Until they fix the economy this game is unplayable as a TBS-strategy/wargame

You need a gold mine...or a palace to get you going.  IF you don't have one, find one. IF someone else has one, steal it.  Use the spy or stone giants.

thats interesting because i almost always have way to many resources and gold by the middle game.  i can never use it all.

Percisely, get a few gold mines and a palace, upgrade the cities they are linked to with the "multiplier" structures from the economic techs and you can easily wind up making 50+ gold a turn.

If you are still having trouble try researching the resource adventuring techs while you still only have a few cities, you are guaranteed to reveal a few gold mines in your territory. Ideally you can link these to the same city, if that city already had 1 or 2 you have the possiblility of gaining a great economic base. Build your palace in this city to further increase gilder production, then build all of the gold multiplying buildings for your faction in that city and chose the gold bonuses for your level upgrades.

You should now have a city that produces 100+ gold by itself which can be further supplimented by additional settlements, treaties and monster hunting.

Specialize your cities and you should have more than enough of every resource by mid game.

regards,

ct

some times you do just get a crappy map...

other methods to find goldmines include adventure tech studying.. I have only rarely not found at least 1 gold mine with in a reasonable distance form my start town (usually one near enough i can link it) and on those occasions I have found one or more where I could build another city... Lastly I have started wars just to get goldmine... currently I am in turn 401 and have 8 of them across my empire of 15 cities heh heh after expenditures (i have lots of troops) I make 28 gildar per turn atm..

If I get a sucky location without gold mines, I mine the monsters for gold. Set up a death squad to kill monsters and I get enough gold to build up a strong army for conquering.

Mining monsters for gold works incredibly well even if you do have plenty of gold mines.

people tend to forget that this isnt a tbs-strategy/wargame.  its a tbs-strategy/wargame with fantasy rpg elements.  which means if you want better equipment, you have to do it the fantasy rpg way: kill monsters.  one of my favorite features of the game.  HOWEVER, i do agree that city economies need a boost (or equipment prices need to come down).  taxes: you only hate them until you cannot force your imaginary citizens to pay them.

He has a point though. Gold mines are the only really viable way of building an economy early game (and they still make up the bulk of the economy late game too!).

Sure gold is useful in real life too but somehow real life historical kingdoms managed to get a lot done and accumulate a lot of wealth without having huge gold deposits!

In fact pretty much every big and wealthy historical city was known as wealthy because of trade, production, etc, rather than because they were all built on gold mines!

pft. 28 gilder per turn? I raise you 98 gilder per turn just from my capitol. 

Unmodded. 

The Warfare tech tree has technology that can produce units faster.  If you have to wait 50 turn I'm guessing your making companies of troops?

In one of my cities I was able to make an elite squadron(er the max size) of dragons at 15 turns with all the barrack/command center upgrades. Eh course even with my 100% gildar per city lvl focus I was losing 70 gildar per turn with 2 stacks. This was only offset by the 100-500 per turn I made by through being attacked.

Edit: I believe its completely necessary to attack enemies /monsters for gildar production to be able to produce even more armies to survive.

Also you should raze the cities you conquer that aren't worth it. Some might have - gildar for a minimal tech/research improvement. I've taken over cities that had like -15 food per turn which pretty much wrecked my food econ in a few turns.

Trade, production, gold? Nonsense. All the great Kingdoms of Elemental built up their wealth by slaughtering giant spiders, which seem to breed like rabbits in any forest just outside civilized territory. It's the only way to go.

Seriously though, sarcasm off: got to tune down the monster economy, and give those who research civilization some buildings that generate reasonable gold on their own, not more percent boosts that depend on gold mines. Right now your choices are 1.) slaughter monsters, or 2.) research some adventure, and with a little luck you're swimming in gold mines. Whatever happened to the civilization techs, isn't that supposed to be where the economic stuff is? It's honestly not my thing, but I know some people love the "building" (that is city/economy development) aspect of the game, and it cannot stand on its own at the moment. I personally love adventure research, for the questing and exploring aspects, but it feels wrong that it's also the best (and arguably only) way to build up an economy, it's so good it feels like cheating.

Not to say civilization is useless, it still has its place for prestige and percent boosts to the base resources, but it's strictly subordinate to first getting enough adventure to bury yourself in raw resources. Civ needs more buildings that generate resources on their own, without depending so much on adventure or simple luck with natural resources. Simply changing "market" from +25% gildar to +4 gildar (equivalent to that +4 material mill) would be a big step in the right direction - not a complete fix on its own, just an example of the kind of change needed to make civilization viable, and help builder-type players be less dependent on luck/adventure/spider slaughtering.

Kingdoms has a bit easier time of it since they CAN build palace, inn, and other resource generating structures. (Giant mill etc.).

