Financial strategy -- what am I doing wrong?

[Forrester]

Quick background -- I'm having plenty of success on Prince level with the Ghandi Relgion/Choprush strategy, getting plenty of early cities early (really is not too different from the whole rapid-city-expansion of the old game, except that I top off the early expansion at 5 cities usually), getting an early Pyramids, going Representation, and then rolling along. Usually I end up building lots o' wonders, build Riflemen when the other guys are at Spearmen, and just turtle to a 1950s to 1990s Space Race victory (all depends on how many freakishly huge military stacks get thrown at me by my neighbors, and how often). The couple times I haven't been surrounded by forest it's still worked out relatively well.

Okay, so I have something that works. Great. Time to try something new. Saw a link pointing to a strat that someone said they've had a lot of success with on Monarch with Financial civs -- early worker, build cottages, choprush two more settlers and two more workers, and use the early towns you get to put scientific development through the roof. After you have three decent cities with a little protection, granaries, and libraries, trade techs with your neighbors to keep them friendly (and get them to war against each other if possible) while then kicking out wonders/more settlers/soldiers.

Here's my problem -- it just ain't working for me. Using this strat my AI opponents are getting a TON more early expansion than me -- goddamn the AI spawns quick. I barely have a lead on them when I go the Indian choprush strategy, and this just seems very slow. I'm growing slow, because I'm not doing much early farming and unless I have lots o' floodplains, I'm only getting a couple food per square, and no hammers. So growth is slow. And I am just NOT getting an early Stonehenge or Pyramids, and Representation is just so freakin' sweet.

So what am I doing wrong? The AI just seems to get a huge early lead on me in # of cities, keeps up with me tech-wise, and beats me to early wonders. Argh. What should I switch? The early cottage strategy seems like it makes so much sense . . .

EDIT: I meant I build Riflemen while my opponents are at Macemen, not Spearmen. Duh.

[jerry247]

When I got it to work for me I just went along normal until I was defended well enough and my third and fourth city had more cottages. You are playing a fin civ right?

[Firecrak]

You will need your cities founded right next to rivers, financial + cottages = shweet.

[trans123]

me i got the same problem, when playing little harder level

yes and build cities close to sea, then when u got some good resources, (like gold or gems, and silver, fish, food etc.) trade them with others for money not resources, so u can still have the 80-90 science level, and also u must go to wars, if not they go instead of you,
And think twice before trade tech with others.

Its very hard to have both the frigate, military tradition, and universities and banks etc... i think when u got library or university and u got population over 7 or 8 u just have to put 1 or 2 science in each city,.....

just yesterday i played with gandy but they beat me cause i went to war with 2 civ at the same time in the early game, all game further there was war on me,...... put some merchants in the cities, where u got silver or gems, so the posibility to get a great merchant is more likely to happen, and then u put it in the city and u get 4-6 more golds per turn,....

its always money, go to wars only with 1 civ, and when u have beet them but not till the end, demand money or tech or both,.... but do not go over him again, ....and destroy the civ, especialy if u have started the war, everyone else will go after u,.... and then u are down,...hope i did help ya

[Forrester]

Well, tried it again last night (Great Plains, standard sized map (yay new patch!), Prince difficulty) and it worked. Chopped two workers, then two settlers, and then set about to chopping myself some Pyramids while the other towns did granaries/archers. (Sucks that there's so little stone on the map.)

It worked! Early pyramids, then spawned three more cities, and traded tech to make sure that my closest neighbors looooved me. No one ever declared war on me and I ended up winning the space race at about 1950.

However, I got lucky in that:

1) My start was in the lower east, where there are tons and tons of forests.
2) I did not have a ton of close neighbors, allowing me to spawn late and still get 6 good cities.
3) Almost all AI civs switched to Buddhism early, allowing me to just switch to it and keep everyone happy. (Though I will say that the strongest AI actually did not have Buddhism, he had Christianity, and I just had to bribe him a lot to keep him friendly.)

