Fun With Great Merchants - size 42 city +555g/turn

Preface - I am not a powergamer so I don't care if a strategy is 'optimal', this was fun regardless.

I started this game with 2 goals - build a super merchant city and win a space race victory since that is the only one I haven't done yet.

Game Setup: Elizabeth, Monarch difficulty, large continents map, all other standard settings

The plan was pretty straight forward. Find a nice spot for a GP farm, tech up all the basic improvement techs + alphabet then go to code of laws for caste system and start churning out great merchants and dropping them in the GP farm. I gave the city national epic & wall street. It could have gone globe theater & wall street, but I wanted the GMs earlier and up until the end of the game the happiness limit was pretty easy to control anyway.

The end result was pretty interesting. With cottage spam I have never been able to be +gold at 100% science, but once the farm got cranking I was on 100% science from around 1400 and stayed positive cash flow even running pacifism and waging wars with my annoying neighbors. (Kublai Khan, Caesar, Napoleon, & Saladin). By the end the city was size 42 with 26 merchants, & 17 great merchants. The site wasn't the best GP farm ever either with just 2 food sources and 2 flood plains.



The game could have ended long ago for a better score (domination would have been easy), but hey it was fun to make the city.

The strategy is pretty easy to implement and doesn't depend on any trait, wonders, or slingshot. For a practical use it could finance a conquest/domination win or after getting the gold flow up start making great artists and switch to 100% culture for a quick win.

Who said Merchants were not a good Great Person to have!!!! Its interesting as a GP farm loves food and the great Merchant happily provides you with 1 food if added to the city. If you manage 20-30+ Great people thats 10-15+ more specialists each providing 3 gold each before bonuses from buildings.

Might be fun to try for a game. But i do like my holy shrines at start.

Good job!!

I like how you don't even collect taxes. If only it could be like that in the real world.

That is awesome. Nicely done, and welcome to CFC!

Oh jeebus...555 gold at 100% research...what was it like at 0% research??

And what was the health like? Can't see it due to the renaming pop-up...

[Edit] Nevermind, I realized it's all farms and no cottages so the slider wouldn't affect it much.

Still, I didn't think you could get a city that big without unhappiness without Globe Theatre. Any tips?

The city gets 555 g/turn. The total g/turn I get is 147/turn. At 0 research it wasn't as much as you might think (around 1100 g/turn) since I didn't build markets/banks/etc in the commerce cities. Health & Happiness are easy to get to around 30 once you get/trade for all the resources. Resources +representation +3/4 religions/temples kept the happiness ok most of the game. Lack of emancipation eventually drove unhappiness too high so around 1920 I had to revert to hereditary rule and load up on military units.

Dizzy75 said:

Oh jeebus...555 gold at 100% research...what was it like at 0% research??

And what was the health like? Can't see it due to the renaming pop-up...

[Edit] Nevermind, I realized it's all farms and no cottages so the slider wouldn't affect it much.

Still, I didn't think you could get a city that big without unhappiness without Globe Theatre. Any tips?

Click to expand...

Yeah I had this idea a while back but haven't yet had a chance to implement it, so it's good to see someone who has.

You'll find you probably won't need caste system for the most part once you've built wall street in the city, since with all the money making buildings (grocer + market + bank + wall street) you can have 7 merchant specialists, which means that caste system won't mean a lot more merchants until biology and the ensuing population growth. I guess this depends on how food rich your city is and hence how many specialists it can support.

For those wondering how you keep your great people farm (probably your largest city) happy without the globe theatre, you instead build as many cathedrals there as possible if you have incense (plus the temples as aurum mentioned), and if not at least build the cathedral for your state religion. I can't see it very well in the screenshot, but there's something there giving his city +5 happyness, I'm guessing that's incense after building cathedrals for every religion the city has.

That's pretty amazing!

We are not worthy! We are not worthy!

Really cool idea, I think I might try something like that the next game I play. The question is, is this the best way to spend your great person points? Great scientists are great for academies, and I personally love great engineers for wonder rushing, but this does seem like a pretty good idea.

Yes the +5 is incense.

Caste System is actually needed for most of the game since once the city got over ~6 GMs then it could easily support over 10 merchants. A couple food sources + flood plains + great merchants = lots of food!

the oob said:

Yeah I had this idea a while back but haven't yet had a chance to implement it, so it's good to see someone who has.

You'll find you probably won't need caste system for the most part once you've built wall street in the city, since with all the money making buildings (grocer + market + bank + wall street) you can have 7 merchant specialists, which means that caste system won't mean a lot more merchants until biology and the ensuing population growth. I guess this depends on how food rich your city is and hence how many specialists it can support.

For those wondering how you keep your great people farm (probably your largest city) happy without the globe theatre, you instead build as many cathedrals there as possible if you have incense (plus the temples as aurum mentioned), and if not at least build the cathedral for your state religion. I can't see it very well in the screenshot, but there's something there giving his city +5 happyness, I'm guessing that's incense after building cathedrals for every religion the city has.

Click to expand...

I like to combine this tactic with a great temple...money takes care of itself

This is kind of an experiment. See if it works. But also this is my first large scale cottage/town usage.

Check out New York

Link seems to be broken, could you update/fix it?

pic now attached

Awesome city!

Godwynn said:

I like how you don't even collect taxes. If only it could be like that in the real world.

Click to expand...

It could, just as it did for several millenia before the discovery of "currency".

If only history could be discussed in the mainstream.