Finance problems: Monarchy to Democracy switching while maintaining a large military

ShowTime · June 29, 2002, 16:33

Hey all, recentlly I have been playing my 2nd monarch game of civ 3. This game has gone fairlly ok, early on I took over the greeks and left the Chinese with only 1 city left, during this time I switched to monarchy and saw my income get cut off. Now im at war with the Romans which I thought would be an easy target due to their territory size ( I was wrong). So now I was thinking about switching to republic to give me a boost, so I saved the game and went into Anarchy, then a turn later I switched to Republic and my treasury went -67 per turn!! What could I be doing wrong? i'm kinda new to this...so far I tried making courthouses and marketplaces in most cities since the far border ones lost like more than half of all production to corruption. I've also tried hiring taxmen in cities and considered switching to wealth production but I think its a waste of shields...One of my cities is currently making the Wall Street small wonder. help pls!

PS, link to screenshot of my game so far, see if u can spot any mistakes i've made

http://www20.brinkster.com/psistorm/civ3/civ1.gif

Blitzer · June 30, 2002, 15:19

How big are your cities? All those courthouses and marketplaces cost a ton to maintain if you have them in size 2-3 cities. I don't really bother with courthouses until a lot later in the game. If you are going to be the warmonger, consider staying in monarchy and not even bothering with any improvements aside from temple, library, aqueduct until well into the middle ages. That courthouse costs the same as 10 archers... just think how useful those 10 archers would have been. Shorter wars means more time in republic. Stay in monarchy until you are into your first builder stage.

delsolsi · June 30, 2002, 16:19

Quote:

Originally posted by ShowTime
http://www20.brinkster.com/psistorm/civ3/civ1.gif

Your link is broken.

alva · June 30, 2002, 19:43

Quote:

Originally posted by delsolsi

Your link is broken.

No it works fine

don't irrigate your grassland. There's (usually) no point in doing so( cities can't grow beyond 12 until you have hospitals anyway). unless offcourse when having lot's of mountains in your city range.

Taxmen are useless!!!!! unless in high corrupt cities they shouldn't be used.

alva · June 30, 2002, 19:46

Btw: you might want to use some graphic mods too. some of them make civ-live (is there an other??

) a lot easier

dunk · July 1, 2002, 11:13

Exactly how big is your military?

First off, is the deficeit coming immediately after the switch? If so, wait one turn for disorder to go away and then tell us how much money you're making / losing.

Second, do you have marketplaces in your cities? They increase tax revenue by 50%. Banks another 50%.

Third, are you building improvements that don't generate anything? ie... Coloseeums in size 4 cities, courthouses in size 1 or 2 cities, marketplaces in totally corrupt cities (for that matter, anything in totally corrupt cities)? If so, sell them off. This is probably no the case, since you are turning a profit under Monarchy, but check to be sure.