What to buy with 270.000 Gold?

[historix69]

In my current game (King, huge, continents, marathon) Siam became the runaway AI, having alliance with 12 CS and dominating 2/3 of my continent, killing of all my RA-partners, usually only a few turns before the RA would give its reward. Siam was leading with points, population, military, etc. They had about 40 cities with size 20-50, a treasury of 270.000 Gold and +1.000 Gold income. They already had reached future tech but probably some techs were missing. They had 4 social policiy branches completed and probably were going for culture or diplo win.

I started the game with inland OCC, building all national Wonders and World Wonders. A long time I was able to lead in science and points due to wonders and RAs. Around researching artillery I was forced to defend myself and puppeted Osman Empire, so I controlled the other 1/3 of the continent.

When Siam declared war on me, their army was 4 times my army acording to demographics. Siam moved it's troops close to my border cities and started assaults on the cities with mech inf, para trooper, helicopter, ... I used my mechs and artillery for defense. Fortunately I had GS ready so I could bulb the tech for stealth bomber and ordered 8 bombers the same turn, all starting with 3 promotions including the attack twice a turn promotion, giving me 16 stealth bomber attacks per turn. In a few turns Siams attacking troops were anihilated and our armys were on par. I then started my counter offensive and took maybe 10 of his cities until I run into negative happiness. From time to time Siam sends single units to attack my frontline, including Jet Fighter and Bomber, artillery, Anti-Air and Anti-tank. Siam still has its 270.000 Gold but they are not spending it. Before the war they had about 20-30 aluminium surplus. (Some of them were lost to my troops.) They also have 5 Uranium but they probably do not have the Manhattan Project. I just research Uranium Tech. Since Siam leads in culture race I focused on Science win. My capital builds a rocket part every 8 turns.

With their treasury Siam could buy tons of units every turn including 10-20 Fighter and Bomber. Is there a reason they do not spend the 270.000 and rather loose the game?

 

[clint0601]

The computer is horrible at using its gold, I would put it on par with its military strategy.

The only time I have seen smart gold usage is when the AI rush builds walls in they city being attacked. I can't say for sure, but it seems like the AI can only buy so much a turn, maybe 1 city state, a unit, and a building (Can't know for sure). I've noticed that when you get into a "bidding war" for a city state, the computer only dumps 250 gold on the CS regardless of how much it has.

I think that some restriction was put in place for the AI spending to try and make it fair for a human. You're playing on King and he has 270k gold. If he actually used it to buy units every turn you would be in big trouble. Imagine on Deity how impossible it would be if they could buy a new unit in every city every turn.

 

[FeiLing]

If they weren't flawed in some way, you'd lose 100% of the time

 

[Callonia]

Well, that's because he's too busy swimming in his oodles of gold like scrooge mcduck.

And he's just rubbing the salt in your wound sayign he could crush you if he felt like it but he don't care and would rather just swim in his gold coin pool like scrooge mcduck.

 

[Camikaze]

The AI is really not good at all at spending their gold. That is one of their big flaws. If you're lucky you can force them into a position where they'll have to transfer all the gold to you in a peace treaty (and I think that'd be preferably to killing them off).

 

[Lrd Dread]

am I missing something??? I know I have only been playing for a couple of weeks... and am on king for only the second time, but how do you (even the AI) amass 200k+ in gold?

I can barely get by with a small military and some buildings?

 

[joncnunn]

I'm fairly sure the AI likes to pay the minimum to cause the civ to go to allied status.
(Large number of X is now ally of Y and X no longer ally of Y same turn once 500 gold buys 60 influence)

As to burning a whole in your pocket, you can rush as many aircraft in a given city as you'd like, only subject to resource (and cash)

Note that in Civ V, the amount of gold you get from capturing an enemy city is NOT based on their treasury (in sharp contrast to previous versions)

 

[joncnunn]

am I missing something??? I know I have only been playing for a couple of weeks... and am on king for only the second time, but how do you (even the AI) amass 200k+ in gold?

I can barely get by with a small military and some buildings?

