Need more gold!

[V.O.C.'02]

This is my last cry for help before, the broke civilisation of the one mighty iroquis tribe will be bankrupt. I'm afraid I am missing the very obvious in trying to earn me some money here. I allready put my science-rate to 10 percent. and, crucial for a warlord of my status, my people are disbanding all of mine units, because my treasury is too dmn low. How can i make a decent living in here? I'n not searching for an solution as trading or something, but something effective to keep the +... per turn sign on my screen.

(for who's interested in helping me out) : Warlord, standard, iroquis)

[Marquis de Sodaq]

If you have a large military, you could perhaps bully the AI on the diplomatic table. Do you have anything to sell on a gold per turn basis? Any luxuries or strategic resources or techs? I've found that this is where most of my income comes. My cities might produce a surplus of a few hundred gold, but tech and resource sales can triple that. Try to renegotiate any such deals with any civ that has grown since you struck the deal. They may be willing to pay more now.

Sell off a few less important improvements. You get a bit of gold, and reduce upkeep costs.

[V.O.C.'02]

The problem is that I cannot offer any new techs because I am not able to higher my science rate, It takes me allotta turns before i get a new tech.

You had a point with selling the less important improvements, but which improvement are less valuable then?

[Stuie]

Couple quick ideas for raising money (realizing I don't know what stage of the game you're at - I'll assume it's still early):

Make sure you have tons of roads within the radius of each of your cities. They help increase your gold/science production.

Explore like crazy and sell your world map (or you could trade for other world maps, uncovering as much as possible, and then sell to others)

If you contact other Civs that others have not yet contacted, don't sell the communication to the other civs! Use your exclusive knowledge of the civ to trade techs back and forth as possible. Expanding on that - don't be afraid to sell techs early in the game as long as you're getting a decent price.

Another thing with trading - I often take this approach:

1. See what the AI has that I want, ask what they want for it.
2. Clear the AI side of the trade, leaving the items they asked for.
3. Click on "What will you give me for this?"
Often you'll end up getting more out of the AI than you originally asked for.

I play on regent, by the way, so my tips should work at lower levels; perhaps not as well on higher levels.

[AJ Corp. The FAIR]

If you have a decent military, use them now. Aim for capturing cities for extra or new luxuries or resources.

If you're in a definite losing position, quit now.
Restart or play new game.

Set science spending to 0%. During the whole game or until late industrial/early modern age, then you could consider aiming for a tech lead, if all your improvements are very up to dated.

Build warriors and settle. Target good locations (rivers, hills/mountains for industry) and resources/luxuries.

Scout and trade as much as you can. Especially buy techs that lead to new resources/units or new improved government. Choose relgious civ for flexibility of government.

Buy communications or contact yourself.

Target at least 1 AI civ to take over. Favour extra/new lux.res.

Act by upgrading warriors (swordsmen) and/or horsemen (knights) if necessary.

Trade newly acquired items.

No money problems anymore.

The rest is up to you.

AJ

[player1]

Have you gone in Republic too early?
If you go to republic too quicky, adn have lot of units, but little Marketplaces, then thre is one bad "solution" (go to despotism or monarchy)

[Arrian]

Yeah, switching to republic with a large military, with no markets will wreak havoc on your treasury. If you're gonna have a huge military, go with Monarchy until you have your core cities properly developed (markets being key, also overall size... getting them up to size 12 will help - the more tiles you work, the more commerce you bring in).

You are the Iroquois, right? Well, if you have a good number of Mounted Warriors, I strongly suggest unleashing them on a neighbor. This will trigger a golden age and you will also gain cities and resources. If all else fails... start a new game and try not to build too much military before your economy can support it.

-Arrian

[V.O.C.'02]

ok, that was actually pretty helpful!

problem 2 in my queste for world domination:

how do I make those (super) production cities, should I plant just alotta mines in there?

