I have got quite a long way into my first long sandbox game now. Just got my capital to level five city too!
As the game is now quite advanced i am surprised to find there is quite a substantial lack of money? I have never seen anything like it before in any other game, to be so advanced, yet so poor? And there seems to be very little capacity to do anything about it apart from demolishing buildings that cost 1 guildar maintenance (big woop).
I have a huge empire and around 30 cities and every single city upgrade bonus so far has gone on guildar.
My capital managed to have two gold mines and i have put all the bonuses and special economic buildings in it and all the upgrade bonuses on guildar.... I'm seeing 25% guildar bonuses all over the place from various things etc etc and with all that, the city puts out a massive 60 guildar per turn! wow, at that rate i sure will retire a millionaire in this game (extreme sarcasm alert).
At one point my overall income per turn was actually going down, but i went berserk demolishing buildings that cost maintenance left right and center and managed to get back up to a whopping 20 guildar income per turn.
For quite a good portion of time i have not noticed this problem because of the false economy provided by relics, but relics are a finite resource and as they come to the end of their life, the economy now is showing its true delinquency.
I wonder if i should actually start destroying all my cities except for those with gold mines?? i dunno,,All i can say is that I am quite grateful that I'm playing on beginner difficulty because i don't see how it would be possible to actually have a real war when there is basically no income available to sustain it!