Silver help

[masterb]

what do i do to get silver/keep it comin in / what causes it to go down???

[dithyrambos]

what do i do to get silver/keep it comin in / what causes it to go down???

There are a number of factors that affect your silver gain/loss per turn.

Taxes generate a certain amount of silver per population unit (each white figure represents 1 unit)
Silver mines produce a whole lotta silver for you.
Selling your excess produce also increases your silver.
You get 50 silver per turn per foreign diplomat with you.

You lose silver in the maintainance of your army (armies in a city only require 1/2 the usual pay so it's good to minimize the time an army spends in the field)
You also lose silver in the purchase of items via the trade menu.

The trick is to balance your army maintanance with your income. It took me a few tries to get it right, but once you get the hang of it, you'll start making silver up the wazoo! In my current game as Sparta, I control all of the Peloponnesus, as well as parts of Attika and Krete, and my silver stock is in excess of 1,000,000!

[nightshades]

What really cost a lot of silver is to maintain your units

In early and mid game when you have limited ressource, it is quite good to raise the taxes in the Empire Overview screen. Raise it until you feel that your population will be too unhappy.


Also its a good idea to raise the ammount of food you give to your population in order to help you raise the taxes.

For exemple. You have a total population of 100.
You have a tax of 10 silver per habitant = +1000
You give 1.00 food to each habitant = - 100
You are 500 silver in the red
You produce + 25 food per turn


To get this 500 silver with the tax you got to raise the taxes to 15 silver per habitant
each 0.25 of tax lower happiness by an average of 0.60
So to make it from 10 to 15 you lower your happiness by 12
Lets say you cant handle to lower your happiness that much
You can raise the quantity of food given to population
each 0.04 food given raise your happiness by an average of 0.60
You are over +25 food so you can only manage to raise it by 0.24 food /habitant wich is a 3.60 bonus in happiness

So your new level is 15.00 silver per habitant
1.24 food per habitant
I personally ALWAYS set my production to 125 %

you lose a new - 8.40 of hapiness but your silver production is even.

Nota :

Most of the time Food will be bought for 8 silver and sold 4 silver
Raising the ammount of food per habitant by 0.04 (in a population of 100) therefore represent 0.32 silver bought or 0.16 silver sold. Considering 0.04 food represent 0.25 silver in the empire overview, you got to represent if you will eventually need to buy this food.

Also, +25 % in production represent 6.25 silver per habitant. (in this exemple 625 silver/100 habitants)

If you produce material like gold, marble, iron or even horse and wood, the +25 % production can easily represent more than the 625 silver if this material is sold.



In order to be sure you dont lack of silver, be sure your tax level is equal or lower to your army cost. This way you will never lose silver unless you decide to trade for material

[Redpossum]

Wow, good work, nightshades~!

I had never looked at this issue from quite such a perspective before.

I generally just look on the map for a city that produces silver, then go capture it, and rely on mining silver to meet my needs. In fact, I often lower the tax rate from the startpoint of 5 silver per lackey

Forgive me if I'm telling you something you already know, but...

OK, you know the 9 round resource icons at the top of the main screen? If you mouseover one of those, the strategic minimap at the bottom left of the screen changes. Cities that can produce that resource (the one you moused over) turn to a solid white square, and all others become a solid black square. Very useful!

[Redpossum]

Here is a save of a game of GoT I am playing right now, the Grand Campaign 1500 BC. I am the Boeotians (i.e. Thebans).

Check out the "Large Village" of Thorikos, south-east of Athens, and look at the silver production.

By the way, the file linked above is a GoT savegame, even though your system may try to tell you it's really a Winblows Media file. Apparently the .lsf file extension that Slitherine chose for their saves is the same as some obscure damn video file format

Just unzip it into your GoT savegames directory (mine is C:\Matrix Games\Gates Of Troy\Save Games), and it will show up in the load list (within the game) as "Lookie Here".

[nightshades]

You are totally right possum

capturing a city producing silver is actually the best way to get silver.

The problem is that there is not so much places producing silver.

In greece, the only places are the city just below Athen and a city in the cyclades.

The greatest source of silver is at the very top west of the map. Not so easy to reach there !

Actually what I consider very hard at Impossible level is that the opponents dont seem to have any silver problems. They can gather 5 huge army on the ground and they dont seem to have problems to supply them.

When you dont have acess to silver mines, exemple when you are Spartan, the best way to supply your army is to sell goods like Iron and Marble.

[sum1won]

IMO, the best way to maximize silver is to have efficient armies. You do not need full phalanxes to defeat what the compuiter churns out- often, 2-4 units will do, backed up by some light infantry or some such. Make sure your towns have very cheapupkeep garrisons, with low upkeep costs - and produce surpluses of as many goods as possible. There aren't enough towns that produce silver to really concentrate on that. Food, I have found, and bricks, are far more important early in the game

[honvedseg]

A basic garrison unit of the smallest size will still give you the same impact on happiness as a large unit of elite Hoplites, so use cheap Astynomia or Hillmen to garrison your safer regions. Keep field armies in a city whenever possible, especially the high-priced units. The AI doesn't seem to be penalized for parking outside the cities, and probably pays reduced upkeep overall, which is why they can build huge waves of troops without having their empires collapse due to bankrupcy or food shortages.

[Redpossum]

A basic garrison unit of the smallest size will still give you the same impact on happiness as a large unit of elite Hoplites, so use cheap Astynomia or Hillmen to garrison your safer regions. Keep field armies in a city whenever possible, especially the high-priced units. The AI doesn't seem to be penalized for parking outside the cities, and probably pays reduced upkeep overall, which is why they can build huge waves of troops without having their empires collapse due to bankrupcy or food shortages.

Yes, the higher difficulty levels allow the AI to "cheat", by paying sub-standard rates for purchase & maintenance. A careful look at the tweaks.txt file, in the /data directory, will show you the details of what I'm talking about.