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I found that out the hard way in a recent game of Civ 4. I had been dominating Monarch so I stepped up to Emperor and I wasn't quite prepared for the higher maintenance costs. It started kinda rough, I lost my scout fairly early after getting nothing more than a couple maps from the villagers, but otherwise I had a beautiful starting location with a couple of great nearby locations I settled immediately and the game was going great for the most part. I settled another area for horses, giving me four cities early on...and then something happened on the way to bronze working. I ran out of money...I mean I *really* ran out of money. The combination of the early scout loss meaning no money from goody huts and no techs meant I stalled out on tech long before pottery, with about 12 turns to go (at 50% tech) before bronze-working. (Emperor/Huge/Marathon/Pangea)
I had great production from my cities, but outside a gold mine in my capitol commerce was marginal. Thus I ended up with gobs of archers for the barbarian wars and nothing to build but more archers and workers, so soon I had a small army of archers and workers and no way of paying them. I started the Parthenon at my capitol in hopes someone would soon build it and I'd get the financial windfall, but it soon became apparent my money would completely run out even with every city micro-managed to produce the most commerce possible. I finally figured in five turns I'd have 0 gold at 0% tech and a deficit of -5 and growing as I had nothing to build but more archers/workers except for settlers, and the last one of *those* had been the straw that broke the camel's back settling the fourth city for the horses.
So I got this evil thought...you see Montezuma of the Aztecs was my nearest neighbor. If anyone deserves a little brutality at my hands it's him. He seems to be in virtually every game I start, usually right next to me (or if not he'll declare from halfway across the map with no way for me to get to him) and starts utterly pointless and destructive wars which do little more than annoy me and/or waste otherwise good starts razing his worthless Aztec ass to ashes.
So I gathered up all my archers and a few wayward warriors and headed in his direction, a force of something like 18 archers and two or three warriors. My object was to raze a couple cities for the plunder which would allow me to restart tech and get BW and eventually pottery and get my economy going. Or at least just to buy time until someone built the bloody Parthenon and I got gobs of cash from that, as it was halfway built in my capitol already, having waiting for dozens of turns for someone to build it and thus solve my financial crisis.
It soon became apparent I was going to run out of time just short of his nearest city. I'd run it too close to the edge, even with all my citizens going for maximum commerce forgoing things like cows/plains for unimproved water/coast hexes for the two commerce despite the fact the city would soon starve, I had a deficit of -6 at zero tech and my army would soon go on strike and start disappearing. So I got another idea....I was sitting on a nice fat floodplain filled with villages, hamlets, cottages, farms etc. Monty had been a busy little builder! I was jealous of his beautifully developed area, it looked like mine usually did when the roles were reversed and I was peacefully building away and he showed up with a couple archers and declared war for the pointless practice of pillaging my countryside. Or, even like the barbarian hordes who will stop at nothing for the chance to wreck any improvement they can get their grubby little barb hands on.
However, unlike him I had more than a couple archers, and unlike the barbarian hordes I had a sense of strategy. Having no other option but disbanding troops two hexes from his nearest city I chose to pillage the village I was sitting on with my SOD. Completely unexpectedly, I got 26 gc just for the village! I was astonished, I hadn't pillaged anything since I first started the game, despite the 'hints' telling me it was lucrative I had been decidedly disappointed when I tested it. Otherwise I never plundered as I generally would only attack cities I planned to keep, and why would I destroy my (soon to be) own stuff?
However, 26 gc when you've a thousand gold in the bank and 26 gc when you're on the brink of bankruptcy is quite a different thing. Hell, that was about five more turns of life! So I gleefully separated my stack to cover every improvement I could reach and started joyously pillaging everything in sight. Soon I had over 300 gc and this silly grin I couldn't wipe off my face. It was just euphoria solving my problems at Monty's expense like this I couldn't stop giggling with each and every sound effect of burning buildings. I razed his roads, despite not getting anything for them, just because I could!
I went through his entire top-rated empire like that, as locusts leaving nothing but destruction behind. Soon his five or so city empire had nothing but a wayward unconnected road or two outside the city limits. For the most part he just turtled and took it, his couple attempts at venturing out to protect his assets being punished severely by my archers who I didn't mind losing anyway. On the open plains even a Jaguar doesn't last much longer than a two archers worth, and I still needed to lose troops.
But like any good barbarian king, my glory was short-lived. The Aztec plunder financed my getting Bronze-working, and I took a barbarian city which had bronze in it's outside radius. Ironically I did that with the chariots I could build now that the problematic fourth city I'd built--which was in part responsible for all this--expanded with the completion of their monument and reception of Hinduism. Unfortunately that bronze was about twenty hexes away and while my army of workers reached that fairly quickly, it was impossible to keep that supply train intact with the Aztec having discovered Axmen from somewhere deep inside the bowels of it's empire, and what with those and the Jaguars and my distaff army of veteran archers and chariots actually having something to defend, it became apparent I couldn't maintain it any longer.
The final nail in my coffin was when I built the Parthenon. Despite doing all I could *not* to build it, eventually I couldn't avoid it as I couldn't stop working the gold mine. I was amazed I could build it with that many other players, and maintaining low production in the city for about half the time. It was like the other ten or so civs were s******ing amongst themselves at the silly Celt going bankrupt thus conspired not to build it just to end my game. Also the Aztecs wouldn't give me peace despite being at war for thousands of years without my giving them my best city. I wasn't going to do that, after eons of terrorizing his once-great empire I wouldn't give Monty the bloody satisfaction.