Still, it worked, and I did have gold through the roof, even with just six cities. I built almost all the wonders, all cities ended up having populations of 18+, and in fact at the end of the game I had all top five cities.

Another nice thing about going to only 6 cities but having wide borders was that there were plenty of spare forests around to chop away. With expansion to 8 or 9 cities, I wouldn't have been able to chop myself to all those early wonders.

[Rancidlunchmeat]

I'm having problems with this strategy as well. Barbarians are what are kicking my ass. Maybe I'm not founding enough cities? I was trying to make three cities, and use workers to build cottages everywhere as soon as possible.

After I get the third city founded, I try to build the pyramids in my best city (usually capital) and then barracks/military in the second best city (usually second one) to protect all three cities.

Barbarians are usually pillaging my cottages before I can churn out enough defensive units. And, for some strange reason, the last three times I've tried I've had no access to bronze or iron. Which means the only defenders I can make are warriors or archers! By the time I start building my military, the barbarians are attacking with Axemen by that point, and I need at least 2 units to each of their 1 in order to compensate for my lack of bronze/iron.

This strat really seems risky if you don't have access to bronze or iron, but you don't know if you do or not until you've already spent so much time building those early cottages!

[Forrester]

I agree with you about barbs -- I managed to get copper in between my first 3 cities, and that allowed me to make sufficient axemen to fight off the barbs, earlier attempts, no axemen = end of Forrester's empire.

[Dominae]

Why are you guys prioritizing the Pyramids so much?

While it's a nice addition to the "financial" strategy, it adds very little until your Cottages mature to Towns for the Universal Suffrage bonus, and that takes a long time. By the time enough Cottages mature to Towns to make Universal Suffrage worth it, you are well on your way to Democracy anyway (if you beeline). Meanwhile you're probably running Representation via Pyramids, which is good but not great considering you do not have many Specialists.

Pyramids are the most expensive Ancient era Wonder. If you free up those Shields, a lot of the problems mentioned in this thread will go away: more military units, more cities, more Workers, and more infrastructure (to be more precise, replace "more" in the previous sentence with "faster").

Just a suggestion.

Re: Barbs, on the harder difficulties it's essential to get one of Horses, Copper or Iron to defend yourself with. Just defending with Archers is playing with fire. What this means for the "financial" strategy (or any other non-military focus) is that it's necessary to research one of Animal Husbandry, Bronze Working and (potentially) Iron Working, even if you do not "need" them for you strat. It sucks when Bronze does not give you any Copper, but I would still recommend proceeding to Iron just to be safe.

[Rancidlunchmeat]

I usually seem to have two towns already by the time I get the pyramids build, with a couple more turning into towns in very short order.

I do agree though, it's the pyramids that are my downfall if I don't have copper or iron to effectively defend my cities and cottages/hamlets/towns.

I was wondering if I'm going for the pyramids too early, or if I should build another city or two (4-5 instead of 3) before locking up one of those cities production up for eternity.

[Forrester]

Originally posted by Dominae
Why are you guys prioritizing the Pyramids so much?

While it's a nice addition to the "financial" strategy, it adds very little until your Cottages mature to Towns for the Universal Suffrage bonus, and that takes a long time. By the time enough Cottages mature to Towns to make Universal Suffrage worth it, you are well on your way to Democracy anyway (if you beeline). Meanwhile you're probably running Representation via Pyramids, which is good but not great considering you do not have many Specialists.

Pyramids are the most expensive Ancient era Wonder. If you free up those Shields, a lot of the problems mentioned in this thread will go away: more military units, more cities, more Workers, and more infrastructure (to be more precise, replace "more" in the previous sentence with "faster").

Just a suggestion.

How dare you dis the Pyramids!