Lets say i want to build a musketman, this takes me about 60 shields, Then I build a mine in the city's radius, should that immediately effect the nummer of shield that are needed?
- And what about building universities/ libraries etc: do these improvements effectively higher my production, If so: How does that work. I saw you are some experienced civ-veterans, so try to give me some helpful advice and maybe I in teh future I will be able to become an oracle newbie can turn to

[Harovan]

"A" mine?

You should build mines and roads on all your grassland, hills and mountains, irrigate and road all plains and floodplains. Cut your forests and jungles and mine/irrigate the tiles too. That is developed terrain, even though it's ugly. And it will bring you lots of gold too. It doesn't change the # of shields you need for a unit, but it increases the # of shields the city produces.

Disclaimer: If the city is not 95% corrupt, that means. You should build units in core cities (around your palace/forbidden palace).

[V.O.C.'02]

very funny ralphieboy

, "the" mine was just to simplyfy my question. But still what exactly makes my unit to change from 30 turns to only 15 turns, what makes that happen. And should I be democratic as soon as possible ( and change to communism when at war? (I'm religious))

[Arrian]

If you zoom in to the city screen, it should show how many "shields" per turn the city is producing. The city square itself produces 1 shield (2 if it's a larger city), and then it's a matter of which squares your citizens are working.

For instance... let's say you have a size 4 city. The four citizens are working: a game (deer), two shielded grassland and a wheat on grassland. The city square produces 1 shield, the shielded grassland (that's grassland with the little shield icon in the middle) each produce one more, and the wheat doesn't produce any. So that would be 4 shields per turn. Now, if you mine the grassland squares (including the wheat), you get 3 extra shields, for a total of 7. That city would take 9 turns to produce a musketman.

EDIT: I should mention that certain squares don't provide their full production under despotism, so it's a waste to spend time mining them early on. Hills, for instance. I start mining them only when I know I will soon switch to a better form of government.

Re: governments. If you are at war, or are planning one, hold off on democracy. If you are peaceful, definitely switch over. Communism sucks. When fighting, use either Monarchy or Republic, depending on how many types of luxuries you have access to, what wonders you have (Hanging Gardens? Sistine Chapel? Bach?), and how developed your cities are (marketplaces? cathedrals? colosseums?).

-Arrian

[Theseus]

Arrian,

Huh?

Mining hills is penalized under despotism?

[AJ Corp. The FAIR]

Originally posted by Theseus
Arrian,

Huh?

Mining hills is penalized under despotism?

Yes, under despotism you'll only receive 2 shields instead of 3.

AJ

[V.O.C.'02]

another newbie question (my hunger for knowlegde stops at deity) What have my wonder, and the number of improvements in my city to do with the government I Should choose?

[V.O.C.'02]

hey A.J. has your flemmish civ already been created?

[Harovan]

The more citizens you have, the more unhappy are your citizens. To be more precise, until a certain point, depending on difficulty level, your city grows by content citizens. Above this point, it adds unhappy citizens. You need to make your citizens at least content, or as much happy as unhappy citizens, or you will face revolts. The mentioned wonders increase the contentness or happiness of your citizens. So do some city improvements, namely temples, colosseums and cathedrals. Also important are marketplaces and luxury resources, as many different types as you can get.

Under certain governments (despotism, monarchy, communism) a certain amount of military units can cause unhappy citizens to be content (so called martial law). So if you can't get luxuries or build improvements or wonders fast, you at least can make some people content with units.

[AJ Corp. The FAIR]

Originally posted by V.O.C.'02
hey A.J. has your flemmish civ already been created?

I guess I stand too isolated to get them in the XP .

Maybe you Dutchees can plee for a Flemish civ?

AJ

[Arrian]

Yeah, it's all about keeping your people happy (or at least content). Under despotism/monarchy, up to 2 military units in a city will make citizens content that otherwise would be unhappy. Hmm... not the best explanation... let me try again:

Same example city I mentioned above (size 4). Monarch level. With no temple and no luxuries, a city will go into revolt upon hitting size 3. But if you have a unit in it, it will be ok until size 4. Two units will keep it from revolting until size 5. But after that, you need something else (a 3rd unit has no happiness effect).

