Late Game Economy Concerns

[pdxsean]

I've made it into the modern age and have taken over a lot of my neighbor's territory. I have ten puppet states (and only 9 non-puppet) and I've run into some real economic problems.

First off, my building maintenance is HUGE. More than my unit+tile maint combined. I might have too many of some buildings in my controlled cities, although very few cities have any buildings other than culture science and happiness. All have the market/bank/stock market improvements which cost no maintenance. My concern here is that I am paying for the ridiculous buildings that are going up in my puppet states. The puppet states are constantly building barracks and stables and such... which makes no sense, since they don't build units. I'm really concerned the maintenance for these buildings is what has my economy in the toilet.

Secondly, the maintenance cost of my workers appears to be insane. I've deleted many of my workers recently, and each time I did so it boosted my gold income by 11 or 12 gold per turn. There's no way this is right, 12 gold maintenance for one worker? I decided to try capturing an enemy worker, and sure enough my income went down by 12. Is this just an aspect of the modern age?

I tried looking in civilopedia for help on the unit maintenance thing and it was not helpful. The unit maintenance entry referred me to the unit entries. The unit entries had no maint info in them.

Anyway, I thought I was being modest in my buildings (gone are the days when every city will have every building!) so I thought I'd see if any of you have any ideas. Thanks!

[pdxsean]

I just went through and manually counted the maintenance for all the buildings in all the cities I control. It's 140 gold per turn. My overall per turn building maintenance is 355. So those puppet states are costing me 215 per turn? I really didn't want to have to start razing cities...

[rah]

With more experience you will adjust your strat to make this a little less of a problem. But this was brought up numerous times during testing and I expect we'll see some sort of tweak in a future patch.
And the unit maint seems to work in pairs. Sometimes you'll delete one and get no reduction and not see any until you disband the second unit. So it really wasn't 12 for a single unit.

[jobe]

As rah said this is something I believe we´ll see tweaks for, it´s been on beta testers radar for some time now.

It can be handled - not too difficult - once one get adjusted to the differences compared to civ4, but it requires limiting yourself in certain areas and planning ahead.

For now try not overexpanding too quickly, raze and puppet cities and only keep the valuable ones in wars and especially specialize a certain amount of your cities (relative to empire´s size) for gold. Best use cities with rivers since those provide a very significant gold bonus already and put trading posts everywhere, while getting markets and other gold bonus buildings without maintenance costs.

Best spots for those kind of cities are those with lots of grassland rivers, potentially luxury resources, some food and some production to get the necessary buildings. A city without produciton tiles at all will have trouble getting the buildings - once it has them it can switch back to working all trading posts.

[pdxsean]

The maintenance thing is pretty weird, I've deleted a few other units in the last few turns (obsolete ship here, longswordsman there) and with three units deleted I saved 26 gold per turn. So that's still something along the lines of 8 gold per unit.

I went in and looked at my numbers for unit supply, and I have 29 units with capacity of well over 100. Not really sure what that means in V, obviously in IV and earlier it'd mean no maintenance.

Thanks for your responses, I will keep your words in mind the next go-round jobe. In the current game, I know I won't be puppetting any more states. I didn't really have these problems until going to war with the neighbor, and now that I have more puppet states than controlled states I'm having these major issues. Still probably going to be able to win the game (so obviously not TOO bad) but I feel like I'm on a much higher difficulty level with the costs associated. That is to say, the end game is WAY tougher than the first half, despite my massive tech lead and superior military strategy.

[Jaybe]

What I have done in my 1st (ongoing) game is annex my puppet states one at a time, waiting until the courthouse is built before annexing the next. I also major at TPs and production improvements at my puppets so their unhappiness doesn't get out of hand. I DEFINITELY want control of what those cities are up to! Merchant specialists and in extremis, even gold production (@10% -- ACK!!) may help, of course.

[binTravkin]

Can maintenance be modded in the XMLs?

Or where can it be if anywhere?

[yin26]

Having puppets is most useful if you are going for Social Policies and a culture win (puppet population doesn't count against you in that case). But you have to absorb the lame buildings and associated maintenance. It's not a pretty trade off. However, you can certainly have enough gold for all of this if you make sure NOT to build too many trade posts. My rule is simple:

Trade posts ONLY on a tile that cannot be improved any other way.

