Economy Help

[GunnDawg]

Starting out early in most RTS, or TBS games I like to build up a decent economy first and foremost before going to war with anyone.

As of late it seems like I am loosing money per turn rather than gaining money unless I put my cities into the "wealth" mode and drop research down quite a bit.

So what are some good tips for getting a booming economy early? should I build farms, cottages, or what?

I always have workers build trade routes and roads and all that good stuff, but there must be more too it.

Also, should I expand and build more cities early on, or wait a bit and only work with a few cities at first (maybe 3 - 4)

Thanks,
GunnDawg

[Theben]

It depends on your situation, and whether or not you're FIN, but generally 5-8 cities early is okay. Make sure you get Code of Laws (courthouses) and Currency (+1 trade route & marketplaces) ASAP, and then you can expand further.

Dropping your research early is not only okay, it's necessary if you're going to expand at all. Remember, 20% of 1000 is more than 100% of 100.

So yes build your trade roads, hook up your resources, get Sailing (foreign trade routes). With CoL you can get merchant & scientist specialists (via caste system civic), and those should help you with any early money/research problems you might have. Build cottages for later in the game.

[GunnDawg]

What is CoL and FIN?

[Solomwi]

Also, explore. I'm pretty sure it's still the case that you can't get a trade route from a city that's not on your map, so even after you've got your immediate surroundings uncovered, keep a couple units roaming around. When you find someone's borders, try to get open borders with them, then snoop around a bit. Uncover coastal tiles to open up sea routes to foreign cities.

[Theben]

Originally posted by GunnDawg
What is CoL and FIN?

Code of Laws technology and Financial leader trait (+1 in each tile producing 2 or more ).

[Diadem]

Originally posted by Theben
It depends on your situation, and whether or not you're FIN, but generally 5-8 cities early is okay. Make sure you get Code of Laws (courthouses) and Currency (+1 trade route & marketplaces) ASAP, and then you can expand further.

8 cities early game??? What? That's suicide! You are guaranteed to run your economy in the ground then!

Early game the optimal number of cities is 3-4. This will already drop your research to 50% or lower. That's okay. Dropping your research to 10% or 20% however is not. You'll slow down too much then.

There are extreme situations when it's needed to build more cities. If you need to grab strategic locations before the AI does, for instance. But generally try not to expand too fast.

Key techs to aim for in improving your economy are: Code of Laws (for courthouses), Currency (for traderoutes, markets and building wealth) and calendar (for plantations = happy faces).

Once you have 1 of those, you can expand a bit further, say 5-6 cities. Once you have 2, 7-8 should be okay. Once you have all 3, the sky is pretty much the limit

But remember these are generalizations. Every individual game is different.

From a purely tech-speed point of view, the optimal number of cities, by the way, is 1, until well into the classical, and maybe even middle ages. This has other disadvantagous, obviously, but it's worth pointing out. If you have trouble managing your economy try a few OCC (One-City Challenge, under custom game options) games, to learn city optimalization.

[snoopy369]

I run eight cities all the time, and don't run it into the ground. 30% is fine if you have enough cities You just have to make sure each city is still benefiting you net.

GunnDawg, the biggest thing I would say to you is: CIV IS NOT A RTS. You sound like you're playing it like Starcraft, and that is a big no-no. "I like to build up my economy some before I go to war" is an RTS style of thought. Economy is your #1 priority always, the entire game. You should primarily go to war to benefit your economy.

[Diadem]

I'm starting to wonder what your definition of early game is. Sure you can have 8 cities with currency and CoL, and mature cottages. But that's hardly early game.

[Diadem]

I did a small test.

With the worldbuilder I added 8 cities, in realistic locations, with 1 worker and 2 military units each. I added the worker techs, monotheism and bronzeworking and switched to organized religion and slavery. Also realistic.

And with 0% research I'm LOOSING 42 gold per turn. So I made all of them size 6 and added a tradenetwork. Now I was exactly breaking even. 0% science. That is with a good tradenetwork, very large cities and a decent amount of tile improvements including cottages and two gold mines.

There is simply no way you are going to have 8 cities early game. It will not work.

[snoopy369]

Early game would be in the timeframe of having currency and perhaps researching CoL, yes. That's quite early in the game. Mid game is post-civil service, in my book, and late game is post-industrialism or thereabouts (determined by when you research these things of course).

You're neglecting a lot of the sources of income in your test. First off, by that point some of your early cities will have villages. Second off, open borders. If you have open borders and a trade network with a half dozen civs, you will be receiving 2-3 GPT per trade route per city, and with some minimal effort you can have several trade routes (great lighthouse, for example).

Obviously you won't always have 8 cities in that timeframe. However, you can absolutely in some normal circumstances have eight.

Size 6 is not very large, by the way... it's the minimum for a city, as far as i'm concerned, unless it just whipped something. If your happy cap is 5 or less you obviously need to work to raise that.

[MoonWolf]

And you might have gotten some gold from huts or captured/ razed cities as well wich of course will help you stay alive. That's how I survived in my current game. Had science to 0% and still loosing money, but kept the war going on which gave me 100-200 pr. captured city and that helped untill I got some money tech and my cottages grew in size.

Now, in the industrial/ modern era, I'm so powerful that Egypt offered me even Memphis at size 17 for peace

[Diadem]

Actually in my test all my cities already had a 2-gold traderoute, because I had a few cities on islands (100% bonus). And I've never seen 3 gold traderoutes early game, tbh.

And I made them size 6 because that was the happiness cap with religion and 2 happiness resources. Capital could've been 1 higher I guess. Imho 2 early happiness resources is already pretty lucky. Though I guess if you do have 8 cities you'll generally have more resources.

No, I think my test was pretty realistic.

[rah]

If you had a few cities on islands, I'd be wondering about the distance penalty. When your cities are a little more compact the maint is much cheaper.

[Diadem]

But anyway it would appear we have different definitions of early game. And I agree with you that once you have currency and CoL you can support 8 cities. By that time some of your cottages will be hamlets or even villages too, and you will probably have some libraries and temples.

For me early game is the period in which you are discovering the map, setting up basic infrastructure, scrambling to get as much territory as possible, and get the first 3-4 religions. Maybe wage an early war to eliminate a close neighbour or capture important territory.

Mid-game is the part where you consolidate. You slowly expand your empire, build filler-cities, spam buildings in your cities, etc. Maybe add a territorial war to conquer extra space.

Finally late-game is the part where you win. Either by gaining decisive advantages (techlead, territory, etc) or by actually winning.

On low difficulties late-game usually ends around the discovery of civil service. The rest is just boring finishing

On higher difficulties things are more exciting though

[rah]

Originally posted by Diadem

For me early game is the period in which you are discovering the map, setting up basic infrastructure, scrambling to get as much territory as possible, and get the first 3-4 religions. Maybe wage an early war to eliminate a close neighbour or capture important territory.

I think focusing on getting the first 3-4 religions is not the best way to go. While it can help some later in the game, I think you give up too much early. If you were in an MP game, I think you'd suffer greatly. NOTE: I am a touch biased since I probably play more MP than SP.