Tricks for keeping your economy afloat

[bahoo]

Re: When is the right time to settle

Originally posted by couerdelion
If the truth be known my first game at emperor level ran into the sort of accelerating expenses that have haunted many.

My first emperor game went the exact same way. I had no idea how expensive it was to wage war on emperor, nor how costly the spoils of war could be (crappy AI cities that add more mtce. than they produce). I spent way too many turns at 10-20% research, although I found the unit mtce. to be a bigger problem than city mtce.

At any rate, by the time the other 4 civs on the map discovered my continent, it was literally like the Old World discovering the New World in our history. The other 2 civs and I on my continent were so technologically behind it was absurd.

[Velociryx]

As for fragility, I will certainly admit that I run as fragile a civ as I can

I guess I would have to classify myself as being in the opposite camp. I may refrain from extremely early growth (in favor for some specialiazing to achieve a stated goal...say, one of the slingshot variants), but after that, continental domination is on my mind, and by the mid to late game, it's not uncommon for me to have in excess of thirty cities, and at that size, you're not just hard to hurt, it's nigh on impossible.

-=Vel=-

[Urban Ranger]

Bigger is better

[Stickyman]

Vel,

How do balance farms vs. cottage?

It is obvious to me that I don't "spam" cottages all over the place as that seems to limit my growth, especially early. In light of this dicussion, it seems that is not the best approach.

Usually, I just build cottages on any +1 commerce tile that I can.

Thanks for the help.

-Stickyman

[Velociryx]

Hey Stickyman....I'm sure you'll get a variet of different answers, but here's what I do:

* It starts with city sites. When evaluating potential sites, I'm looking to see how many resource specials I can cram into a single fat cross. The more I can get, the higher the site moves up on my "must have" chart, even if it's a bit farther away than I'd like.

* Food specials get two "extra points", especially in the early game (ie., a site that contains a food special and, say, sugar, will win out, for me, over a site that contains three sugars)....a site with two food specials is the next best thing to heaven.

* Because of the above, most, if not all of my growth to the initial happy cap, stems from the food specials. Because I weight them highly, when evaluating potential sites, they wind up providing the lion's share of the early growth needs.

* And because of THAT, I tend to have great flexibility where seeding cottages is concerned.

Placement Rules of Thumb
* If I have a food special and one or more flood plains in the fat cross, then all the flood plains will be marked for cottages.

* If no food special, then I'll use 1-2 flood plains as farms, and the rest will be cottages.

* If it's green and on the river, it gets a cottage.

* If it's tan, it gets a farm (later, it MIGHT get a workshop, if there are no hills).

* Once I have civil service, I try to create redundant irrigation paths to places not on rivers, so we can get in the food loop. These paths, of course, remain farms, with cottages placed any time I have a "comfortable surplus" of food (4 extras is my general guide).

* If I am building a G-man pump in a particular city, no cottages at all. Maximize food in all cases.

* Everything green that's not immediately needed for food production, gets a cottage (near a river or not) (generally given a lower priority tho...only after all critical work is done)...this, on the thinking that as food needs increase, I can review the cottages and "till under" any that have not yet been worked, in preference for a new farm.

Works pretty well for me.

This is, IMO, one of the main LONG TERM strengths of Horizontal Growth. It doesn't really matter if it takes some time to build money multipliers in your various cities, because you are devoting large numbers of TILES to commerce, and this is a multiplier in its own right, thusly:

By having more cities, your population grows more quickly, enabling you to work relatively more commerce oriented tiles. This can easily surpass the 25% boost from say, a Market in a city working 3-5 commerce oriented tiles.

By allowing these greater number of low-level cottage tiles to be worked sooner, rather than later, you start seeing increased dividends FROM the cottages as they mature (a cottage on a river starts off producing 2cpt (3 if financial). This will increase to 3 and 4 in short order (multiplied by the number of cities you're doing this in) = a 25-33% increase...the same or better return than you'd get from a market, and all it takes is time (AND it is further enhanced when you get markets up in those places).

Volume.

That's the name of the game if you want a runaway lead. Efficiency will take you a fair distance, but volume will allow you to simply overwhelm.

-=Vel=-

[couerdelion]

A very specific question

Here’s a rather specific question to a particular situation although I’m sure it has relevant to many other cases where a player is trying to balance production and commerce.

