Is there ANY advantage to using this civic?

I've been using it in a game but I haven't noticed any advantages...

It seems to be useless.

Also, it says it stops trade routes yet I can still declare open borders with people.

It's a pretty bad civic, but it does have its uses. If for some reason you don't want to have open borders with anyone, for example. And it stops foreign corporations from coming into your towns and increasing their maintenance. But i've tried switching to it from free market or state property and I always notice a huge decrease in money coming in from foreign trade routes. Most of the time state property, free market, or environmentalism are all better.

Gives a Free Specialist and is an option earlier than others. Furthermore, if the rest of the world is running it you get no trade routes with foreign sources.

I only ever run it when there is no point to running Free Market or Decentralization (e.g. Alone, rest of the world is in it, only other civs are across the ocean pre-astronomy).

Also you can have open borders and trade techs and resources normally with it, you just don't get any :commerce: from forign trade.

Used properly, it's very powerful.

You want to use it in combination with Representation and/or Pacifism. One gives you an extra +3 science per Specialist (which means +3 science in every city) and the other doubles your GP points. If you're Philosophical or have the Parthenon, that's just as good. Angkor Wat is also nice.

Think about it: free Specialist.

-- In cities with low production, whip or chop a Forge and then run an Engineer (or a Priest if you have Angkor Wat). You'll notice the difference.

-- In your science city/GP farm, run a scientist

-- If your economy is in trouble, run Merchants. +3 gold per city adds up fast.

-- In border cities or new conquests, run an Artist. That'll keep rival culture at bay and encourage fast border pops.

Mercantilism is better than Free Trade as long as the stuff you get from it -- a grab bag of science, cash, and hammers, plus faster Great People -- is better than the extra commerce from Free Trade. This is a judgment call, but one thing to watch is how many other civs are open for trade anyway. Remember, civs that are running Mercantilism won't trade, nor will civs that don't have Open Borders with you, or that are across oceans (before Astronomy).

As a rule of thumb, if only one or two rival civs are open for trade, run Mercantilism. If three or more are open, consider Free Trade.


Waldo

Vormuir makes good points, but I think that you are underestimating the sheer amount of :commerce: you can get from forigen trade routes (especially intercontinental). You can ruin or make you economy boom with trade routes, regardless of if you're running CE, SE, XE (infact, in a lot of my SE trade routes provided a lot of commerce that let me rake in lots of money/up culture for happiness).

I only ever use it when I'm isolated and haven't yet gotten astronomy..but even then I often go for astronomy before banking, so I rarely use it.

I suppose another situation would be if you're at war with all the rest of the civs.

If you have a large empire - many cities - the AI will profit from trading with you far more than you from trading with them. This might be reason enought to stop it.
Also Many cities -> many free specialists.

If you have a large empire - many cities - the AI will profit from trading with you far more than you from trading with them. This might be reason enought to stop it.
Also Many cities -> many free specialists.

This is relative.. you could own a fifth of all the cities in the world on a huge earth map but if you're friendly with all the other civs, all of your cities will get good trades bc you still only have 20% of the cities. In general you're right about this tendency though.

All you have to do is look at toku and then ask yourself how useful it is. Unless he goes on a warpath he is always at the bottom of the pile because of this. Trade routes are awesome, most of the time I don't even think about it, but seeing that boom in commerce as soon as I research astronomy reminds me pretty quick how much it matters.

In my experience, it also depends on the map type and difficulty.
Few coastal cities = less trade route pay-off.
Low difficulty = smaller AI cities = less trade route pay-off.

My last MP game, it only ran at 4 commerce per route (with a harbour), and in that case it wasn't helping at all compared to mercantilism.

There is also the hidden culture benefit if you have the Sistine Chapel, very nice when you fight for tile control, say after a war or with newly founded cities.

Refar is right. It depends on the relative size of the trading partners. Take an extreme example. You have 18 cities and the only other civ with open borders has 6 cities. Each of you has 3 trade routes per city. He gets 6 cities all with 3 foreign trade routes worth an average of 3 commerce = 54 commerce. You get 2 cities with 3 foreign routes worth 3 = 18 and 16 cities with 3 internal routes worth 1 = 48 for a total of 66 commerce.

If you switched to Mercantilism his income would drop by 36 to 18 commerce. Your income would drop 12 to 54 commerce. You'd get 18 specialists which can be any type the city can support but if scientists would give 3 beakers each worth a total of 72 commerce. If you ran Representation you'd get another 72 beakers. In the 2 or 3 cities where you can get enough GPPs to make another GP that adds 3 GPPs and hurries GP production.

So it's clear in this case Mercantilism hinders your future target by 36 commerce and gives you approximately another 60 commerce or double what you were getting. His trade income fell from 54 to 18 and yours rose from 66 to 126. That should make taking over the other civ a lot easier.