One other thing I did differently was not go all-cottage, but rather mixed in cottages with three or four farms per city, include at least one farm (assuming I don't have a cow/pig/rice/wheat/whatever resource) per early city development. This seems to have a few benefits:

1) Faster population growth
2) Ability to grow even if I've got a health penalty
3) If growth needs to stop because of the unhappiness barrier, because I've got a food surplus I can run a specialist or two.

Specialists = great people, and with Pyramids, bonus beakers that are as much (if a scientist) as what I'd get if he were on a town anyway. Plus, if I need additional production I can make the specialist an engineer, and production can be a problem in some of those all-cottage cities.

I guess one thing I did differently this time was play him a bit more like I would Ghandi -- in other words, I didn't go all-cottage, and stuck with Representation throughout the entire game, as my populations got high enough I was running a decent number of specialists. Maybe dumb, I'm new to this financial thing, but I didn't have the production problems I have before pre-Universal Suffrage. And I was still a financial and science powerhouse -- even with just six cities I was researching future tech in 6 turns at the end.

[joncnunn]

Dominae, the +3 happiness in the top 5 cities is extremely useful early on.
And if you add say The Great Libary to your empire, you've doubled the beaker value of those free specalists, which in turn get multipled by Monstanaries and Libary's, etc.

The Pyramids is the most expensive early wonder because it is the most useful one.

Now if I'm not playing an Industrious civ it's tougher to justify the sheilds needed for any wonder you don't have the resource that halves production times for, and that definately include the Pyramids.

Originally posted by Dominae
Why are you guys prioritizing the Pyramids so much?

While it's a nice addition to the "financial" strategy, it adds very little until your Cottages mature to Towns for the Universal Suffrage bonus, and that takes a long time. By the time enough Cottages mature to Towns to make Universal Suffrage worth it, you are well on your way to Democracy anyway (if you beeline). Meanwhile you're probably running Representation via Pyramids, which is good but not great considering you do not have many Specialists.

Pyramids are the most expensive Ancient era Wonder. If you free up those Shields, a lot of the problems mentioned in this thread will go away: more military units, more cities, more Workers, and more infrastructure (to be more precise, replace "more" in the previous sentence with "faster").

Just a suggestion.

Re: Barbs, on the harder difficulties it's essential to get one of Horses, Copper or Iron to defend yourself with. Just defending with Archers is playing with fire. What this means for the "financial" strategy (or any other non-military focus) is that it's necessary to research one of Animal Husbandry, Bronze Working and (potentially) Iron Working, even if you do not "need" them for you strat. It sucks when Bronze does not give you any Copper, but I would still recommend proceeding to Iron just to be safe.

[Hauptman]

What ya need to do is...

First, found a religion. get at least 1. Now pray that it founds in a decent city. and not that peice of poop stuck up in the tundra. You also need a Great Person pump city. read up somewhere else on those, but its usually my capital as it tends to make most of the wonders. Wichever city is the homecity of that religion, you send all your +gold GP to it, dont plop them in your capital (wich i used to do). Now have this city concentrate on the +money things like markets grocers banks etc and when its not making those its making missionaries.

I got lucky in my last game, 2 religions founded in the same city... =)

The first prophet you get from your GP pump builds the building. then all others plop in the city, thats 5gold and 2 hammers EACH. If you founded 2 or more religions but they are in different cities, ignore them and plop them in the $ city. Send all the great merchants and artists (not being used for culture bombs) to the $ city as well.

Why all the focus on 1 city you ask? because you can only make 1 wall street, and you'd be silly to put THAT in your capital.

This last game, my $$ city was making 100+gold per turn on 0%tax. It alone payed all the bills.


Screenshot of that city, notice at 10% tax it makes 128 gold (only 7 coming from taxes) the rest from the 4 GP and the holy shrine i had build... It is still constructiong wall street at the moment so that 140 is GREAT. Cash per turn jumped up to 200 after wall street and the other shrine added a whopping 9 more. but it all gets tripled with bank/market/grocer/wallstreet.