So I packed it in, with a lesson learned about the gravity of the economic situation on Emperor. Next time I won't build more than my initial two cities until my economy is better developed, in fact with early wars and barb cities I might not build another at all. At any rate I whiled away hours having lotsa fun destroying and pillaging the Aztecs, and now somewhat understand the mentality of the barbarian hordes who try to do the same to me every time I play 'raging.' It IS kinda fun to simply destroy and watch your gold balance get higher every turn.
I had great production from my cities, but outside a gold mine in my capitol commerce was marginal. Thus I ended up with gobs of archers for the barbarian wars and nothing to build but more archers and workers, so soon I had a small army of archers and workers and no way of paying them. I started the Parthenon at my capitol in hopes someone would soon build it and I'd get the financial windfall, but it soon became apparent my money would completely run out even with every city micro-managed to produce the most commerce possible. I finally figured in five turns I'd have 0 gold at 0% tech and a deficit of -5 and growing as I had nothing to build but more archers/workers except for settlers, and the last one of *those* had been the straw that broke the camel's back settling the fourth city for the horses.
So I got this evil thought...you see Montezuma of the Aztecs was my nearest neighbor. If anyone deserves a little brutality at my hands it's him. He seems to be in virtually every game I start, usually right next to me (or if not he'll declare from halfway across the map with no way for me to get to him) and starts utterly pointless and destructive wars which do little more than annoy me and/or waste otherwise good starts razing his worthless Aztec ass to ashes.
So I gathered up all my archers and a few wayward warriors and headed in his direction, a force of something like 18 archers and two or three warriors. My object was to raze a couple cities for the plunder which would allow me to restart tech and get BW and eventually pottery and get my economy going. Or at least just to buy time until someone built the bloody Parthenon and I got gobs of cash from that, as it was halfway built in my capitol already, having waiting for dozens of turns for someone to build it and thus solve my financial crisis.
It soon became apparent I was going to run out of time just short of his nearest city. I'd run it too close to the edge, even with all my citizens going for maximum commerce forgoing things like cows/plains for unimproved water/coast hexes for the two commerce despite the fact the city would soon starve, I had a deficit of -6 at zero tech and my army would soon go on strike and start disappearing. So I got another idea....I was sitting on a nice fat floodplain filled with villages, hamlets, cottages, farms etc. Monty had been a busy little builder! I was jealous of his beautifully developed area, it looked like mine usually did when the roles were reversed and I was peacefully building away and he showed up with a couple archers and declared war for the pointless practice of pillaging my countryside. Or, even like the barbarian hordes who will stop at nothing for the chance to wreck any improvement they can get their grubby little barb hands on.
However, unlike him I had more than a couple archers, and unlike the barbarian hordes I had a sense of strategy. Having no other option but disbanding troops two hexes from his nearest city I chose to pillage the village I was sitting on with my SOD. Completely unexpectedly, I got 26 gc just for the village! I was astonished, I hadn't pillaged anything since I first started the game, despite the 'hints' telling me it was lucrative I had been decidedly disappointed when I tested it. Otherwise I never plundered as I generally would only attack cities I planned to keep, and why would I destroy my (soon to be) own stuff?
However, 26 gc when you've a thousand gold in the bank and 26 gc when you're on the brink of bankruptcy is quite a different thing. Hell, that was about five more turns of life! So I gleefully separated my stack to cover every improvement I could reach and started joyously pillaging everything in sight. Soon I had over 300 gc and this silly grin I couldn't wipe off my face. It was just euphoria solving my problems at Monty's expense like this I couldn't stop giggling with each and every sound effect of burning buildings. I razed his roads, despite not getting anything for them, just because I could!
I went through his entire top-rated empire like that, as locusts leaving nothing but destruction behind. Soon his five or so city empire had nothing but a wayward unconnected road or two outside the city limits. For the most part he just turtled and took it, his couple attempts at venturing out to protect his assets being punished severely by my archers who I didn't mind losing anyway. On the open plains even a Jaguar doesn't last much longer than a two archers worth, and I still needed to lose troops.
But like any good barbarian king, my glory was short-lived. The Aztec plunder financed my getting Bronze-working, and I took a barbarian city which had bronze in it's outside radius. Ironically I did that with the chariots I could build now that the problematic fourth city I'd built--which was in part responsible for all this--expanded with the completion of their monument and reception of Hinduism. Unfortunately that bronze was about twenty hexes away and while my army of workers reached that fairly quickly, it was impossible to keep that supply train intact with the Aztec having discovered Axmen from somewhere deep inside the bowels of it's empire, and what with those and the Jaguars and my distaff army of veteran archers and chariots actually having something to defend, it became apparent I couldn't maintain it any longer.
The final nail in my coffin was when I built the Parthenon. Despite doing all I could *not* to build it, eventually I couldn't avoid it as I couldn't stop working the gold mine. I was amazed I could build it with that many other players, and maintaining low production in the city for about half the time. It was like the other ten or so civs were s******ing amongst themselves at the silly Celt going bankrupt thus conspired not to build it just to end my game. Also the Aztecs wouldn't give me peace despite being at war for thousands of years without my giving them my best city. I wasn't going to do that, after eons of terrorizing his once-great empire I wouldn't give Monty the bloody satisfaction.
So I packed it in, with a lesson learned about the gravity of the economic situation on Emperor. Next time I won't build more than my initial two cities until my economy is better developed, in fact with early wars and barb cities I might not build another at all. At any rate I whiled away hours having lotsa fun destroying and pillaging the Aztecs, and now somewhat understand the mentality of the barbarian hordes who try to do the same to me every time I play 'raging.' It IS kinda fun to simply destroy and watch your gold balance get higher every turn.
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