Playing Elizabeth I have a capital with 5 population and operating under Bureaucracy. Health cap is high while happy cap with a temple will be 6. Currently working the following tiles (adjusted for financial trait)

Farmed corn (5/0/0) – Not irrigated although I suspect I can do this by farming the plains tile next to it.
Oasis (3/0/3)
Mined copper on plains hill (0/6/0)
Cattle herd on plains (3/3/0)
Unquarried marble on plains hill (0/3/0) -> (0/4/3) when quarried

I have one river tile in the fat cross but this still has forest on it – I guess I left there for strategic defence. The issue here is that I don’t think I’m producing anywhere near enough commerce. However, I’ve got plenty of food - too much if you consider the happy cap – and production is more than adequate (19 -> 21 when marble is quarried) for a city of this size.

I’d be less uncomfortable if other cities were churning out decent commerce but can really only rate them as adequate. All of it comes from coastal resource tiles and these cities are, like the capital, hammer-heavy. As a result, the tech rate is a little sluggish and will not be solved until I get a library up in one city to allow me to appoint scientist and churn out some Great Scientist.

My main problem is that I cannot see any obvious solution since cottages seem a rather feeble investment without the rivers to make them immediately valuable. Ultimately, cottages will go down but there always seems something more important for my workers to do – for one thing preparing both London and York for twin wonder builds of Colossus and Great Library.

What’s your take on this?

[billones]

Well, if all your cities are hammer heavy and commerce light, your civilization is going to be hammer heavy and commerce light. That seems almost a "duh" statement, but there it is

You're right that cottages aren't as immediately useful to run as those cattle herds and that corn/copper combo. But every turn you don't work that cottage is one more turn you're putting off being able to run it at 2/1/5.

So unless you plan to move off the copper and marble and run two Merchant Specialists...

[Velociryx]

Tough decisions, there, Lionheart.

I agree, there are no quick and easy solutions in the example terrain you provided. Gotta figure out what you can live without. You don't want to give up too much in the way of hammers in the name of commerce, so hybrid tiles (like the rock) are attractive, in that they provide both. If you have too much food for this point in the game, then I'd look at hand-picking some hybridized tiles, and running with those.

If commerce is your game, then I would definitely keep the Oasis (3cpt), and quarry the marble with all possible speed (3 more cpt). Lose the farmed corn, in answer to the "too much food" at present, and sub in a cottaged green tile (1 additional cpt, with more as it grows).

As the first cottage grows, I'd switch away from either the quarry or the oasis (as the prevailing in-game situation dictates) to begin ramping up a second cottage (which will eventually surpass the oasis/marble in cpt, but you have to commit to it while it's less profitiable...fortunately, once the first cottage begins to mature it'll do some to offset the less profitable tile, making it, not a wash, but less impacting than it otherwise might be.

Only other solution really is to sacrifice something in the name of long term money. Kill your production and work nothing but new cottage tiles unless it's absolutely critical that you have hammers, and then switch back to the cottages as soon as the hammer need has been met...this puts you into essentially developing an MRC (Multi-Role City), which I personally prefer, but might not mesh so well with your playing style.

So...to sum up, I see two approaches. A slow measured addition of cottages to the worked tile roster, which will allow you to blunt your "too much food problem" and gradually increase cpt while preserving the greater bulk of your production, or a radical, ditch everything in the name of commerce approach, which will see production plummet in the name of working scads of cottages (and to mitigate this, if you have any flat tan tiles, these would be better choices for cottages in this particular situation, since you've got a food surplus anyways, and the cottage tiles would be generating at least one hammer apiece....if you've got the tiles to play with, it might be a good hybridized position that wouldn't TOTALLY ream your production.

-=Vel=-

[lawren65]

I've found that placing wall street (and market and grocer and bank) and globe theater in the same food rich city creates an intesting cash city. It allows me to create 7 merchant specialists who at three coins each with the +200% modifier can generate 63 gold per turn regardless of the science slider % (and generates great merchants). I prefer to also have a religious shrine in the same city, but I'll take food excess over the shrine.
Do others combine wallstreet with lots fo merchants?

[fed1943]

Vel,you really understand the game (you already knew that).Just a question:no watermills?And,if food is already+4,mines/windmills?Few hammers?Rush,then poprush,then goldrush?
Best regards,

[uberfish]

Re: A very specific question

Originally posted by couerdelion
My main problem is that I cannot see any obvious solution since cottages seem a rather feeble investment without the rivers to make them immediately valuable. Ultimately, cottages will go down but there always seems something more important for my workers to do – for one thing preparing both London and York for twin wonder builds of Colossus and Great Library.
What’s your take on this?

