Gold is the in-game standardized currency of Civilization II. The term is used interchangeably with taxes, one of three commercial resources derived from a city's 
Trade yield.
Taxes' primary purpose is to pay maintenance for city improvements: at the beginning of the player's turn, total maintenance costs are deducted from gross tax income. Surplus taxes are added to the treasury as gold, which can then be used for discretionary spending, such as hurrying city production, trading in diplomacy, and funding seditious activity. Likewise, if maintenance costs exceed income, gold is deducted from the treasury.
Acquiring gold[]
Taxes are primarily earned based on the civilization's tax rate, which determines the allocation of cities' Trade between Taxes, 
Science, and 
Luxuries. Individual cities can also generate taxes directly by assigning 
Tax Collector specialists: each tax collector provides 3 Taxes.
Commercial improvements (Banks, Marketplaces and Stock Exchanges) increase a city's base Tax output by 50% each. Capitalization is a special improvement that converts a city's entire 
Shield output to taxes.
Several interactions will supply gold directly to the treasury:
- Establishing a trade route provides an upfront reward of both
Gold and Science, in addition to its Trade bonus; - Selling city improvements immediately reimburses the treasury with their Shield value;
- Villages can provide gold rewards ranging from 25–200;
- Defeating barbarian leaders earns a ransom based on the difficulty level;
- Conquering rival cities loots a portion of the opponent's treasury;
- Diplomatic exchanges may reward gold as gifts or tribute.
- Chieftain difficulty provides the human player 50 at the start of a standard game.
Civilopedia entry[]
The Taxes collected by a city are indicated by gold coin icons in the Resource Chart of the City Display. Taxes are used primarily to pay the maintenance cost of City Improvements each turn. Any tax revenues not used for maintenance of Improvements are added to your treasury. The amount of Taxes generated by the city is primarily determined by the amount of incoming Trade you have allocated to Taxes. This can be adjusted by selecting the "Change Tax Rate" option from the Kingdom menu.
Tax revenues can also be increased through the construction of certain City Improvements and Wonders of the World, or by converting citizens into Tax Men.
Modding[]
The Cheat Menu command "Change Money" (Shift+F9) edits the selected civ's current treasury. In the original game, inputs are capped at 30,000 and the treasury itself will not grow beyond this without third-party patching; in Test of Time, the dialog is limited to five digits, for a maximum input of 99,999.
The "ChangeMoney" event macro can also be used to add or subtract from a player's treasury.
The tax icon is located in the left-hand grid of ICONS.GIF/BMP.
Labels for gold are located on Lines 315 and 325 in the @LABELS section of Labels.txt; the Multiplayer Gold Edition adds further definitions for multiplayer interactions on Lines 777 and 829; Test of Time adds a fifth definition on Line 873.
Labels for taxes are located on Lines 73, 91 (vanilla), 700 (MGE), 859, and 866 (ToT).
Gold and taxes are manually defined in several popup messages.
See also[]
- Gold (currency) in other games
| Civilization II [edit] |
|---|
| Conflicts in Civilization • Fantastic Worlds • Test of Time† |
| Lists |
| Concepts |
| Miscellaneous |
| † Standalone remake with different graphics, units, etc. |