Running out of Gold Fast!!!

[burningrave101]

Well i started out the game just fine, but in all games i like to have this big freaking army cause i dont care about the rest of the stuff and i had my entire island taken over and was doing perfectly with tons of cities but i kept making my army bigger and bigger with new stuff and after a while i start losing money like
-75 gold per turn!!! the only reason i want a cheat is so i can boost my gold up enough to maintain my army. Does this Cheat mod do that??? and the thing i dont like about this cheat mod is cause it says it like substitues in two new civs and it adds like workers that do everything??? i dont wanna change the game any or add nothing else, i just wanna give myself a little gold when the bank runs dry from my Army.

[yin26]

Do you imagine we are going to give you a piece of gold for each thread you start asking this same question?

Merry Christmas.

[Libertarian]

Okay, okay, here's the cheat:

Face east. Squat. Beat your chest while chanting "Down with the American imperialist fascist pigs waging war against the innocent Vietnamese people!". Squint and grunt three times.

A gold coin will fall out of your butt.

[Barnacle Bill]

All kidding aside, my friend, you are suffering from the Soviet syndrome. The USSR attempted to maintain (and continually expand) a military which was beyond the capacity of the economy to sustain. They tried to achieve military superiority to a coalition of nations having considerably greater economic strength. Everybody who played suffered economic damage. The USSR suffered most, because it spent the most as a percentage of GDP. Eventually, their economy collapsed. Civ games don't model economies in a level of detail to show exactly what happened to the USSR, but what is happening to you is as close to that as the Civ3 system will come. I'll bet the Politburo wanted a "gold cheat" real bad, too

Not carrying about "the rest of the stuff" is part of your problem. There is an old saying "amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics". At a grand strategic level like the civ games, "the rest of the stuff", i.e. your economy, is logistics.

During the 6th Century AD, the Eastern Roman Empire under Justinian was engaged in an attempt to recover the territories formerly comprising the Western Roman Empire. During the fighting in Italy against the Ostrogoths, the Franks decided to take advantage of the weakened state of both sides and invade Italy themselves. They crossed the Alps with a "6 figure" all-infantry army and absolutely no logistical arrangements. In those days, supply of armies mostly relied on "foraging", i.e. ripping off the local farmers. Cavalry performed this vital function, as they could range about the slower troops gathering food. Bringing food in wagons didn't work well, because a horse-drawn wagon with the tech of the time consumed a wagon-load of fodder every 40 miles. Ships worked good, as long as you stayed in wagon-distance of a port. The Franks brought no ships, no wagons and no cavalry. Northern Italy had no where near enough farmers in any one spot to feed 6-figures worth of Franks. The Franks lost half their army to starvation & disease, and the rest was incapable of fighting so it was obliged to go home without ever engaging the enemy. That's what comes from not caring about "the rest of the stuff".

I suggest you do one of the following:

1) Go hunt up a copy of Empire - same mechanics of combat as the Civ games (air units work as in Civ1/2, not as in Civ3) but no "the rest of the stuff" to worry about. Cities produce units. No gold, no tech, no buildings or citizens or unhappiness, no nothing but modern Civ-type units fighting over cities.

2) Learn to care about "the rest of the stuff". Balance your budget - adopt a better government that makes more gold, build money-making city improvements, commerce-building terrain improvements, disband some of those excess units, etc...

3) Go into the editor and roll your own cheat - if you are playing a "game" instead of a "scenario", and changes you make in Civ3mod.bic will apply if after you save Civ3mod.bic you relaunch Civ3 and open your saved game. You can change whatever government you are using to "all units free", then make units to your hearts content without paying a single gold to support them.

[spy14]

Civ is about doing all the other stuff as well. Thats the point of the game - management of all the issues. If you wanna build big armies (and who dosnt? ) go buy command and conquer.

[Jodo Kast]

I prefer another option:

4) Use the Unlimited Funds Cheat.

[Allemand]

I generally only spend about 10-20% of my budget on the military after I'm in Democracy and building up, so I think the unit maintenance is too low. Some units should cost more than one gold per turn, maybe up to 3 or 4. For example, I would peg the cost of Knights as 2 and Cavalry could be 3, with modern units weighing in at 4, maybe even 5. This would result in more defensive units versus offensive juggernauts.

[Libertarian]

Originally posted by Jodo Kast
I prefer another option:

4) Use the Unlimited Funds Cheat.

Gah!!!

You mean the one who has been lecturing me on ethics is a cheater!?

[Barnacle Bill]

Originally posted by Allemand
I generally only spend about 10-20% of my budget on the military after I'm in Democracy and building up, so I think the unit maintenance is too low. Some units should cost more than one gold per turn, maybe up to 3 or 4. For example, I would peg the cost of Knights as 2 and Cavalry could be 3, with modern units weighing in at 4, maybe even 5. This would result in more defensive units versus offensive juggernauts.

Oh, yeh!

Try this on for size:

It costs $4.5 Billion to raise US mechanized infantry division. That includes the first 30 days of supply (ammo, fuel, food).

It costs $75 million PER DAY to use that division in combat. The cost to have it in peacetime is lower due to reduced fuel & ammo consumption.

What that means is to raise a new division and use it for 90 days (the first 30 included in the price plus 60 more days after that) costs 9 Billion.

What this means in civ terms is that, with turns of 1 year or longer, per turn maintenance cost of a unit should be considerably higher than the cost to build the unit in the first place.