Free Market or not?

Hey I'm playing a game with the English, earth 18 civs. Usually after conquering enemies I go for state property, but this time I'd like to try out a different approach to make my empire more like the real one. Now I'm one turn from Liberalism and wonder which way to go.

However I have built certain wonders that interferes with my plans: The Collossus, The Great Lighthouse, Sistine Chapel, among others. I have also built several castles in my 12 cities and am now running Mercantilism+Representation. This means that if I tech Economics I will lose the castle bonus, and if I change to Free Market I will gain it back but lose my bonus specialist. If I go further to Corporation I will gain more trade... except for 11 of my 12 cities that will actually lose 1 (TGL).

I know I lose some good trade by running Mercantilism (3 of my better cities are off the main continent), but the beakers and culture have so far made up for it (Rep. and SisCh.).

Once I get access to some good Corporations the FM route will be good again, but before that might I benefit from simply ignoring these techs and pick them up when needed (and lose the free Great Mercant)?

I also considering postponing Astronomy again (collossus) although I will probably want them for overseas empires later on.


Here's the savegame If you want to know the details. No matter what I do I'll probably do well this game, but I'd rather not go a way I'll regret later.

View attachment 193097

FriendoftheDork,

I haven't opened up your save, but do you think it would be possible to nab Democracy with Liberalism?

Opening up Free Speech, Emancipation, and Universal Suffrage all at once is very useful. And you could easily swap to or remain with Representation & Merc for the beaker bonus (12 * 6 + modifiers) making your civics like this:
Representation, Free Speech, Emancipation, Merc, *

Then once you have a generous amount of towns you can swap to US and Free Market when you eventually get to Economics.

If Democracy probably isn't possible, then you could probably go for Printing Press. That's a favourite "Oh crap I need to get Liberalism now!" tech of mine to grab, and stick with the Merc thing, too. Even if you're not Rep, the Merc + Castle bonus should be worth it, if you have enough Castles, though you miss out on a Great Merchant.

Another route is to try to get up to Rifiling really quickly. Rifiling is a great tech to have in the early game. Especially if you have the patiance to drop your commerce slider down to 0% Science and upgrade all your CR2 and CR3 units to Rifles. A 14 Strength unit with CR3 and no counter unit won't even need a seige weapon to soften things up.

As your cities in England get +100% oversee bonus, its worth to switch to Free Market. After building Custom houses, your trade routes will be jumping to 10 . A lot better then your 4 routes now and 6 from the free specialist. Its even worth losing one trade route from castle.
4 x 10 = 40
5 x 4 + 6 = 26

Mercantilism is only worth if you are in war with all other nations or have a lot of vassals for enough good trade routes.

After Astronomy, your european cities will be getting intercontinetal trade routes from aztecs and incas. Thats also worth giving up the Colossus.

Additional notes to your save:
Build fishing boots from your 2 whales in scandinavia and the crab in marocco. (You can trade both for some gpt)
Trade horse to Asoka instead of 33 gpt.

Merc also prevents foreign corp spam from screwing you, but yeah go FM here, and if you can get the free merchant IMO save him for sushi. With enough seafood sushi is ridiculously powerful.

TheMeInTeam,

Since he's playing the Earth 18 civ map, which is a huge map, the amount of food per each sushi resource is 0.25. Unless he has a huge empire with access to tons of seafood resource, it may not be worth it to build a corporation.

Feyaria said:

As your cities in England get +100% oversee bonus, its worth to switch to Free Market. After building Custom houses, your trade routes will be jumping to 10 . A lot better then your 4 routes now and 6 from the free specialist. Its even worth losing one trade route from castle.
4 x 10 = 40
5 x 4 + 6 = 26

Mercantilism is only worth if you are in war with all other nations or have a lot of vassals for enough good trade routes.

After Astronomy, your european cities will be getting intercontinetal trade routes from aztecs and incas. Thats also worth giving up the Colossus.

Additional notes to your save:
Build fishing boots from your 2 whales in scandinavia and the crab in marocco. (You can trade both for some gpt)
Trade horse to Asoka instead of 33 gpt.

Click to expand...

Ok I'm sold about FM, didn't think about the custom houses. And I am looking forward to founding Sushi, the last time I did I got about 14 extra food per city! I'll probably also go for either Mining inc or Creative Constructions for the production... they will go nicely in Madrid with wall street, no?
Corporations are almost made for the English with their awesome UB.


