How to make lots of $?

[bigvic]

Just curious how others go about making big bucks. Talked to a friend the other day, who sacrifices tech early to make money. Don't know about that one. Tried it when I first played, but ran into problems. Figured out the playing w/ the science spending thing, then noticed that a great way to become mega moneyman is to, ironically, build loads of science improvements. This reduces the amount of $ you have to spend on tech, thereby increasing profits immensly.

[notyoueither]

Set science to 0 after you have contact with 2 or 3 other civs. Use money to buy contact and techs, in that order. The more civs you are in contact with and who have the tech you want to buy, the cheaper the tech is to buy.

[Skanky Burns]

Set one population to scientist, never spend any money (during the early game) on science. You get the best of both worlds, and only lose 1 population to achieve this. Even better, it works during anarchy (or did before 1.21, haven't checked with latest patch) and can work in otherwise purely corrupt cities.

[Jamski]

Keep building and selling "worthless" improvements. (This only really works if you're a peaceful type) For example aquaducts in desert towns. If you have enough cities doing this you can produce quite a turnover, or so I've found. Probably should be building something useful instead...

-Jam

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by War of Art
Keep building and selling "worthless" improvements. (This only really works if you're a peaceful type) For example aquaducts in desert towns. If you have enough cities doing this you can produce quite a turnover, or so I've found. Probably should be building something useful instead...

-Jam

That something useful is called "wealth".

[Jamski]

True, but I fell just SOOOO awful when I can see twenty cities producing wealth. I think it looks kinda bad or something.

-Jam

[Tuberski]

The biggest problem I have with it, is when you DO have something new to build, you have to cycle through each city to start to get it built.

Of course, all CIVs have been this way.

[bigvic]

Well, constant monitoring of science spending, keeping science improvements plentiful and utilizing trade proactively all work for me. Seen some good suggestions, but pretty happy w/ what I do. Course, good old fashioned extortion/conquest gets big bucks too.

[MiloMilo]

Don't underestimate the value of gold.
In an early game, I once had a lot of gold in my cities, and was psyched that I could try to corner the gold market. Later I realized that it's just a terrain bonus, not a tradable luxury. In any event, my science and gold production in that game far outstripped the AIs, even though they were democracies and I was a monarchy. It's very worth it to build an otherwise useless city if it has a couple hills with gold within it's radius.

[Arrian]

A couple of other things will really help the cash flow:

-Democracy, or at least Republic for a government
-marketplaces, libraries, banks, universities
-selling other civs things
-Wall Street

-The Colossus (smaller the map, bigger the effect)
-The Great Library (set science to 0, get free techs up to and including education)
-Sun Tzu (free barracks in every city, more effective the bigger the map)
-Leonardo (1/2 price upgrades. Better 'n better the bigger the map). This can be HUGE. The difference between upgrading 20 horsemen to knights with versus without Leos is 800 gold.
-Coperincus/Newton/Seti - all wonders that boost science, which means you can lower the science budget. Better the smaller the map.
-Sistine/Bachs - depends on the situation, but having these big boys may mean the difference between needing luxury spending and not.
Adam Smith's - no upkeep on markets & banks. Obviously better the bigger the map.

[Arrian]

(*#*(%@#(*(@#%&!!! double post.

[MiloMilo]

Yes; to be more specific, according to the good example set by Arrian:

In addition to finding gold, here are some concrete tips. I play on Regent these days, and am consistently the richest nation on large maps, though rarely the most powerful.

-The AI always buys everything it can, so is usually down near zero gold. As long as you're getting one or two gold per turn, you'll be ahead of the curve. Set you science as high as possible without incurring a loss (usually like 70% early on).

-Build cities near rivers. Roads EVERYWHERE. And later railroads.

-Watch your armies. Prune (that is, disband) any units that aren't vital. In despotism or monarchy don't go far above your allowed free units. In republic or democracy try to keep the same standards (5 or 6 units per city total, including workers).

-Lots of wonders can help you be rich. Pyramids and Sun Tzu's save you improvement maintenance costs. The colossus is great if you have lots of rivers and roads in that city. Copernicus's or Newton's should ideally be built in the same city as the colossus. Adam Smith's is incredibly good, it can potentially save you 4 gold per turn per city (!). And Wall Street (SW) usually affords an extra 10% to be allocated to science or luxury output. Usually if I get three of these wonders I can remain financially competitive as a monarchy with all the republics and democracies out there.

[Arrian]

I totally forgot one very important thing: the tax/tech slider. As you know, there are caps on how quickly (4 turns) or slowly (40 turns) one can develop a technology. Even if your civ produces enough commerce to discover something in 2 turns, the game will not allow you to get it faster than 4. Accordingly, setting science to 100% would be wasteful.

Here's what I do, once my economy is up and running (this is not counting my pre-conquest buildup, which is basically all about hoarding cash while developing a few specific military techs):

I set my science rate such that I can discover a tech as fast as possible while not losing a lot of money. Example: astronomy, I can discover it in 5 turns while gaining 15 per turn, or 4 turns losing 20 per turn. I will chose 4, but on the final turn (1 turn to go), I will check the slider to see if I can adjust it and still get the advance on the next turn. Often, I can drop the science rate to 10 or 20%, rake in enough cash to offset my earlier losses and then some, and still get my precious technology on time. This occurs because of the 4 turn cap. My civ didn't produce enough commerce to discover the tech in 5 turns while turning a profit... it's more like 4 2/3. But that 1/2 will be wasted unless you adjust the slider. No "beakers" are carried over to the next research project. So, basically, keep an eye on the tax rate, and play around with adjusting it - you'll get the hang of it pretty quick.

