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.

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

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.

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.

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

Unmodded. 

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.

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.

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.

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)

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).

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.

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.