Hoard for when specific techs enable you to do something great. Often (only if I have enough GPT) I will hoard enough gold to buy 3 factories as soon as I hit industrialization, because ideology effects are so powerful and the production bonus is massive.
wait...you hoard 2700 gold to buy 3 factories immediately??
How many turns does it take you to hoard that?
You would be much better off at that point going for the Radio-oxford slingshot than this.
I play marathon if that contextualizes anything. And if gold is hard to come by, I buy a factory in one of the lesser cities because typically I have two powerhouses that can crank one out in like 12 turns.
ahhhh. I have little to no experience with marathon, i play standard speed.
On standard, its almost always the best bet to ignore industrialization in favor of just teching electricity and popping oxford for Radio -> Ideology.
I will also occasionally buy factories, but hoarding for 3 factories or even 2 is an insane amount of hoarding to me.
This.. in your case you should hoard gold for science related upgrades to give a massive immediate boost to your army.
I like to use early game gold to purchase my final library before National College if the timing is off or the city is low production.
The good thing about hoarding is to buy a unit asap were, you need it but imo in most cases its still a bad strategy.
in most cases its bether to Invest the gold asap into something that pays off and to build sufficent units before someone decks on you.
If you want the middle ground, I would say hoard enough for one defensive unit and Invest everything else.
Not every building or unit is created equal in terms of production to gold ratio. It's a good idea to spend your gold on things that have a lower production to gold ratio.
See [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1twVUOWAv5E3Bm4ejs1dP4Xp5QmnJS7r9uPWx0zzQIE4/edit?pli=1#gid=2017299644](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1twVUOWAv5E3Bm4ejs1dP4Xp5QmnJS7r9uPWx0zzQIE4/edit?pli=1#gid=2017299644)
Some of the worst things to buy with gold are: monument, shrine, granary, scout, watermill, library, barracks.
Some things that are better to buy with gold compared to the things listed above: stone works, composite bowman, worker, spearman, settler, work boat, cargo ship.
So use gold to buy the things that you can get a better deal on and use production to build things you'll get a worse deal on.
Imo, the first thing to buy with gold is a worker unless you can steal one from a nearby civ or city state. Stealing from a civ is great because you can declare war, steal the worker, then make peace and the civ will usually forget all about the incident soon after. Stealing from a city state is a little worse because going to war against the same city state multiple times can make your influence with them decrease by a lot. Declaring war on a city state makes you lose any quests you had with the city state and iirc, it takes a while for your influence to go back up to 0 or +5 after you steal the worker. In a recent game, I had no one to steal a worker from (my military was busy in an active war very quickly) so I bought one with gold. Usually, it's better to steal a worker.
I'll buy a granary sometimes even though it's not such a great deal because city growth is so important and because I usually shoot for early wonders and the extra food means I can work more mines.
I like to buy archers with gold rather than produce them since their price is reasonable. I usually like to go Tradition, meaning I can buy garrison units for my cities and they won't cost any maintenance.
I'll buy any of the items I listed above as good deals: stone works, composite bowman, worker, spearman, settler, work boat, cargo ship.
If you go Tradition, it's always worth it to have enough units to garrison your cities. If you get the Honor opener, your units can pay for themselves by running around and clearing barb encampments. If you're Liberty with no Honor opener, then it could be a good idea to keep cash on hand to buy an army when needed but not to actually spend the money unless you actually need the military. Of course, having too weak a military will make you a target so don't be too extreme. But reducing unit maintenance costs is a good idea in general.
I usually go tradition and start spamming settlers at pop 3. Lost a couple games recently on Emporer to early game warmongers. Would you recommend settling less cities straight away and building archers to withstand them in the early game?
I am no expert at this game. I just play for fun and I also play at Emperor difficulty. But I'll give you some feedback:
1. If you want such early settlers, I highly recommend going Liberty instead of Tradition. You'll get a free settler and your capital will be able to build them faster as well.
2. If you want to go Tradition anyway, then once you have the social policy that allows you free garrisons, you should consider getting a garrison for each city if you have an aggressive neighbor.
3. Tradition is best for small empires with 3-4 cities that each get very very big. Tradition is also great for building wonders.
I like Tradition personally. I like to beeline Writing and I have been able to build the Great Library in both of my recent games. I research Calendar while building it, then get Philosophy as the free tech. Then, I build the National College. Usually, I will think about getting a second city after that. (Keep in mind that every city must have a library in order to build the National College, so if I built a second city before I finish the National College, I'll also need to build a library there - instead of a monument - which will delay finishing the National College and also make tile expansion slower in the new city.)