The AI's cash advantages are as follows:

Cheaper unit upgrades
Massive happiness bonus (so fewer happiness buildings built / less upkeep)
Lower cultural policy cost
lower unit maintenance cost

But mostly it often simply refrains from spending cash in situations that a human would.

 

[historix69]

It is a marathon game and it is around turn 1.000 ... Siam has this big income of 1.000-2.000 Gold per turn for many hundred turns ...

 

[gozpel]

Build a mass of GDR's and bring him to his knees.

So easy.

 

[historix69]

It is no problem to take his cities but the resulting unhappiness will kill my production ... I could take a city every turn but his remaining cities are worth approximately -200 to -300 in happiness.

- I will either have to destroy all his cities resulting in an empty continent or
- I will have to liberate cities of vanished civs or
- I will have to wait until the puppets have build enough happiness-buildings or
- I will have to wait for next social policies to take a happiness increasing policy.

I miss martial law where massing military units in a city could counter unhappiness in that city.

But the topic of the thread was : why does the AI not use the 270.000 to defend itself, e.g. by buying a dozen GDRs every turn?

 

[joncnunn]

It is no problem to take his cities but the resulting unhappiness will kill my production ... I could take a city every turn but his remaining cities are worth approximately -200 to -300 in happiness.

- I will either have to destroy all his cities resulting in an empty continent or
- I will have to liberate cities of vanished civs or
- I will have to wait until the puppets have build enough happiness-buildings or
- I will have to wait for next social policies to take a happiness increasing policy.

Other options:

1. Sell useless cities to the highest bidder (be sure its in an area you don't want as whoever you sell it to may develop land envy if you have an adjoining city)

2. Annex & rush court houses as you have the cash (court house removes the city based unhappiness)

And yup, when conquering its often best to trim down the AIs holding by razing those cities that bring in nothing new. I often find myself razing 40% of the AIs cities when conquering.

I've also sometimes seen the AI go horribly wrong (placing cites that lock themselves out of a resource); and have razed three offending city sites to found the city that should have been built in one of my games.

 

[historix69]

In this game I play with 1 city + puppet empire, so razing or annexing or re-settling is not an option ... happiness will improve when I continue in the honor tree. I focused on rationalism and freedom so far. (Siam in contrast completed Tradition, Liberty and Order which is also a strong combination.)

 

[DevilHell]

In this game I play with 1 city + puppet empire, so razing or annexing or re-settling is not an option ... happiness will improve when I continue in the honor tree. I focused on rationalism and freedom so far. (Siam in contrast completed Tradition, Liberty and Order which is also a strong combination.)

No no no, maybe it is a bad combination But I've used Tradition-Order couple of times and they do work So stfu!!
Your policies in this case are worse, cause you didn't know you where gonna puppet that much, so Freedom is useless here, it will sink you down...

 

[headcase]

Is there a reason they do not spend the 270.000 and rather loose the game?

The problem Firaxis faced as I understand it is this:

The AI couldn't handle gold shortages very well, so it was programmed to receive breaks on maintenance, etc to help it from bankruptcy. The bonus on gold served their purpose to let struggling AI civs from going broke, but the problem is, if an AI isn't struggling, the gold bonuses become too useful in the other direction, giving them unreasonably high amounts of gold.

Then there's a separate issue where they did the same thing with happiness that they did with gold, which means an AI that is doing well against other AI in war can continue to conquer and grow (without that pesky happiness barrier), making them more powerful and more able to take AI-owned cities until they have the whole continent.

The more dominant they become, the more the gold bonus helps them. Each city they get is opportunity for more gold-producing buildings and trading posts. Normally that's off-set by maintenance, but since that's cut by the AI bonuses, extra cities give them ever-increasing returns on gold, like good old Siam there.

Firaxis saw this problem where AI would have comically high amounts of gold. So they programmed the AI without taking into account how much gold the AI has. For example, say France is in need of a Swordsman. The French AI is programmed to determine if it's worth buying based on a set of variables: how big is my army? How big is my enemy's army? For each city, how much do the nearby enemy units outweigh my nearby units? But one variable it doesn't ask is: how much gold do I have? Whether it has a million gold, or just enough gold to but the Swordsman, it won't affect the AI's determination to buy it. It's may also be limited to x number of purchasing actions per turn.

tl,dr: They AIs are being sporting to give you a chance.

