Resource economy

[CrabNicholson]

If I am constantly low on gold and more than half of my cities are passing their turns producing merchandise, am I doing something horribly wrong, or is that just how the game's economy is?

On the other hand, I am often finding myself floating obscene amounts of mana with nothing to spend it on. If I can summon creatures, then I spam the map with them, but if I'm playing a class that doesn't summon, it seems like mana count is always trending upwards. Is that also typical?

[Phirestar]

Originally posted by CrabNicholson:

If I am constantly low on gold and more than half of my cities are passing their turns producing merchandise, am I doing something horribly wrong, or is that just how the game's economy is?

On the other hand, I am often finding myself floating obscene amounts of mana with nothing to spend it on. If I can summon creatures, then I spam the map with them, but if I'm playing a class that doesn't summon, it seems like mana count is always trending upwards. Is that also typical?

Yep, that sounds about right.


On a more serious note, this is to be expected to some degree, yes. (The key phrase there is some degree.)

In the early stages of the game, you're not going to be getting a whole lot of gold income. This is because of the fact that the inherent gold income on a city is not all that high, especially with smaller city sizes. The majority of the gold that you acquire in the game comes from structures within your domain that give gold income, like Gold Mines.

A Village - which I believe is the default starting city size in the game setup screen - only has a base income of +10 gold, which is the same as a Gold Mine. However, multiple Gold Mines can be contained with the domain of a single city or fort. And acquiring new cities, especially when you're starting out, is a lot more difficult than clearing Gold Mines and placing them inside of your borders. It takes 1 turn and 100 gold to clear out a Gold Mine and start building a fort, versus 4+ turns and 250 gold to produce and settle a new city with a Settler, or to siege and absorb an independent city. And if the Gold Mine is inside the domain of your city, then it will immediately be added to your income free-of-charge, meaning that you do not have to spend any money on a fort or Settler unit, and it will also increase the amount of bonus gold received by assigning Produce Merchandise in the city.

Once you've got a couple of cities / forts going, you'll see your gold income and, by extension, your reserve stash of gold, increase. At the same time, however, you have to remember that each unit that you produce has an upkeep cost that takes away from your total gold income from those cities and forts. A Tier 1 might only have an upkeep of 4 gold per turn, which doesn't sound like a lot on the surface, but as long as that unit is within your army it is permanently reducing your total income.


Imagine it this way: picture there being "notches" over the structures that are inside of your domain. Each notch represents an amount of income of that structure's resources that's equal to a T1 unit's upkeep cost of that resource. So a Gold Mine in your empire's borders, for example, has 2 full notches (+4 and +4) and 1 half-a-notch (+2), equaling a total of +10 gold income.

Now, each time you produce a Tier 1 unit in any of your cities, they introduce an upkeep cost of +4 gold. This means that if you go over to your Gold Mine and look at it now, one of these notches will be "filled in" with a white dot. When the notch is filled in with white, this means that the +4 gold from that notch (or whatever resource is associated with the notch) is being given to your T1 unit and is not going towards your total income on the bar at the top of the screen. If you produce a second T1 unit, then the second notch is now filled with a white dot, leaving you with just a half-a-notch not filled in, making the income that you're receiving from that single Gold Mine equal to +2 gold-per-turn.

The upkeep costs for units also doubles with each next tier, meaning that if you were to produce a Tier 2 unit in your city, it would have an upkeep cost of 8 gold-per-turn, therefor filling in both of the notches that were filled by the two T1s in the previous example, but this time only for a single new unit. A Tier 3 unit has an upkeep of 16 gold-per-turn, so now you would have two notches filled on two different Gold Mines just to pay that one T3 unit's upkeep, leaving you with +4 gold income from those two Gold Mines, which would normally give +20 gold income.


This is where the balancing task comes into comes into play. You have to manage all the structures in your empire's domain and divide their resources between passive income and expanding your military. If you keep producing new units every time you acquire more Gold Mines into your domain, then you're basically walking in place and can never build up a large enough reserve to begin producing more expensive city expansions.

Acquiring 2 Gold Mines (+20 gold) - producing 5 T1s (-20 gold) = +0 gold income

When you're just starting out you have to really rely on using as few units as possible to do as much work as possible, so that you can build up that reserve cash and pay for more expensive upgrades that help expand your empire faster. This is also why it's so important to play super carefully and not lose units at the beginning of the match, because you'll have to dip into that pool of reserve gold in order to replace them. If you built up 45 gold over the past several turns and then have to replace a Tigran Cheetah, which costs 45 gold to produce, then all that time spent producing that gold was essentially wasted.

The less gold that you're spending on your military, the more you have to invest into your cities and forts, which will lead to you getting more domain control over the map and granting access to more structures that increase your income of resources.