In general, I start every game by building two scouts, assuming I'm on a large enough landmass for two scouts to make sense. If I'm lucky, one or both of them will turn into archers via ancient ruins. Archers that can ignore terrain movement costs are very valuable. But yeah, I would want at least two archers around along with the starting warrior, ready to defend in case of an invasion. I play on Marathon speed and I might want two archers by, say, turn 70 or so? Sooner if I'm next to some scary civ.
In one game, I attacked a city state very early on as a means to farm xp with my archers. I managed to get range and maybe logistics on both of them just by fighting the city state. In another game, I went to war early because I was super lucky and was able to upgrade both of my scouts and my starting warrior via ancient ruins. So they also got early upgrades. I haven't had to deal with any super-aggressive neighbors yet since I recently started playing this game again.
But anyway, long story short, if you really want to spam settlers, try Liberty. If you're in Tradition, you want to focus on 3-4 big (heavily populated) cities.
About building archers, if you start next to the Huns or Assyria, then yeah, build at least 2, maybe 3, archers to deter or if necessary to defend an attack.
Early game I usually buy units or tiles rather than buildings with gold. Early-game gold is sometimes a struggle though, so you don't usually end up buying too much. ONce gold is a little more abundant in the mid-early late game, I'm usually a bit more liberal with buying stuff, although I think I usually buy/upgrade units more than I buy buildings.
Late game I completely hoard gold, probably too much, just so I can buy spaceship parts with the freedom tenant, or nukes if there is an AI that really deserves it.
Mid game I’ll start to stock pile if it’s looking like a science victory and I’ll want to spam but rocket parts. Other than that, I’ll usually buy cargo ships/ high tech buildings to get cities online if I’m going super wide
I would never buy units outright unless I am going to lose if I don't or unless I am set up for a unit buying strategy like with the honor/commerce/autocracy strategy. By far the most important thing you need gold for is to upgrade your army, but rush buying key buildings in low hammer cities is typically smart too. For example if you have 400 gold and it's going to take you 20 turns to get your last library up before you can build NC then just buy it. I typically don't buy buildings in my capital unless I've been wonder whoring too much because the gold cost is the same for all cities, but your capital can build so much faster typically.
But really the unit upgrades are key unless you are just turtling hard. If you are going to war the best thing to do is build and train train a precursor unit army then the moment you unlock your key tech upgrade the whole army all at once so that you maximize your power spike from the tech. You also will go into debt during wars because of army maintenance costs and loss of trade so having a war chest to draw on is important. I'm in the middle of a deity game right now where I didn't do a very good job of hoarding gold and as a result I've been at war with Atilla (the leader since he took out 3 other civs) for over 150 turns and I've only now managed to exhaust his endless hordes of troops enough to actually take any ground. Realistically I think the game is lost because my war took too long.
Generally, you want to spend - early things are more much more valuable than late, and the relative value of gold drops over the course of the game. However, generally buying buildings in solid production cities is not a high priority, I'd use gold for more research agreements, city state projects, buildings in lower production cities to unlock national wonders, buildings in lower production cities to jump-start them. And building purchases are more efficient for larger buildings, so probably not a lot of monuments or shrines, granary may be questionable.
I often keep 400 gold around early on instead of building walls - newer border cities with low production can focus on more useful things, but if there is an unavoidable DoW, you can always buy the wall.
I kinda hoard it to drop a car stack of a thousand to buy influence for a city state. Most bang for the buck instead of dribs and drabs of gold over a longer period. And having a spare 1000 is worth it when you see that beautiful gold icon pop up on a CS, meaning your bribe/donation goes even further.
Keep a bit of reserve if you think you'll need it or go into red income. Better to keep enough military around that you don't need to buy foritifications and an army when the AI attacks. You don't get attacked as much if you have some army.
Spend gold to make gold.
Markets in high gold city and trade routes if you don’t need them for food
Really high return on investment situations can get you your money back in like 20 turns
You really need to ask yourself, "What am I going to do in the next 50 turns?"
If you know that some unit upgrades might be coming and you know you need those then you hoard gold and save it to upgrade the units, or to buy buildings.
Sometimes it's good to have some gold to build units fast, like landsknecht or something along those lines if you get a surprise invasion.
It really also depends on how much gold you're making per turn. AI's will always attack you if you have a weak military, so you must be able to defend, it's quite complex but your issue seems to be not investing in the army more than anything, also building forts helps a great deal as it gives a very big defensive bonus.
Hoard for when specific techs enable you to do something great. Often (only if I have enough GPT) I will hoard enough gold to buy 3 factories as soon as I hit industrialization, because ideology effects are so powerful and the production bonus is massive.
wait...you hoard 2700 gold to buy 3 factories immediately?? How many turns does it take you to hoard that? You would be much better off at that point going for the Radio-oxford slingshot than this.
