun unit (or something like that). A pretty hefty jump in tech.

 

[Paradigne]

I agree with MosquitoE, You can spend a TON of money upgrading those units. I will always at least upgrade the ones that have more specials...

 

[Erudine]

Did you notice you can hurry Wonders with gold? That's extremely powerful. 2000 gold can buy you a wonder.

 

[PoweredBySoy]

Did you notice you can hurry Wonders with gold? That's extremely powerful. 2000 gold can buy you a wonder.

You mean regardless of my civics????? Because I sure would like that Pentagon.

 

[cass1010]

I didn't think you could hurry wonder's. Maybe you can hurry national wonders but not world wonders. I know you cannot hurry SS Parts.

 

[LostKing]

Well, there is always spies. Probably best used on destroying ungarded improvements deep behind lines. Their missions cost money.

 

[Grunthex]

Around that point of the game, I'm often willing to actually give up 10% science a turn for gold. Am I crazy? Maybe, I haven't ruled that out.

But I *do* like to upgrade those old units. Anything with 3 or more promotions needs to be up to date. (2 promotions you can get via barracks and a good civics choice). So I'll run +150 to +250 a turn, so I can afford to spend it.

If things are totally up to date, I tend to use it to rush production, especially forges and factories in new(er) cities. I've also just discovered spies, so may have to have money for them as well.

 

[Zhahz]

2500g isn't that much really.

I'd use it to upgrade units - but not necessarily on a whim. Chances are some of your cities have ancient units defending still. Save some cash for selective upgrades when needed. Also, if you fought and got some nicely experienced and promoted units you're going to want to save them and upgrade them rather than building lessers to replace them.

Espionage can be expensive - it can cost 1000's to knock off only some production of big items like SS parts or wonders. When you discover you're losing the game to an AI that's building the spaceship you'll need the gold to sabotage til your army can get there.

I almost never run the civic that lets you pay gold to complete buildings but that's another way to spend your money.

Mostly I use gold to let me run 100% research (with a negative income at times) or to upgrade units.