Have run out of gold

[Eastwood]

I'm up to turn 65 and have expanded aggressively over the last 15 - 20 turns.

I have 2 well-built 'main' cities and a vassal city that I have integrated, 2 cities founded by outposts, and a free city I took over via siege - all but one of the cities has a gold vein.

I tried setting all my cities to focus on producing gold, but I am still in deficit.

My army has dwindled so that I only have about 14 of 15 units, almost half of them are heroes. The morale of the remaining troops is very low because I'm not paying them.

Because I am focusing on gold production my cities are now starving and I am losing provinces.

I am at war with a neighbour and have just captured another city and supposedly killed their leader (but he is available through diplomacy).

I'm at a point where I am now selling weapons to Ham Binger to get enough gold for another turn.

Why do I have no gold? I feel like I am being punished for expanding too fast?

[yuzhonglu]

Every city over city cap reduces your income (mana, gold, prod, food and draft) by 25%.

So you have 5 cities. That means if your city cap is 3, all your cities are operating at a 50% loss.

Also, every hero over your hero cap greatly increases gold upkeep. So if you have 7 heroes on 5 cities, that means you're paying a lot more for the heroes.

In summary, you f-ed yourself over by going over hero and city cap.

[~ Fabulous ~]

make more vassal cities instead of your own cities and take the +10 gold per vassal perk if you can

[Aurumworks]

Heros get expensive upkeep when you have more of them than cities.

[Chthonic Guardian]

Release cities as vassal, get heroes down to your limit, don't build, don't recruit. Dis band troops that are not high level and can be replaced when crunch is over. All you can do for a while.
Might be too late to salvage it, so view it as lesson learned.

[Tavio]

yes, you expanded too fast, at the start of the game, you can only have 3 cities (not counting vassals), you can increase the cap with a "research" in the imperium skill tree, every time that you do so the cost of the research increases, but you can do it over and over so long as you meet the imperium capacity.

the enemy leader, sounds like a main faction, something like your own leader, they can be killed in combat, as can your own leader, but unless you kill them AND take their throne city, they will keep coming back, same as with you

[Eastwood]

Thanks for all the help everyone. Each of your replies have been extremely helpful. Thank you all.

[Chthonic Guardian]

Originally posted by GORO:

Thanks for all the help everyone. Each of your replies have been extremely helpful. Thank you all.

You are welcome. Good luck!