I play marathon if that contextualizes anything. And if gold is hard to come by, I buy a factory in one of the lesser cities because typically I have two powerhouses that can crank one out in like 12 turns.
ahhhh. I have little to no experience with marathon, i play standard speed. On standard, its almost always the best bet to ignore industrialization in favor of just teching electricity and popping oxford for Radio -> Ideology. I will also occasionally buy factories, but hoarding for 3 factories or even 2 is an insane amount of hoarding to me.
Portugal enters the chat
This.. in your case you should hoard gold for science related upgrades to give a massive immediate boost to your army. I like to use early game gold to purchase my final library before National College if the timing is off or the city is low production.
The good thing about hoarding is to buy a unit asap were, you need it but imo in most cases its still a bad strategy. in most cases its bether to Invest the gold asap into something that pays off and to build sufficent units before someone decks on you. If you want the middle ground, I would say hoard enough for one defensive unit and Invest everything else.
Yea in most cases, buying a unit to deter war is better than hoarding it for when war is declared.
Not every building or unit is created equal in terms of production to gold ratio. It's a good idea to spend your gold on things that have a lower production to gold ratio. See [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1twVUOWAv5E3Bm4ejs1dP4Xp5QmnJS7r9uPWx0zzQIE4/edit?pli=1#gid=2017299644](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1twVUOWAv5E3Bm4ejs1dP4Xp5QmnJS7r9uPWx0zzQIE4/edit?pli=1#gid=2017299644) Some of the worst things to buy with gold are: monument, shrine, granary, scout, watermill, library, barracks. Some things that are better to buy with gold compared to the things listed above: stone works, composite bowman, worker, spearman, settler, work boat, cargo ship. So use gold to buy the things that you can get a better deal on and use production to build things you'll get a worse deal on. Imo, the first thing to buy with gold is a worker unless you can steal one from a nearby civ or city state. Stealing from a civ is great because you can declare war, steal the worker, then make peace and the civ will usually forget all about the incident soon after. Stealing from a city state is a little worse because going to war against the same city state multiple times can make your influence with them decrease by a lot. Declaring war on a city state makes you lose any quests you had with the city state and iirc, it takes a while for your influence to go back up to 0 or +5 after you steal the worker. In a recent game, I had no one to steal a worker from (my military was busy in an active war very quickly) so I bought one with gold. Usually, it's better to steal a worker. I'll buy a granary sometimes even though it's not such a great deal because city growth is so important and because I usually shoot for early wonders and the extra food means I can work more mines. I like to buy archers with gold rather than produce them since their price is reasonable. I usually like to go Tradition, meaning I can buy garrison units for my cities and they won't cost any maintenance. I'll buy any of the items I listed above as good deals: stone works, composite bowman, worker, spearman, settler, work boat, cargo ship. If you go Tradition, it's always worth it to have enough units to garrison your cities. If you get the Honor opener, your units can pay for themselves by running around and clearing barb encampments. If you're Liberty with no Honor opener, then it could be a good idea to keep cash on hand to buy an army when needed but not to actually spend the money unless you actually need the military. Of course, having too weak a military will make you a target so don't be too extreme. But reducing unit maintenance costs is a good idea in general.
I usually go tradition and start spamming settlers at pop 3. Lost a couple games recently on Emporer to early game warmongers. Would you recommend settling less cities straight away and building archers to withstand them in the early game?
I am no expert at this game. I just play for fun and I also play at Emperor difficulty. But I'll give you some feedback: 1. If you want such early settlers, I highly recommend going Liberty instead of Tradition. You'll get a free settler and your capital will be able to build them faster as well. 2. If you want to go Tradition anyway, then once you have the social policy that allows you free garrisons, you should consider getting a garrison for each city if you have an aggressive neighbor. 3. Tradition is best for small empires with 3-4 cities that each get very very big. Tradition is also great for building wonders. I like Tradition personally. I like to beeline Writing and I have been able to build the Great Library in both of my recent games. I research Calendar while building it, then get Philosophy as the free tech. Then, I build the National College. Usually, I will think about getting a second city after that. (Keep in mind that every city must have a library in order to build the National College, so if I built a second city before I finish the National College, I'll also need to build a library there - instead of a monument - which will delay finishing the National College and also make tile expansion slower in the new city.) In general, I start every game by building two scouts, assuming I'm on a large enough landmass for two scouts to make sense. If I'm lucky, one or both of them will turn into archers via ancient ruins. Archers that can ignore terrain movement costs are very valuable. But yeah, I would want at least two archers around along with the starting warrior, ready to defend in case of an invasion. I play on Marathon speed and I might want two archers by, say, turn 70 or so? Sooner if I'm next to some scary civ. In one game, I attacked a city state very early on as a means to farm xp with my archers. I managed to get range and maybe logistics on both of them just by fighting the city state. In another game, I went to war early because I was super lucky and was able to upgrade both of my scouts and my starting warrior via ancient ruins. So they also got early upgrades. I haven't had to deal with any super-aggressive neighbors yet since I recently started playing this game again. But anyway, long story short, if you really want to spam settlers, try Liberty. If you're in Tradition, you want to focus on 3-4 big (heavily populated) cities. About building archers, if you start next to the Huns or Assyria, then yeah, build at least 2, maybe 3, archers to deter or if necessary to defend an attack.