Empire gets +1 of each and the rest is through map resources... Titans help you if you don't find a gold mine and hasn't got the equipment / spells to kill anything with impunity. Can get rather boring, like the OP mentioned... 35 turns to get enough gold to build a basic city guard - not to mention trying to get some equipment to fight with (Another 50-100 turns).

I'll need to play kingdom more to see how their status is on resource increasing (%) buildings though.

I've seldom been that strangled by resource shortages, but sometimes several factors combine to make your situation pretty dire.

I just build two or three cities, with or without gold mines, but near something worth developing, wait for them to get at least a pop of 35 (for the two hex radius) and then research the adventure category for resources, I forget what it is called.  I usually get 1 or two gold mines discovered in one or more cities this way.

If there are hordes of enemies, there are hordes of cash to be had. Get a decent army together, kill them, and become rich. It's not unheard of to get 600+ gold after wining some battles.

Note however that there is a bug currently that causes you to get zero cash after a won battle if the battle was initiated by the enemy AND fought in tactical(i.e. no autoresolve). Either make sure you hit them first, or use autoresolve to get money out of the fight.

They're working on it, issues are known by now etc. etc.

I think new suggestions should come after version 1.1 at this point.

Even when I'm making more than 100 gildar per turn from cities, I still get most of my money from gold monsters. When I run out of monsters, I research another Adventure (Kingdom) or Domination (Empire) tech to spawn more

Some people have suggested waiting until you've expanded before researching the Adventure resource reveal techs. This is incorrect - those techs reveal the same number of resources regardless of how many cities you have. All it means if you wait longer is the spawns will be more spread out. In fact, it's much better to get, the first one at least, as early as possible, as extra gold mines early on is very valuable. Also, it's better anyway to have the resources concentrated around a few cities than spread around.

And be sure to have a strong melee sovereign so you can go hunt monsters for loot, there's a lot of gold in them (though what spiders are doing with gildar is a mystery to me)

The economy can be a struggle, but I wouldnt call that broken.  Sometimes, as others have said, you just dont get what resources you want.  If that is the case, may I suggest taking the resources you want from your opponents.. it is a war game after all.  Also, putting your city bonuses in the right places makes a big difference.  Having high gildar bonuses on a city that produces mostly tech knowledge is counter-productive.

I haven't really had much trouble staying +50gildar or higher over my expenses. I supplement that with money from adventuring with my soveriegns and/or the family(Dynasty) and I have no problems with money.

It is not whether you can get to +50 econ, it is HOW you get there. The only realistic way to get there is via Gold mines.

I agree with the OP that it should be possible to build a decent economy without Gold mines.

The mark of a good strategy game is choices and multiple paths. There should be multiple paths to making money and right now pretty much all of them are in the Adventure tech tree (ie finding gold mines or increasing monster spawn level).

even with a few gold mines, i usually still find myself in the same position as the OP and i've played quite a few games now. what's the point of building multiplier buildings when there's nothing to multiply? there need to be a few more base gildar production buildings. or alternatively, give me an extra gildar per turn per level of city, to encourage people to develop cities instead of building lots of little outposts.

I agree that gold mines are almost the only way to get a stable income of gold, but I also think that this is the point.

This is not just another game, this is a post apocalyptic world.

You are supposed to treat resource zones like something worth starting a war for. You are supposed to calculate the wages of your troops, deciding where to place your defenses and when it is safe to attack.

It does need a little tuning, adding just a few minor buildings that give stable income (not percentages) after some research, and reducing the monster economy, but as a concept, specialized cities and the lack of common resources can be a good thing.

Don't be afraid of changes, it's not a bug if it isn't like the games we already know, it's a problem only if there is something unbalanced in the game itself.

Also just a note [maybe it's getting old :P] -> Modding. It takes no time to edit the specific .xml file and modify the gold output of a building for example.

I agree we could use some other ways to boost income.. It is not a must but it would provide options.. A small tax or another possible boost per haps..

Oh I have great income.. one of my cities makes 104 gildar per turn and my total income is 216 per turn I pay 148 in wages per turn (2 of my armies have troops with magic items and horses) plus my standing def force for each city LOL... admin costs are36 per turn atm.. So I spend much of my money troops and development(monster hunting does add much to  support this).. its near time to control the world but i just having so much fun LOL

It is true that your scrambling a bit at teh very start. If your unlucky, you have no mine and sometimes a few monsters who are a bit too strong to take down right away. But usually once you get get a bit of a decent party with bows or some decent armor you can earn money fairly easy.

I usually leave my city's unprotected for a while since I can't affort much troops at the very start. I've only seen a city of mine destroyed once though by some random creature pack. Usually they only take out recources that are outside the city. They also tend to attack more if you actually have troops in your city (or is that just my imagination).

Once you get rolling though, your usually flooded in gold.