-Temples make 1 unhappy person content, 2 if you have the Oracle (and it's still active).
-Cathedrals make 3 unhappy content (6 with Sistine Chapel)
-Colosseums make 2 unhappy content
- marketplaces increase the effectiveness of luxuries. Without a marketplace, if a city has access to all 8 luxury types, those luxuries will provide 8 "happy faces" for the city. However, if the city builds a marketplace:

luxuries 1&2 = 1 happy face each
luxuries 3&4 = 2 happy faces each
luxuries 5&6 = 3 each
luxuries 7&8 = 4 each.

That has a huge impact as your cities grow.

Bach's = 2 unhappy become content in every city.
Hanging Gardens = 1 content become happy in each city, 3 in the city where the Wonder is built.

So, if you have a civ that has access to four or five luxuries, you have temples/cathedrals/markets, the Sistine Chapel and Bach... I'd say you can fight effectively in a Republic (easily, even).

If you have a civ with two luxuries (markets don't play a role here), no Sistine or Bach... you may want to switch over to Monarchy.

Obviously, the size of your cities plays a role here. For instance, I was talking to a friend about a massive late-game war he fought in his most recent game, and he was complaining about his democratic government lasting 7 turns before collapsing into anarchy. He had the right city improvements, the Sistine and Bachs, and I think 5 or 6 luxuries. I was astounded. Then I realized why: his cities were all in the 20s or 30s. It's really hard to keep big cities like that happy. From a pure effeciency standpoint, the size 20 city is best. But this friend and I have a thing with high scores (dates back to CivII, where we went back and forth playing the Europe map trying to best each other), and high score means big cities and lots of 'em.

-Arrian

[IthacaMike]

Originally posted by V.O.C.'02
ok, that was actually pretty helpful!

problem 2 in my queste for world domination:

how do I make those (super) production cities, should I plant just alotta mines in there?

The standard procedure is to mine all the grassland and hill squares that are being used and to irragate all the plains that are being used or worked. Also build roads everywhere.

The exceptions are that if a city stops growing because it has run out of food you may need to irragate some of the grasslands.

Once you can build railroads build them on every square that is being worked since they will increase production.

Originally posted by V.O.C.'02
Lets say i want to build a musketman, this takes me about 60 shields, Then I build a mine in the city's radius, should that immediately effect the nummer of shield that are needed?

Building mines won't reduce the cost in shields of the unit but it should reduce the time needed to make the unit.

Originally posted by V.O.C.'02
- And what about building universities/ libraries etc: do these improvements effectively higher my production, If so: How does that work.

Libraries/Universities/Research Centers increase the number of beakers (science production) that the city generates. The more beakers that you produce the quicker you can research the next Tech.

Factories and power plants increase the number of shields that the city produces.

Mike G

[V.O.C.'02]

I guess I stand too isolated to get them in the XP .

Maybe we should see what the people think of a civillisation out of the "dark side of the force" : the benelux (The netherlands, Belgium, luxemburg). This combination of lethal power shoul be able to make a fist against any A.I.

[V.O.C.'02]

Building mines won't reduce the cost in shields of the unit but it should reduce the time needed to make the unit.

By this you mean, first it takes you 60 shields to make the unit, which takes 30 turns, and after you build the mine, it still needs 60 shields but only takes 15 turns

( by typing this question I actually feel quite stupid, but hey...., the last game I played was pacman and I played it on a Commadore 64 (tapes!!!) now I got civ3 and I Love it the thing now is It totally comsumes me. It allmost costed me my relation, I gained about 20 pounds (very, very, very fast food) And my dog allready learned to walk itself. Give me some time, and i'll see you at deity guys (and ladies, how many women are on this forum actually? (Find me one and I'll mary her)

[Stuie]

There is a fixed price in number of shields to build units/buildings/wonders. The squares around your city produce shields that contribute to whatever you are building - thus, as your shield production goes up, the time it takes to build something is reduced.

So your understanding is correct.