You don't have enough workers if they're so busy that they have no time to build all the improvements your capital needs, and you're also underestimating Financial cottages. After only 10 turns, those 1 commerce cottages grow to 3 and are the equal of non-financial cottages built on a river, and more valuable than the oasis because they'll keep growing.

You can and should switch the city between production and commerce heavy setups when you have new things to build, but in either case you should build cottages, it's the best way to turn the city into a real science powerhouse.

[joncnunn]

Re: Tricks for keeping your economy afloat

Market+Gorcer+Bank are often only needed in the shrine cities.

Assuming your science is 90%-100%, for other cities

Only pick the fastest ones the bank will complete to allow Wall Street. (No need for Markets to build Banks)

Build Markets if you need more happiness (and have the resources)

Build Grocers if you need more health (and have the resources)

Found as many religions as possible (or capture holy cities.)

Have at least one of as many types of Monstaries as possible.

Originally posted by Simplicity
I find the hardest aspect of the game to be curtailing my expansion in order to keep my economy healthy. You want enough land to be able to field a military and keep up with research, but not enough to be crushed under maintenance costs. Anyone have any tricks for this?

Some obvious economy strategies:
1) Found a religion immediately. Build temples/cathedrals to generate a great prophet. Build the shrine. Spread that religion!

2) Cottage spam.

3) Market+grocer+bank. My problem with these is that I typically have them dead last in my build queue. My science is always over 50%, so why build this when I can build a library?

4) Caste System to get Great Merchant, and then bleed yourself to 0 gp over a very long time.

5) Harbors + Great Lighthouse.

Any others tricks I'm missing that people like to use?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by lawren65
I've found that placing wall street (and market and grocer and bank) and globe theater in the same food rich city creates an intesting cash city. It allows me to create 7 merchant specialists who at three coins each with the +200% modifier can generate 63 gold per turn regardless of the science slider % (and generates great merchants).

In my current game I have a city with 5 (!) gold mines inside the fat cross. Wall street is definitely going there.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Tough decisions, there, Lionheart.

I agree, there are no quick and easy solutions in the example terrain you provided. Gotta figure out what you can live without.
-=Vel=-

There was no denying that this was a really powerful position and as the game panned out, it showed itself in all its mighty splendour. The only thing that I probably regret was failing to establish a proper long term GP generating city.

Those resources, did allow switching so that I could quite easily switch from corn to a mined hill if I wanted to build and run on stored food. The corn certainly helped with building settlers/workers if the capital has nothing worthwhile to build.

Selecting Metal Casting to get York working on a forge and the colossus was my big goal with a secondary goal of rushing to literature for the great library in the capital. With copper, marble and forges, these took no time and at this point, most of my small concerns with tech were slowly receding. With the great library, I was assured of eventually getting my scientist to build the academy.

Happiness remained a little problem and it was some time before I finally built up sufficient strength to know out the barbarian city in the south that was put right in the way of my fur resources. However, by this time, I discovered a little late that a rogue barbarian galley from the north had not come from the city in the south but from across a shallow waterway linking me with such friendly people like Huayna Capec and Genghis Khan. Then it was a case of getting whatever resources from them as I could so that all my cities could rapidly expand to use those nice coastal tiles.

Back on the question of the economy, I found myself in a situation where I delayed courthouses but would liberally flog the population of more distant cities to build one if costs were running too high. Even so, typical build order would be granary, lighthouse, library, forge/harbour and then courthouse. Anything scientific goes to the science capital London while shrine city builds anything that moves with a gold multiplier. Both cities switch from growth to build mode depending upon the importance of the building in question.

By the time Genghis finally declared war on me (always watch out for a nation switching to Theocracy/Vassalage), his goose was well and truly cooked. Using the free Liberalism tech I had opted for Chemistry because of the importance of naval supremacy with an island state. And with the Heroic Epic finished in York, the frigates practically fell out of the city and the sea routes to Mongol territory were quickly secured to allow the galleons of Catapults and Grenadiers shortly followed by Cavalry and Redcoats.

All of the costs of this expanding empire were met through a nicely developed shrine city with missionaries sent to any city and as a nice friendly home for two spare Prophets and a great merchant, who are just waiting for Wall Street to finish so that they can set up their own stockbroking houses. With one city churning out that sort of money it was easy to keep research at 90% or just drop research to 80% to give a little more cash for unit promotions.

All in all, rather trouble free really and, despite having to wait so long before I could adopt a military expansion, the expenses hardly seemed to make a dent in the national coffers.