No no no, maybe it is a bad combination But I've used Tradition-Order couple of times and they do work So stfu!!
Your policies in this case are worse, cause you didn't know you where gonna puppet that much, so Freedom is useless here, it will sink you down...

Agreed with this.

It sounds reasonable to use SPs to bolster what you are weak in. However, most SPs work in a way that the more you have of something, the more the SP bolsters it. So you should play SPs to your strengths. Example: in OCC, you gain a lot of culture compared to a normal civ, so take piety. Tradition is also helpful since it focuses on your capital (in this case your only city).

 

[historix69]

If I go for OCC-culture-win I usually take Tradition, Piety, Freedom.

In this game I needed to be on par in science with the other players on my continent since I knew I would be attacked sooner or later by one of the run-away-civs. So I choose Rationalism and built PT to improve RA but RAs were difficult since to many small nations just died before the RA resolved.

I won the game twice this evening : diplo-win and science-win.

I encountered some strange bugs when I conquered Siam's capital and offered peace :
- Siam's capital was size 53 when I bombed it with stealth bombers and captured it. The city had only 3 minor buildings inside. Other cities had 10-20 buildings on capture, almost bringing enough happiness-buildings to support itself.
- I offered peace to Siam which now had 320.000 Gold. They offered me -70.000 Gold, all ressources and all cities but one city (Washington). I saved the game before the deal so I could go back if needed. The -70.000 was not an error in displaying a huge number. After signing the deal I went from +30.000 to -40.000 Gold while Siam went to +390.000 Gold. So I reloaded. The highest number to enter in the deal is 9.999 Gold. There was no way to enter more money for the peace treaty. So I did the deal with a small lump sum and then sold all the transfered cities back the same turn to get rid of -70 in (un-)happiness. Due to the strange name of Siam's capital, I also sold it back. I can take it back any time since i have a city close to it.
- Siam's cities which were traded to me in peace treaty and back the same turn now all are in resistance for 30-35 turns depending on size. Siam is paralysed with all cities in resistance.
- Siam was bound by the peace treaty so I used the opportunity to make peace with all its CS-allies and started to buy most of them. Siam was left with only 2 maritime CS allies. When I looked at its capital, it said +36 Food, so they still receive an enormous amount of Food, probably from friend-status with CS.

 

[smallfish]

tl,dr: They AIs are being sporting to give you a chance.

If they weren't, I would imagine there would be more naval invasions, more nuclear barrages, more cross-continental invasions (even if mishandled)... basically Empire Earth at the highest difficulty level (and that game had the AI cheating outright, they just produced units out of thin air with no care for gold or production whatsoever).

I actually don't mind that.

 

[Callonia]

I remember one game on old dead pc where one AI in CIv 5 actually attempted an naval invasion once on me and the map is pangea. It took me by surprise in fact I was so unguarded for it, but nothing like rushbuying a unit of rifleman in every single coastal city couldn't fix.

end result: naval invasion failed because they don't have enough followup units. Faced 10+ frigates and like 20 rifleman, that was an anomaly. And I only had 2 frigates when that happened.

I just don't get the AI, they're so bad. Yet, they have possibility of doing what's needed. Cuz if AI succeeded, he would've taken persian cities under my control away and he would've been free to strike at my core cities. too bad for him cuz those cities was annexed cuz of my habits. Screw puppets xD the rush buying riflemen + garrisoned riflemen in that region was too much for the surprise AI naval invasion to work in first place.

IF firaxis want AI naval invasions to work, they would need to have them to account for region response forces and possiblity of rush buying like there is 10 cities at where he is invading so that's possible +10 extra units to face on counterattack immediately plus other 10 units that may be rush buyed in a single turn if player have enough gold to pull it off which puts the region force at 20+ units if all is accounted for which would mean AI would need like 40-60+ units to forcibly suppress that area and keep on launching reinforcements.