[Dominae]

I'm not saying the Pyramids is not useful, I'm saying it does not fit into the "financial strategy" as outlined in the original post. Many posters mentioned having troubles with slow expansion and insufficient military - spending hundreds of Shields on the Pyramids so early is surely the cause. Thus my suggestion of removing a non-essential part of the strategy.

I certainly do not think that the Pyramids are a must-have in any given game, even when playing an Industrious civ. It seems to me like a lot of player are overvaluing it, trying to incorporate it into strategies that do not really need it. Yes, it's a good Wonder, but it does have associated costs.

[Aginor]

On the higher levels of difficulty (Prince is debatable, but certainly anything above Prince) attempting to build the Pyramids every game is a bit like the Russian "scorched earth" strategy employed to weaken Hitler in World War II. Sure, you accomplish something of value...but victory is surely Pyrrhic. If you're an Industrious civ, and you choprush 2 Settlers, then send the second into a monster forest and clearcut for the Pyramids, there's a good chance someone gets it before you. If you try and start on it earlier in the capital or the second city, you tie up far too much of your productive capacity (both city and Worker) for far, far too long.

Early Representation is addictive because it is indeed powerful. However, the Financial civ just doesn't need it. The happiness bonus is extremely nice in cottage-spammed cities - but you would be just as well served by heading for Calendar and having an empire of significant size in order to hook up three luxuries driven by that tech. For the Financial player, hordes of early specialists are actually a BAD idea in my experience...your long-run objective is to grow as many of those cottages as fast as you possibly can in order to best exploit your civ's bonuses, as in the long run for the Financial civ cottages > specialists under Representation. The advantage of the specialist is GPP...the advantage of the cottage, even on a boring old Grassland square, is the two food needed to support the next cottage (which a specialist does NOT provide).

One can make the argument that a Philo great people factory spam strat NEEDS the Pyramids. One cannot make this argument with Financial. Dominae has the right of it - you need to get out there and aggressively bash some skulls while you're spamming cottages. I find that on Monarch it takes an 8-10 Axeman horde, consistently replenished, to get the desired results of a defined, personally reserved growth space and weaker neighbors.

If you grab enough land, you don't need to worry about being 4 techs down around 400 AD. You'll be at least that many ahead of everyone by 1400 on Monarch, and once you get the draft to back up Cavalry spam no one on your continent can possibly stop you. Financial is *powerful* if you can grab sufficient land early on to fuel it.

[Wild Pig UK]

I have to agree, the Pyramids (and Oracle and Stonehenge) are not needed with the financial strategy. Pyramids gets you and extra 3 beakers per specialist. With the financial strategy, with the exception of two early scientist specialists for 20 turns to get you an academy, the science specialists aren't worthwhile for the beakers even with pyramids. A worked tile by that point is getting you 6-7 coins, and as you'll be running 90-100 percent science with this strategy, this means 6-7 beakers for a tile, plus the food and possibly hammers.

As for happiness, you can simply grab monarch and build 3 units per city for the same effect. The financial strategy makes grabbing monarch through trades or research a snap, and the 3 units per city is a good idea for defence/military strength anyways.

I think if you look at the financial strategy thread, it is recommended to produce/chop two warriors, two settlers, and then make sure there is at least two of the best unit available in each city (either axeman, swordsman, chariot, or if you strike out on all 3, archers) prior to even attempting a wonder. This specifically is to protect the cities from the barbarians, who start getting nasty right about the time you get the 2nd unit in every city.

Moreover, take the first warrior in each city, after making the better unit to protect the city, and place him on a hill outside your borders. This gives him a greater line of site, reducing the fog of war, and greatly reducing the probability of barbarians spawning. If I am alone on an island on the higher difficulty, my first priority after two settlers is to spam 4-5 warriors and place them on hills to completely eliminate the fog of war (and therefore the barbarian threat).