The reason why mana piles up is because you're spending it on far fewer things in comparison to gold. You either spend mana to cast spells in combat, invest it towards casting a strategic spell, or in some cases, spend it as a secondary resource to produce certain unit types (usually Support units). And if you're not playing a class or specialization that relies a lot on spells, then it's just going to continue sitting there and stack up over time.

The other good news is that if you happen to encounter an AI empire, and you're able to maintain a neutral / positive relation with them, you can potentially exchange your mana for gold (or vice-versa) at a 1-to-1 ratio. I did this in my last game as a Sorcerer, where I met the Dreadnought leader and traded her my mana for gold multiple times. (I think in total I gave her like 500 mana, over multiple separate trades, and got 500 gold in return. That was a massive boost when I was still struggling for cash.)

[BillyJoelWilliamson]

Two things for mana build up.
One make items it is a huge mana sink and you can outfit you hero’s to be extra strong.
Two try to clear forbidden sanctums they give spells and you can get amazing summons for a class that has no mana sink.
Also consider your specializations I try to make sure I have at least one mana sink to summon and sometimes use those to defend my town clearing up some gold.

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

Also, use the mana for the terraforming spell.

Terraforming is unique in that it doesn't cost any casting points. You just get to select hexes in your domain and pay a mana cost. It lets you change terrain to forest, swamps, plains or barrens.

Use this to A] make your cities happier (goblins like swamps, elves like forests) and B] make terrain more/less passable. (Tigrans walk faster over barrens, swamps in a chokepoint can slow down enemy stacks, etc.)

[HurtfulPlayer97]

Originally posted by Iguana-on-a-stick:

Also, use the mana for the terraforming spell.

Terraforming is unique in that it doesn't cost any casting points. You just get to select hexes in your domain and pay a mana cost. It lets you change terrain to forest, swamps, plains or barrens.

Use this to A] make your cities happier (goblins like swamps, elves like forests) and B] make terrain more/less passable. (Tigrans walk faster over barrens, swamps in a chokepoint can slow down enemy stacks, etc.)

One of the things about this spell I have noticed is you cannot terraform the hex that the city is built on, but you can terraform all the hexes around it. So does that mean if you build a city in a terrain type that makes the population unhappy yet terraform all the other hexes around it are they still unhappy? And you can only use this spell in the cities radius so you can't use it before you found the city.

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

Originally posted by HurtfulPlayer97:

So does that mean if you build a city in a terrain type that makes the population unhappy yet terraform all the other hexes around it are they still unhappy?

Yes. But only for 1 single hex.

The total bonus/penalty is something like "base + (Happy hexes / total hexes) - (unhappy hexes / total hexes)" with some multipliers added in.

Bottom line: If you have a large city domain, a single disliked/hated hex is going to be neglible.

And you can only use this spell in the cities radius so you can't use it before you found the city.

True, but it does work in fort radius as well city radius. And I think (but can't check right now) that you can also terraform the centre hex of a fort. So if you settled a fort first you can prepare the ground, as it were.

[HurtfulPlayer97]

Ah, thanks and sorry for hijacking the thread. :)

[pipo.p]

If you really have a lot of mana (and gold) you can always buy items from your allies, or even deprived a future competitor from all items. The AI plays dumb to this regard.

[CrUsHeR]

1) During the early game phase, always sell items from clearing structures on the map, unless they are extremely useful. Crafting items mainly costs mana, so get basic equipment by that instead.

2) More is better - founding new cities increases the bases racial happiness and racial governance very quickly. Also each city has a base gold income based on its size.

3) Happiness is the key for everything. The max happiness level increases all city output by 50%, and randomly generates happiness events.

4) Necromancers cannot have happiness, but instead get a flat 15% output bonus and some extra mana. Use the mana to cast the Undead Plague on a couple of independent cities, then your own cities grow extremely fast to Metropolis size. This not only gives them extra gold from the base city size, but also unlocks the Palace of the Perished, adding another +10 of everything.
For units, you want to roll with three Banshees plus two Reanimators plus Hero. These armies cost almost no gold and can clear any type of landmark (including Lich King Castle etc) assuming the banshees are at gold+ rank.

5) If you are evil, always plunder Dwellings. These take like 20 turns and thousands of gold to build up the production chains for their T4 units, then can produce like 1 unit every 4-5 turns. Just not worth it if the game should only run until turn ~80.

6) Otherwise: Vassals. A vassal city can contribute up to ~50 gold per turn, and you don't have to invest gold into defending it from independent armies. Like a good-aligned Rogue may even get instant vassalization offers upon meeting an independent city.