-Arrian

[MiloMilo]

I too use that exploit Arrian, but I wish it wasn't there (ahem, FIRAXIS (does writing their nam improve the chance that they'll see this thread?)). They should make excess beakers carry over. It would fix the exploit without changing things too much.

[Harovan]

It ain't an exploit. The # of beakers needed for a tech is a constant. Just if you set your science rate high enough, there are less beakers left to research for that last turn, than you could with your current rate. Instead of wasting money on unneeded beakers, you can save them for other purposes. If it was possible to adjust science more accurate (in percents instead of 10% steps), all this would not be necessary.

[Harovan]

Here's an example:

Let a tech cost 600 beakers, you are making 200 gold per turn. Let's assume, that these numbers don't change. You now play around with the science slider:

100% - 200 beakers per turn - would be 3 turns, but the cap is at 4, so the game shows 4 turns.
90% - 180 beakers per turn - 4 turns needed.
80% - 160 beakers per turn - 4 turns needed.
70% - 140 beakers per turn - 5 turns needed...

Ah! So we set the slider at 80% (lets assume we can afford it). After 3 turns, we have researched 480 beakers. 120 beakers left. To research them, but not more (would be a waste), we can set the slider down to 60%, that gives us 120 beakers. Since we did not spend 160, but only 120 gold for science in the last turn, this saved us 40 gold, compared with the funding in the first 3 turns.

Now lets assume, units+improvements cost 50 gold per turn. you lose 10 gold per turn in the first 3 turns, but you win 30 gold in the last turn. You could even "win" more, if the numbers were different. But you did not magically create money, it's pure math.

You see - no exploit here.

[Arrian]

Ralph just explained it better than I did, using fewer words. Well said, sir. And I agree, I don't think it's an exploit at all.

-Arrian

[Theseus]

bigvic is the only one who mentioned it, but have a favorite strategy for wealth...

If I see that a civ has or is making a lot of gold, I take it.

(pats self on back)

[captaincurt]

In my current huge/pangea/regent/12civs/Iriquois game (though strangely it's islands, not a supercontinent... ) there is tons of gold in clusters in the hills of my northern jungles. As soon as I had the spare settlers, I planted cities on the gold. Knowing they would be stuck at size 2 for a long time, I packed them close together to take best advantage. Each city could reach two gold (in addition to the one it was planted on) and thereby had an income of 15, though corruption siphoned off some of it. A "regular" city would have to be around size 8 or something to match that. I have about ten of these cities, and with no improvements, they are cash cows.

I finally cleared enough jungle for one of those cities to actually grow. It has SIX gold in its radius and is on a river (gold + road + river + republic = a 7-commerce tile). It has something like 45 raw income.

What got me going on this was I needed a good location to build Copernicus', and thinking about it, realized it would have most effect in one of my gold cities. Hopefully I will also be fortunate enough to build Newton's there and truly have a science city.

In any event, as MiloMilo suggested, building permanent-size-2 cities on gold or gems can really improve the bottom line.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Set science to 0 after you have contact with 2 or 3 other civs. Use money to buy contact and techs, in that order. The more civs you are in contact with and who have the tech you want to buy, the cheaper the tech is to buy.

I usually set science to 10%. I can usually discover a tech once in a while, then sell it for a bundle, trading for the other techs. (More accurately, I set science to 20% for a few turns, so that the science is not ---, then as soon as possible lower it to 10%. Later, in Republic 40% is pretty normal.)

[Zachriel]

In 4000bc, I set my scientists to work on inventing the marketplace.

[Willem]

Originally posted by bigvic
Just curious how others go about making big bucks. Talked to a friend the other day, who sacrifices tech early to make money. Don't know about that one. Tried it when I first played, but ran into problems. Figured out the playing w/ the science spending thing, then noticed that a great way to become mega moneyman is to, ironically, build loads of science improvements. This reduces the amount of $ you have to spend on tech, thereby increasing profits immensly.

One thing to keep in mind, especially when you get into Republic/Democracy, is keep fiddling with your science slider. Quite often you can lower it a notch or two and it won't have any effect on the number of turns it takes to finish researching your tech. And all that money that would have been wasted will go into your treasury. That alone can make a huge difference.

[bigvic]

Originally posted by Willem


One thing to keep in mind, especially when you get into Republic/Democracy, is keep fiddling with your science slider. Quite often you can lower it a notch or two and it won't have any effect on the number of turns it takes to finish researching your tech. And all that money that would have been wasted will go into your treasury. That alone can make a huge difference.

Kepp fiddling w/ it regardless of gov. Once you have serious science pumpin out of your cities, you can make serious cash. Even if in the beginning of a reserch you are losing $, you may find that by the end you make it back up. Then, if you want, take a research break to make $ for 1 turn, then pump up research$. I think this might have something to do with the fact that, given a little breathing space, I often see the russkies and other scientific/non commercial powers w/ loads of money.

[The Eliminator]

Forget it, max your tech early to mid game, and sell big advances like Polytheism, Literature, and Monarchy to your neighbours for ~400 gold a pop. And early lead in tech and gold will put you in a flawless position when things start heating up. I dont even bother talking to Civs who have less than 350 gold.

[Arrian]

Hmm... in my experience, the AI is dead broke until the middle ages, if not after. Once they get into republic or democracy, you can milk per turn cash out of them, but I had very little success selling ancient techs like mysticism.

-Arrian