If you take 3 of his cities and then vassalise him his trade routes count as foreign even in Mercantilism. You could give back the 3 cities you took and now you would be in the same situation as we started in, as far as trade routes, with the added bonus of a specialist in all your cities. Mercantilism is a powerful and useful civic in the right circumstance.

If you have a large empire and are running a SE with proper civics (rep/cs/merc/pac) it can be very powerful. However, if you are running a CE and your opponents are all in free market then it can be disadvantageous.

Keep in mind that when merc becomes available and fm isn't yet, the ais will largely switch into merc meaning that your trade routes are going to take a hit anyways. During this period you can leverage SE tendencies yourself and then transition out more into a CE as the civics become available.

I like mercantilism only if using a Spiritual leader. Once all the AIs switch to it (they usually do) I will do it also for the free specialist. But Free Market and those foreign trade route produce alot of commerce so I like the option of switching out without anarchy. To me never worth adopting unless Spiritual or your against the world.

I like it when warmongering a lot, you will often have few open borders, since a lot of people hate you, and you have a lot of underdevelopped conquered cities that can use an extra engineer/artist. It only really shines with Representation though.

I like it when warmongering a lot, you will often have few open borders, since a lot of people hate you, and you have a lot of underdevelopped conquered cities that can use an extra engineer/artist. It only really shines with Representation though.

I was wondering how to word my response, and I couldn't have done it much better than this.

Small and developing cities stand to gain a lot from a free artist or engineer. Don't think twice about declaring war, and be passive-aggressive towards other civs by denying them access to your trade routes.

Obviously a lot more useful with representation, and less useful as the game progresses.

It only really shines with Representation though

It's a SE civic that synergizes with the other SE civics (rep/pac/cs). Also, a good warmongering civic prior to SP. Another of the many reasons why SE goes well with warmongering.

If the open markets resolution passes you get the best of both worlds.

The main problem for me with mercantilism is that it comes to late. Usually banking is the last tech I get before economics and then corporations are not far away either if I'm in a building period. If I have tg lighthouse it also goes without saying that I'm not likely to adopt mercantilism.

Edit: I suppose the real blame here falls on liberalism. Remove the benefit of going for liberalism first and my research path would vary MUCH more for each game.. maybe liberalism should be nerfed?

On a non-watery map, I generally prefer Mercantilism before I get corporations. The free specialist is just too flexible to give up and a welcome production helper in the early stages of building up new acquisitions.

I agree with Refar. Jump into Mercantilism if you run out of foreign cities to trade with.

The world's economy will suffer much more than you. :D

I often find my strongest opponents adopting Mercantilism. If I find the bulk of world power adopting Mercantilism, then I will do so myself, in order to compete with the top leaders.

I don't buy the arguments about helping the AI more than you. If you have 18 cities and they only have 6 then quite frankly you don't care how much you help them - you are going to beat them. But both of you are stronger through trading than you would be on your own.

My rule for mercantilism is simple - if I make more with it then I'll use it - otherwise not. In an SE game, its worth 6 commerce units per city approx and in a CE game typically 3 per city. If there are enough trading partners then usually just one foreign trade route at that stage in the game is enough for a CE city to be as profitable without mercantilism. With two trading partners of roughly equal size then my good cities will all have three international trade routes making probably around 15 commerce units - far better with free market. Obviously if there are no trade partners run mercantilism.

I like the mutual benefit of the trade routes - the AIs that I am helping are my friends. My future allies in battle and tech trading partners. If they are bigger and stronger than me - then I get proportionately more benefit from the trade routes. If they are smaller than me then I am happy to help them keep up - they are more useful to me that way.

I don't buy the arguments about helping the AI more than you. If you have 18 cities and they only have 6 then quite frankly you don't care how much you help them - you are going to beat them.

How about if half of those 6-city empire are allied to your tech rival?

How about if half of those 6-city empire are allied to your tech rival?

Actually trading to the weaker allies of your rival works pretty well - including their vassals. The AI isn't as good as a human at managing its tech trades and a lot of those beakers are going to get sunk into techs that aren't going to benefit your rival anyway. And if the weak civ is allied to a strong rival of yours chances are they may have already maxed out their foreign trade routes, so you aren't adding any. It works purely to your gain.

There's also an undocumented change to mercantilism in BTS. You can still trade with your vassals which makes it even better for pre-state property warmongering.

There's also an undocumented change to mercantilism in BTS. You can still trade with your vassals which makes it even better for pre-state property warmongering.

Do these count as international trade routes fully? That seems quite a decent bonus.

I've noticed the being able to trade with vassals under mercantilism, but the yields don't seem especially big. Maybe they count as domestic trade routes.