Thanks for pointing out the little details I may have overlooked, I didn't know my Norwegian whales was inside my culture yet and that Asoka needed horses, I almost never trade my GPT for AI resources.

Later on I of course plan on making colonies (one way or another) in order to obtain the valuable oriental resources, I hate being dependent on trade with Asoka and Quin.

BTW I'm a bit asmamed about keeping Gao (west sahara) as it is possible the worst location for a city in Africa, I have no idea why Mansa always goes for it. However at the time I needed 11 cities asap to finish off the forge and coliseum quests.


Kesshi I'm convinced about FM now, but I still think I will postpone Corporation until I have railroad, combustion or medicine otherwise it will only be loosing a trade route.

I don't want to be beelining rifing just yet as i don't have nearly enough CR macemen and pikemen to upgrade. Once I have about 20-30 good CRs I can upgrade them to be super rifles.

In any case, ty for tips y'all. I'd expected more "OMG where is your militairy and why so many wasteful wonders!"

An update: I played some hours and although I haven't ruled out ecconomics, I found out that there was no reason to go for it as no one else even had Banking, let alone Education. The only benefit of going FM would be to... be paying more civic cost, and Custom Houses, which requires alot of time and production and might not even pay the increased upkeep of Free Market.

I did drop Mercantilism though as I was net loosing tech because of it, and decentralization is cheaper anyhow.

I "liberalized" Navigation instead, which despite losing Colossus is pretty nice, enabling me to go for those nice privateers and rule the seas as britannia should I also settled the Carribean (argh!) to get my own spice supply and near Panama for gold and a nice channel. As an aftertough I teched rifling, filled up 4 galleons with Recoats and annhilated the Inca, which despite me opening up a corridor past the Andes, was still struggling against barbarians A GA and good economy allowed me to run 100% science for some time, but my cities in the new world are getting costly and now only privateers allow me to tech 100%.

If any AI starts getting close to Economics I'll tech it (4 turns tops at marathon speed), but otherwise I'll go for the corporation techs (railroad and medicine) now that I've gotten the militairy techs (mil. science, mil. trad, rifling and soon steel).

Well, if I were playing as the English, I'd create a New World colony and unleash my military upon India.

I always go either a) Free Market with Corp spam or b) State Property focusing on hammers.

Rusty Edge said:

Well, if I were playing as the English, I'd create a New World colony and unleash my military upon India.

Click to expand...

Yeah thought about this as well, but I just couldn't wait until astronomy to get more land so early on I chariot rushed France and Spain, and settled in Marocco. And after many and long wars against the unloved Musa (just to get friendly with everyone else) I captured two of his cities so I could get 11 cities for my quests (build 11 buildings before rennaissance).

Later on when I got Astr. I settled Cuba and Panama to get spices and gold+ a nice canal.

After many turns of peace I found that Cyrus was getting too strong, especially with 3 vassals: Germans, Russians, Indians. Once the Romans and Arabians was in war with the quad-powers I joined in after several turns of building troops and running nationalism.

The early fighting vs Fredrik was quick and brutal; Cannons, Grenadiers, Cavalry and lots of Redcoats vs longbow and macemen and I had railroad right beside Berlin so it fell in the first round.

OK I'm going to skip forwards now. I almost destroyed the germans completely and capured one major Russian city although I lost some important units vs Cathy.

In my southern front against Cyrus war was slower. a fleet of 10 redcoats unsuported managed to capture his city in Syria/Isreal region, but the damage slowed them down.

A fleet of 3 Frigates and 3 redcoats in a Galleon landed by Pasragade (RL location Basra, Iraq), but he had castle so bombardment was slow. Even with 3 more reinforcements from my other conquest I was unable to capure the city in a timely fashion and weakened myself for counterattack.

I did manage to liberate Mecca though, and returned it to my vassal Saladin.

At this point I had to accept peace with Cyrus to prevent losing about 20 seriously hurt Redcoats to his level 4 Knights and lvl 3 pinch musketmen! This meant I couldn't take a major city from Cathy and a small one from Fredrick, but I did't want to risk my CR Redcoats that are essentially irreplaceable.