I know this sounds counterintuitive, and it is. So why do it? Population drives both science and tiles worked, which determines your tech and your gold strength. So by growing big populations, you completely put trade posts in the grave in terms of importance.

[yin26]

P.S. Also be sure to read through all the Social Policies carefully. Some of them have a big impact on maintenance, with roads, for example.

[pdxsean]

Jaybe, that sounds like a good way to go. I've only actually annexxed one puppet state so far. The more we discuss this, the more I realize that I'm in a jam because I've conquered so much of my neighbor so fast. Which brings up a whole other issue... how does one properly wage war when conquering cities grinds your economy down? I guess experience will help me find the way.

Yin, I don't know HOW I would accomplish that. I have a pretty massive population and my happiness barely stays in positive territory.

I have 20 cities, 11 puppet and 9 controlled. I'd say 8 with 13-16 pop, 10 with 8-12 pop, and 2 less than 8. I have 214 total happiness, and 206 negative happiness. 15 from number of cities, 199 from population. I guess the 199 is my total population?

Maybe I should have went for the Piety social policies rather than rationalism. I've maxed out liberty, so I know I'm getting some help from that anyway.

Well, lots of things to think of when I get the next one fired up. Thanks again for all the comments.

[Jaybe]

Population drives both science and tiles worked, which determines your tech and your gold strength.

Alright, I've only had one mug of coffee this morning and I've only got less than a dozen hours of V under my belt at this point.

How is it that population drives gold strength better than TPs, especially when you have financial buildings in the city?

[yin26]

Because if you build "too many" TPs, you deny yourself population growth, and if you looked at gold from tiles worked, you realize that working more tiles with a larger population yields better gold (and science) than a smaller population loaded with TPs. Now "too many" is a matter of choice and of strategy. Perhaps my "only on the worst tiles" thinking is too extreme, but I can say without a doubt that if you - or the AI - go TP crazy, the net effect is not particularly good.

[yin26]

Yin, I don't know HOW I would accomplish that. I have a pretty massive population and my happiness barely stays in positive territory.

You won't always stay entirely positive or positive by much ALL the time. The key is to invest in happiness buildings, pay for that maintenance by an ever-growing curve of population growth, choose social policies wisely, and grab a few of the key wonders. And the obvious with getting access to as many happiness resources as you can, etc. That's one approach to the game. It's also possible (easier depending on the victory you're going for) to win with far, far fewer cities. This might, in fact, be one of the great things about Civ5.

But it's more complex than it appears at first, especially with Social Policy effects and how City States and Conquered Cities can be used to your advantage and, if not careful, to your detriment.

[pdxsean]

It is pretty complex, I give you that. However after talking with you guys here I've taken a closer look at some things and I think I have found some answers.

First off, your army has to be crazy small. Just because I have a "support" of 100+ it doesn't mean I can feasibly support that many units. And I was caught in old-style "1 unit = 1 gold maintenance" thinking, where clearly that is not the case. Right now pretty much every unit is costing me well over 5 gold, possibly 8 or more. I've made peace with my neighbor and immediately deleted six older units. Boom, instant deficit reduction.

As far as population/gold goes, I do have growing cities, and all of my inner cities have maxed out their tile usage and are investing in specialists. I only spaced my cities out by two hexes, maybe next time I will space them at three for optimal growth. It's not like Civ III where having a crapload of cities in a small area was the way to go.

What a great game, I love how it's making me take a look at things a whole new way.

[yin26]

Absolutely right about the small army. This is where that tech advantage can be most powerful. I also try to keep these units the entire game so that their promotions add up over time to something fierce. It's obviously possible to have a larger army, particularly if you run up some gold savings and prepare yourself to wage the war, but it's simply not good policy to have a large standing army. Period. Frankly, I like that pressure.

And so that's kind of my echo of your earlier point: There is now an INTERNAL pressure to the game with this change in economic model. I'm not saying it's perfect yet, but I've always wanted Civ to be a bit more about such issues as the challenge of maintaining a large standing army. We have a few examples of that now, which are good. Do I think maintenance for buildings is perhaps too high overall and that we need more ways to focus on gold production? Yes. I think we'll get there.

Oh, and I really dislike maintenance on workers. Hate it.