Game Over after won war?

[Grenouille]

I have just conquered the only other civilization on my continent, and now, my income is -50and all my units are striking and being disbanded.

Any idea what to do now?

[Cort Haus]

Welcome to Civ 4, Grenouille.

You have over-expanded and your economy has collapsed, as City Maintainence costs have exceeded your commercial output.

Your best bet is probably to start again, but build up your economy before expanding heavily. Use & work cottages, and grow coastal cities to generate commerce. When at war, keep an eye on City Maint' costs and build courthouses. Devour enemies in manageable chunks, and follow conquest with economic development before expanding further. Don't bite off more than you can chew.

[Grenouille]

So this is a game mistake?
I mean, shouldn`t I at least be able to burn down those cities that drag me down?

[Cort Haus]

You can raze them when you take them. I think the idea is that it'd be too easy to disband them afterwards.

[Shaka II]

Probably it is best to restart, depending on difficulty level. But if you want to continue, I would suggest as Cort Haus say, build cottages and courthouses, turn all city managers to accentuate gold output for the time being, or do it manually. Some, hopefully not too many, of your military will be disbanded before your economy catches up.

Everyone has done this at least once in Civ4. So, we usually start the cottages early on to get hamlets, villages, towns. About waging war, what CH says.

[Grenouille]

Thanks for the advice.

Firaxis should really do something about this, i.e. make at least ONE way out of the economic dead end without having to restart..

[ghen]

I prefer using the abandon/raze city mod that also lets you kill specific buildings you don't want. That way, you can maybe pop rush a few of the new slaves into war units and then disband Definitely realistic so it doesn't screw up the gameplay.

[Tventano]

Building courthouses with slavery helps.
Also building a forbidden palace in the middle of the newly conquered territory helps.

Just restarting is a bad move when trying to solve a problem IMHO. When you are sure the war is voer, probably you can disband some untis, thus reducing maintenance costs. Further you could change to cheaper civics. After builiding up your economy, you will be much stronger. A few turns of strike is not really a problem, though when it takes a long period you have lost.

[Just_Matt]

Another suggestion

Take your 4000BC savegame and try the same scenario again, but focus on building your economy before going to war.

You should look at changing your Civics more frequently. Just before you go to war you want to decrease citizen and military unit unrest. This is where the Pyramids wonder comes in handy.

Also, there are some city buildings which help to keep people happy and earn money. I agree with the previous poster about cottages.

Good luck. Let us know what happens!

[Grenouille]

The big problem with some of the advices here is: I don`t have the necessary technologies yet to build courthouses or a forbidden palace, or install neat civics. (and of course can´t research anymore due to the collapsed economy).

This is really a game bug, IMO.

@Firaxis: please make a way out for this in a future update. Even if it`s costy, like having to burn down some buildings/cities, etc.

Or maybe make some cities revolt and become barbarian cities.

[Grenouille]

BTW, here`s the savegame.

[Dominae]

Grenouille, the game was designed so that you cannot do all-out conquest while neglecting your economy. In other words, as you capture cities, you're expected to be able to pay the increased Maintenance costs.

What you are asking for, an easy way out of this overexpansion, goes against the game's design.

We're not talking about a "bug", but about a "learning curve".

You may feel this is simply "bad design", but personally I feel it was a good decision: it ensures that CIV is about empire-building, rather than mass production of military units.

Your best bet if you like conquest is to start a new game, and make sure you raze a majority of the cities that you conquer. Only capture and keep the really good ones (foreign capitals, most likely). Then slowly build up your empire around the ruins.

Alternatively, you could play on a higher difficulty, where the AI will slow down the rate at which you capture cities.

[Grenouille]

No, I`m not asking for an easy way out, but for a way out, and I even stated that it can/should be costy.

I think it`s a good thing to have expansion limited, but it shouldn`t mean that the game becomes unplayable when you do this mistake of overexpanding. Instead, it should punish the player, but give him the opportunity to get out of the situation, i.e. by a revolt in the economical collapsing cities, a civil war, the loss of the conquered territory, etc..

I think that would be much closer to reality, and more fun to play, than having a civilization in an dead end, that can still exist for a few more millenia with zero gold and no units, until some AI player finally conquers you.

[Krill]

I'm not sure where the break point is, but past it, there will be no way out. But that break point seems to be placed in such a position that you have to expand peacefully, and then start conquering other civs to reach it.

Hence the easy answer: Don't conquer the other civs cities, raze and disband. And evewn then, the amount of gold you capture when you conquer the other cities generally gives me enough breathing room to gt the cities stromng enough to pay for themselves...

BTW, try to aim to make at least 2 out of every 5 of your cities working mainly cottages. That should make enough money to pay for cities and civics, and power research somewhat.

[Blake]

It's worth noting that larger cities have higher maitenance, thus poprushing in the more distant cities can actually improve your income situation.