Isn't that the way it works in the real world?  You do the work, then a year later you get your check from the government.

The real world's irrelevant on this one for me. It just seems easier (more player-friendly) to take the money from the treasury upon commissioning the building. Whether it goes to the builders promptly, stays in 'escrow,' or gets paid in per-turn installments is secondary.

Gonna have to say I agree with the OP. In a turn based game that's the way I prefer it as well.

Vieuxchat, I don't think we can really apply the Supreme Commander method here. Supreme Commander was a RTS. Every second the building was going up was draining part of it's cost until completion. It's a great system, I just don't see how it can be worked into a turn based game other then to devide the cost of the building by how many turns it takes to complete it.

You need 400 gold to do the job. Then you can spend 10 gold per turn in the project .. then you'll need 40 turns to finish the project. I would prefer that instead of the "You must have the 400 gold before the project starts".

At the very least, it seems like the UI should flag 'unspent' money in some form analagous to how bank/CU web sites indicate that there are pending transactions against the current balance of an account. A treasury total with no future obligations should look different from a treasury with a known future outgo.