I don't buy the arguments about helping the AI more than you. If you have 18 cities and they only have 6 then quite frankly you don't care how much you help them - you are going to beat them. But both of you are stronger through trading than you would be on your own.



This isn't really true as I demonstrated in my example Mercantilism can, depending on relative sizes, both reduce the AI income AND increase our own. It does matter how much trade income you give the AI if you intend to attack them due to their large bonusses to research and production. It is very much hader to overcome defending riflemen with your own troops than taking on longbows or muskets. So an invasion will be more costly in material or time.


I like the mutual benefit of the trade routes - the AIs that I am helping are my friends. My future allies in battle and tech trading partners. If they are bigger and stronger than me - then I get proportionately more benefit from the trade routes. If they are smaller than me then I am happy to help them keep up - they are more useful to me that way.

I find many of my most lucrative trade routes are with rivals (AI that could win the game) that I need open borders with to keep good relations and to help spying, they are not really my friends. So Mercantilism is a good way to keep good relations with them while limiting the commerce benefit in many situations. If you really want to help an AI ally just make them a gift of technology or units. The trouble with using trade routes to help them is the AI decides what they research and that might be against your interests. I tend to play for Domination victories so helping any rival AIs makes the number of targets harder to find and delays the game. For me intentionally helping any AI, other than a vassal, with trade routes doesn't make sense. It is always against your own interests. And of course Mercantilism gives a vassal normal trade routes with your civ with open borders, another benefit of the civic.

as mentionned earlier, bonuses given by mercantilism are very flexible.
IMO that's better that a raw advantage over your whole empire. Civ 4 is about city specialization.

I can barely recall a game in which I didn't use this civic.
A usually have a large empire by the time I hit banking.
statue of liberty on top of it, on a continent game is ... incredible.

I'm rumming merchantilism atm.
An SE pre-astronomy on a continent with 4 other civs the largest of which Toku is also running it and my choices atm are Decentralisation or Merchantilism. It has its uses.

http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee313/PMabey/traderoute2.jpg

http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee313/PMabey/Traderoute1.jpg

I like free market.

Yes, free market is great if you have corporations (it reduces the cost!).
But when you don't (because you're playing warlords for instance ;)), mercantilism has its uses.

Short list of situations where you can make good use of mercantilism :
1) Everyone hates you (or runs mercantilism). You can compare a free specialist to 1 domestic trade route. It's pretty rare that the trade route is better than a free specialist.
2) you're the big boy (=more than 30% land). This means that most of your trade routes are going to be domestic anyway. Almost same situation as 1, finally. However, your best trade routes may very well be in your best cities. It's even very likely. So if your best cities are really better than the others (happens often when running for domination, your last cities are fillers more than anything else), you may still be losing out.
3) You're running a SE. It's very likely that you don't have all the buildings in all the cities. Your cities probably aren't ready to use the commerce to its full power. This means that 1 specialist that you can choose brings in more than commerce that you use for culture anyway to keep your big cities happy.
4) you don't care about techs or gold. You want production. A free specialist can be an engineer or a priest, or in any case a citizen (1 hammer is still better than 0).

Like others, uses for mercantilism:

1. You're the largest empire, most of your trade routes are domestic and your rivals are benefitting more from open borders trade routes than you are from theirs.

2. No-one likes you and you don't have many open borders agreements.

3. You're isolated and pre-Astronomy.

4. You're warring and want your newly conquered cities to get up to speed quicker, either using an artist for culture or an engineer for production. After music or drama, one can always produce culture using hammers, so it's not a major pro.

5. You're running representation, have built the Statue of Liberty and are running a strict SE.

It's specialised civic and overall, unless my civ is globally despised, I'm at war with a lot of civs, or I have by far the biggest empire, I tend to avoid mercantilism.

One additional addendum, if your empire is intercontinental (not all on the same land mass) you can get domestic Intercontinental routes which come close to the value of foreign ones. (this can be done with a few Island cities)

I use it with representation all the time, works great until state property.

I rarely use free markets.

It's a SE civic that synergizes with the other SE civics (rep/pac/cs). Also, a good warmongering civic prior to SP. Another of the many reasons why SE goes well with warmongering.
SE? CS? SP? o__o;; *Clueless, and can't find the acronyms in the glossary in the War Academy*

SE = specialist economy
CS = caste system in this context, also commonly refers to the Civil Service technology
SP = state property

If you are running Mercantilism and you have open borders with rival civs do they still get foreign trade routes with your civ?
I ask because it is sometimes important to keep open borders for reasons other then the trade routes (military access, spying, etc).

I.

no, they don't.

You can add if you want open borders with Tokugawa to your list.:D