[Where do I...] Spend Gold?

thele

Chieftain
Joined
Jan 4, 2011
Messages
40
In the early game, I find myself buying Settlers. I get the feeling this has been causing all the mass declarations of war against me, so I'm looking to do something else with my gold.

So, in the early game, if I'm not spending money on Settlers, what should I be spending it on?

-The Le
 
Well, from what I can tell, units have the best gold/hammer-ratio.. meaning, you get more for your gold if you buy units rather than buildings(compared to building). It can be very useful to instantly buy a worker in your newly founded city, I do that quite often. And of course, military units are always useful :)

But really, you can spend it on whatever you want.. I often buy up at least 1 or 2 cultural City States early to get more culture and happiness(or more money if the CS has the same luxury as me). Workshops, Water Mills and other production buildings can also be very nice to buy. Just spend the money on what you feel is needed :)
 
On Deity (I play epic speed) Longsword rushes are probably the most popular strategy, and only sometimes requires a settler. This strategy generally involves National College asap, researching Metal Casting and bulbing Steel with your Meritocracy GS.

To pull this off you need to do with maximum efficiency which means:

- Buying a Library the turn you finish researching writing (525g)
- Producing 3-4 warriors before metal casting (you may have to buy some if you can't squeeze them into your build order - dont neglect monument or dont underestimate granary (270g per warrior)
- Iron. If you dont have 4+ in your first city, look for a city state that might and ally them (500-1000g). If that fails and there is a nearby 6 iron that wouldnt make a horrible city, buy a settler (680g).
- Then you have to get those 4 warriors to Longswords (160g to swords and 230g to LS iirc). 1560g.

So, even if you have 4+ iron in your capital and can hard build your warriors without delaying Metal casting, your looking at 2085g minimum. Realistically this plan more often requires about 3000g.
 
As sad as it may sound, if you spend all your gold, it is why you get DoWed (regardless of what you purchase). Your total gold counts towards your military thus a lump sum spent on any given turn increases the odds of being DoWed the next turn


Most players use the gold to purchase the library for NC start. I guess if you purchase settlers you don't quite do NC start...

w/ regards to northernlights' post, on standard speed, library is 380g and upgrading 4 warriors-> LSs costs 1080g

And for what else I spend my gold on...it very significantly depends on my strategy/civ. I would purchase settlers and workers for a tradition-based REX. For super tightly timed RA bump for a pure rifle rush (ottomans/america or persia/germany) I would purchase granary/watermill to get very early growth. Otherwise the NC start doesn't suffice to lock all the trees properly for the 2 slingshots.

Anytime I play one-city starts (mostly for warmongering games), I usually try to save 420g availible for walls if I don't think I can defend early DoWs.

Most of the time the above aren't too important, I start purchasing CSs.
 
As for myself, it depends on what my immediate situation dictates. If i have an early aggressive neighbour, then I buy a barracks pehaps or just buy a unit or two to prepare for a DoW (watch for hostility declarations!). If I have the situation well in hand I tend to buy a library in my first city (my capital obviously) and before I build a second city, tend to go for Great Library/National College build for a science boost. Library tends to be the smarter and wiser choice for first gold spending. Walls can be useful by can never replace a good unit strategy counter for an incoming attack IMO. Buying a settler used to be the strategy I always seemed to implement a lot in my earlier games, and it's not a bad idea necessarily speaking since it pays off in the long run, just make sure you pick a good second city spot! :)
 
Most players use the gold to purchase the library for NC start. I guess if you purchase settlers you don't quite do NC start...

I am very familiar with the Civ series, but I haven't quite figured out Civ V yet. For the life of me I just can't win on Prince mode (but I've won on all the easier ones).

I try to be peaceful, but it's just not working at all.

-The Le
 
Then I suggest you read one of the various threads explaining NC start. It is a very, very strong opener to get an early game lead over comps in lower levels...or to try to catch up with them on higher levels. It is not absolutely essential to win but it will very likely give you a good enough bump to significantly improve your prince learning curve.

As for the topic though, I think holding on to some gold at least up until you have good military for defense will help you prevent those DoWs more than pretty much any purchase would as I sorta pointed out in my previous reply
 
I find settlers to be typically a good buy, because, like other units, they have a good gold/production ratio and, most importantly, if you hard build, they stop your city from growing -- on high difficulties keeping up with AI populations is extremely difficult. I typically go NC start, and buy settlers/found cities the moment my NC is finished (sometimes I pre-buy them if I have enough money and get them into their positions). I almost never hard build settlers unless I grabbed the +50% settler production.
 
I find settlers to be typically a good buy, because, like other units, they have a good gold/production ratio and, most importantly, if you hard build, they stop your city from growing -- on high difficulties keeping up with AI populations is extremely difficult. I typically go NC start, and buy settlers/found cities the moment my NC is finished (sometimes I pre-buy them if I have enough money and get them into their positions). I almost never hard build settlers unless I grabbed the +50% settler production.

Buying settlers to avoid the growth hit is fine, the issue with buying settlers is that they have a modifier so that they cost more than other units/buildings of similar hammers ratio.

In other words, if growth isn't an issue at the time, you will save more hammers by buying something else and building the settler (or save more gold whichever way you see it).

On top of that, as pointed out in a different thread, building settler "stops" growth so if you have (in early game) massive hammers tiles, you can switch all food out (run negative food/turn) and get an even better production on the settler without negative growth.

