the currency crunch

[anteos]

Hi

I always seem to run into a cash crunch when I research currency. I'm generally a few turns away when I run out of money. And currency goes back to 112turns. Also I can only build units, so all my production is wasted.

Should I have headed for research before this?

thanks

[dac]

Hopefully you've got a couple of cities with Libraries in them by this time. Find some cities that can run specialists and add some Scientists. The old Civ goal of keeping your Science rate as high as possible is no longer a good strategy, often it's better to lower your science rate to generate some cash (or now espionage), and set up some scientists in your good science cities and let them do the research.

[sfeldkamp]

also, if you research alphabet before hand you can build research instead of units.

[anteos]

thanks for that. I changed a few citizens into scientists and I just about got there. I keep forgetting to use citizens in that way, i'll have to brush up

[couerdelion]

Not forgetting cottages

[frenzyfol]

Sounds like you might be over expanding.

More cities = more upkeep = dead economy.

Build courthouses, reduce your expansion.

[Robert]

Overexpanding is only a fact when your units are on strike. As long as your science rate is > 10% you're under-expanding.

You need 2 types of cities in the early game:
- food cities (cities with many food-resources, like sea-food, wheat, corn, etc.) so you can run many scientists
- production cities (cities with many hills and plain-forrests (and obvious some food-resources) so you can have high production in those cities.

[MJW]

Well if you are going that far his science rate should almost always be at 0% or 100%!