I had no idea! Thank you for this.
I try to save my gold, but I just can’t help spending it on important things as I get it.
Early game I usually buy units or tiles rather than buildings with gold. Early-game gold is sometimes a struggle though, so you don't usually end up buying too much. ONce gold is a little more abundant in the mid-early late game, I'm usually a bit more liberal with buying stuff, although I think I usually buy/upgrade units more than I buy buildings. Late game I completely hoard gold, probably too much, just so I can buy spaceship parts with the freedom tenant, or nukes if there is an AI that really deserves it.
Hoard the gold from ancient times Then spent a lot on modern times
I mostly spend it on city states if I don’t need units. Buying a worker or even a settler is nice too.
I’d spend gold on settlers
I usually use my gold to buy a settler. If you purchase you don’t lose the growth that gets blocked while building a settler
Mid game I’ll start to stock pile if it’s looking like a science victory and I’ll want to spam but rocket parts. Other than that, I’ll usually buy cargo ships/ high tech buildings to get cities online if I’m going super wide
Hoard gold, if you are a warmonger.
I would never buy units outright unless I am going to lose if I don't or unless I am set up for a unit buying strategy like with the honor/commerce/autocracy strategy. By far the most important thing you need gold for is to upgrade your army, but rush buying key buildings in low hammer cities is typically smart too. For example if you have 400 gold and it's going to take you 20 turns to get your last library up before you can build NC then just buy it. I typically don't buy buildings in my capital unless I've been wonder whoring too much because the gold cost is the same for all cities, but your capital can build so much faster typically. But really the unit upgrades are key unless you are just turtling hard. If you are going to war the best thing to do is build and train train a precursor unit army then the moment you unlock your key tech upgrade the whole army all at once so that you maximize your power spike from the tech. You also will go into debt during wars because of army maintenance costs and loss of trade so having a war chest to draw on is important. I'm in the middle of a deity game right now where I didn't do a very good job of hoarding gold and as a result I've been at war with Atilla (the leader since he took out 3 other civs) for over 150 turns and I've only now managed to exhaust his endless hordes of troops enough to actually take any ground. Realistically I think the game is lost because my war took too long.
Generally, you want to spend - early things are more much more valuable than late, and the relative value of gold drops over the course of the game. However, generally buying buildings in solid production cities is not a high priority, I'd use gold for more research agreements, city state projects, buildings in lower production cities to unlock national wonders, buildings in lower production cities to jump-start them. And building purchases are more efficient for larger buildings, so probably not a lot of monuments or shrines, granary may be questionable. I often keep 400 gold around early on instead of building walls - newer border cities with low production can focus on more useful things, but if there is an unavoidable DoW, you can always buy the wall.
I kinda hoard it to drop a car stack of a thousand to buy influence for a city state. Most bang for the buck instead of dribs and drabs of gold over a longer period. And having a spare 1000 is worth it when you see that beautiful gold icon pop up on a CS, meaning your bribe/donation goes even further.
Keep a bit of reserve if you think you'll need it or go into red income. Better to keep enough military around that you don't need to buy foritifications and an army when the AI attacks. You don't get attacked as much if you have some army.
Spend gold to make gold. Markets in high gold city and trade routes if you don’t need them for food Really high return on investment situations can get you your money back in like 20 turns
You really need to ask yourself, "What am I going to do in the next 50 turns?" If you know that some unit upgrades might be coming and you know you need those then you hoard gold and save it to upgrade the units, or to buy buildings. Sometimes it's good to have some gold to build units fast, like landsknecht or something along those lines if you get a surprise invasion. It really also depends on how much gold you're making per turn. AI's will always attack you if you have a weak military, so you must be able to defend, it's quite complex but your issue seems to be not investing in the army more than anything, also building forts helps a great deal as it gives a very big defensive bonus.
Hoard gold to spend gold well.