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

1) During the early game phase, always sell items from clearing structures on the map, unless they are extremely useful.

Agreed, selling items and spells is an important source of income.

Research should (almost) never be sold though, and units generally should also be kept.

Crafting items mainly costs mana, so get basic equipment by that instead.

I never bothered building an arcane forge early enough for that to matter. It's quite expensive and the prerequisite observatories aren't the highest prio either. (Though they are useful anyway.)

I haven't done the math, but I'm not sure selling item A and then crafting a similar item B will save you much money, as the city spends a lot of time it could have produced merchandise on building the item instead. It's quite an opportunity cost.

2) More is better - founding new cities increases the bases racial happiness and racial governance very quickly. Also each city has a base gold income based on its size.

To an extent. Settlers cost a lot of gold and population, and a city takes a long time to earn its initial investment back.

The happiness bonus is significant, as you say, but I still wouldn't put down cities without some good resources nearby. (Rule of thumb: at least 2 mines/nodes in quick reach, with more to come when growing.)

6) Otherwise: Vassals. A vassal city can contribute up to ~50 gold per turn, and you don't have to invest gold into defending it from independent armies. Like a good-aligned Rogue may even get instant vassalization offers upon meeting an independent city.

Not to mention that vassals periodically give you gifts which can be quite good if it's a strong vassal with a good relationship. (Gold, mana, armies...) In a pinch you can demand gifts from your vassals, at the expense of your relationship. But it's worth it if you're in trouble and you get some free stacks of troops to turn the tide.

[CrUsHeR]

To an extent. Settlers cost a lot of gold and population, and a city takes a long time to earn its initial investment back.

My precise strategy is to start with 1-2 builders, build roads and plop down forts on every potential city site. IIRC the minimum distance is 9 hexes to prevent constrainment penalties. Then when the area is secured, and there is spare gold/population, send at least one settler to the best spot.

That way you at least earn all the minimum gold, research etc. from the forts.


But yeah, founding at least a couple of cities early on quickly snowballs in terms of empire power.

Sell rewards for gold and invest into colonizers > Cities are more happy > everything grows faster and makes more gold / mana / research / production > much earlier governance unlocks > wealthy empire with powerful armies



Another thing not mentioned yet;

7) Don't waste gold on unneeded unit upkeep. Like a T3/4 unit guarding a city from roaming armies is a complete waste, instead have something like 2x T1 archers and 1-2x T2 support unit at most. Example two human priests standing on city walls can easily kill anything that isn't a dragon or phoenix.

Likewise, charming units to your side is great if you're going for an immediate invasion against another player. But otherwise, if you cannot incorporate the charmed units into your main armies, always send them on kamikaze attacks to weaken tough landmark defenders. Or send them off to clear landmarks on their own.

[Ayalin]

Originally posted by CrabNicholson:

If I am constantly low on gold and more than half of my cities are passing their turns producing merchandise, am I doing something horribly wrong, or is that just how the game's economy is?

On the other hand, I am often finding myself floating obscene amounts of mana with nothing to spend it on. If I can summon creatures, then I spam the map with them, but if I'm playing a class that doesn't summon, it seems like mana count is always trending upwards. Is that also typical?

So I always tell myself to never advertise my mods when I am taking part into discussions, but I have to say this feedback on the Vanilla game really rings a special bell for me (I am assuming you are playing without mods). Because this feeling you are describing innocently is precisely one of the reason which pushed me to do my first class mod, a few years ago.

First of all, it depends on the class you play- if you are playing with a summoning class, overall flow between your income and your needs should be satisfying most of the time, and past mid game what you will be missing the most will be casting points.

But if you play anything except Necro/Druid/Sorcerer in the vanilla version of the game, yes you are right, you need little mana and the game gives you way too much- that's how city economic upgrades work (3 for mana, 3 for pop/happiness, 2 for research and 3 for production- nothing directly giving gold but 3 giving mana!!!).
Like some mentioned, there are ways to spend it nonetheless- crafting items for example is expensive in mana, but it is still just a weak band aid at the end of the day as most items you will find by exploring treasure sites will generally be of higher quality (and the number of heroes who need items is not infinite).
And issues do not stop there in my eyes- many city enchantments or global enchantments that non summoning classes have available are actually fairly weak or overcosted for what they do. So not only do you overflow in terms of mana, but you also tend to spend it for not-so-good things.

One of my focus when modding non summoning classes was always to 1) nerf most of their mana costs 2) adds new and interesting ways to make them spend mana without making their mana usage as efficient as what summoning classes do.

[sandman25dcsss]

Non-summon classes should choose mana intensive specializations if they want to spend mana efficiently. Not explorer and expander ;)