You pointed out a good point where often in higher levels you don't want to stop growth...but there are just about as many cases where you WANT to avoid the growth in capital because happiness is a big issue and you need to save enough for your new city. In those later cases, the above is a pretty strong way to get the best out of growth/hammers/gold all together.
 
Myself, I look more at the cost of gold per turn saved on the build, and go for the least costly build that way. (Or sometimes decide nothing is currently worth the savings and so hold onto the cash or sign a RA or buy a city state ally)

Usually this means that a building in my least productive city will get built or the last building needed to start a national wonder (since in that case it can fold in the turn savings on the national wonder)

Looked at this way, units are often the most expensive to be rushed since they can be built anywhere and therefore it's the most productive city turn times it's being looked at.
 
Settlers are a good buy if there is a great site for the new city. I like to play expansively, so for me, settlers & workers are my top choices. Both are pretty solid purchases, sometimes I will end up buying 2-3 of each before the expansion phase has ended.

If you're going NC first like the rest of the people here, the whole point is to get that up ASAP so you definitely want to buy that library.

Save some for upgrading warriors to swords. Money in the bank deterrs attacks too, so it's not all bad if you just sit on it for a while.

Sometimes, buying tiles. Most often it would be to prevent a CS from stealing a good tile, or maybe to buy an iron mine.
 
The responses in this thread are so tied to certain players playstyles or the difficulty at which they play. With all due respect I disagree with most of the posts here.

OP if you want better information tell us the difficulty and game type (map/era etc) you're playing so you can figure out who's advice is relevant to your games.

Edit: Just saw you play Prince. Ignore my advice, such a strategy is impossible with poor AI's.
 
Hard to say because what to spend money on is dependant on the situation (as others have pointed out), however I tend to use gold for the following;

Library to open a National College start - this is a common opening these days for many, sell your first luxary right around when Writing comes in and buy your library so that you can start on the NC immediately.

Defensive buildings or units if I've been DOW'd - not all that common that I need to, my starting build most often includes a second warrior or two, which is usually good enough to fend an early rush.

I tend to hard build a granary if I have time, but I am fond of buying a water mill in my capital before I start in on heavy production.

I don't often build settlers - but when I do, I prefer to rush-claim resources. Okay, it's a bad joke and I'm just not that interesting. What I do tend to spend money on mid game if needed is initial buildings to get a newly founded city up and running. Food or culture buildings are good for that, depending on the city.

Universities tend to be something I rush-buy in my capital or major science cities, and observatories. My thought here is if I have the money, the return on these buildings is greater the longer they are in existence.

Units - already covered in detail here. I do tend to wait until I have a solid infrastructure but once my empire is running well, especially if I am at war, more units is always a good investment, they'll make that money back easily.


Edit: Deeeerrrrrp. City States, which I suppose goes without saying, but yes.
 
Workers or selters to make sure my cities are productive and/or if I see a strategic location I need before the AI makes a move.

Beyond that I'll try to buy the cultural city states to get the culture boost as soon as I get settled / work'n.
 
One thing that I think should be mentioned is that you don't need to be rush buying things all the time when that gold can be better spent on a CS ally or to bribe a civ into a DOW. Those things can often be more valuable than the time you saved by not hard building units/buildings.

Of course like everything in civ it is very dependent on you unique situation. The best advice I think is to do everything for a reason, i.e. why are you rush buying instead of hard building. Sometimes the benefits to rushing are very tangible, while other times it simply is not worth spending 380 gold (library, rax, granery, mill) to save 8-10 turns on your build. For instance you may be better served to save another 120g and get a maritime CS instead of a granery.

Basically if you don't have a concrete reason why rush buying something is necessary, don't do it. IMHO of course
 
I usually buy the library.

I often buy a worker or two, and a warrior or two.

I sometimes buy a settler or two -- if there are multiple resources to be claimed, that city will pay for itself quickly.

I sometimes buy workboats (though the gold-per-hammer rate is criminal, sometimes it's still worth paying).

Other than those (and emergency defense, of course), I don't rush-buy much. Once the initial land-grab phase is over, I need my gold for RAs, troop upgrades, and CSs.
 
buy barracks and then military units.
never really buy worker/settler.
first 2workers are free, one from SP and another from CS
that does you fine for first 2cities. assuming you did NC then your 2workers will be about finished improving everything when 2nd settler is on his way.

i usually find it better to buy military units because gold = power and military units = power so your not actually dropping in power rating therefor no sudden DoW because of all gold gone on other things. since you don't have to build military units you can spend those hammers in other things and with free settler/worker SP, you build those two 50% faster. its not much loss in population growth time.

or atleast thats how my games mostly go.
once a decent military size, all money goes to CSs if luxuries do not overlap because they'll pay for themselves when i sell mine and use CS provided happiness
 
I got it from another strategy thread, but I started playing around with buying friendship with a culture city state as soon as possible to get the free worker SP. That is 250g for 60 culture from a friendly city state and one step closer to meritocracy or lets you jump to collective rule for the free settler to get an iron resource. I can usually squeeze that and rush buy library on deity while using a loan from an AI. It works better if you have a mining luxury and you get mining before literature, but still doable without it.
 
Thanks for all the tips! I finally won a game on PRINCE level after a dozen failures.

For this game I completely changed how I spent my money -- this time I put it towards City/States to keep friendship up (or become allies during wartime). This helped tremendously.

I also purchased Monuments in new cities since it's cheap, and bought Workers in any new city so I can improve tiles immediately.

I don't think I "purchased" any tiles this time. I did buy some military units, but only in emergencies.

AGain, thanks!
 
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