Merchant's City Plan

This is my plan:

1-Found a city with excelent food resource (floodplains, cow, …) and fresh water (for farms).
2-Change to “Caste System” civic.
3-Put highest number of merchants.
4-Each “super merchants” will join that city.
5-Build all the city building that generate commerce bonus (grocer, market, bank,…, wall street) in that city.
6-Built National Epic in that city (for more Great Merchants).

I will try to expand my empire when I can support the most city mantenaince, unit mantenaince and civic unkeep with my merchant´s city while the research are at 100%.

I think that a good option are philosophical and organized (Mao). Phi: 100% birth rate. Org: -50% civic unkeep + 2X courthouse.

I’m not sure if the “super specialist” need food, and how many SE can join a city?

Isn't National Epic a great artist wonder?

If you have at least 2 specialists, the national epic gives more merchants AND more artists.

Some discussion here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=158482

To start with your question first - super specialists don't require food. Even better, super merchants give food to the city; every two super merchants is another merchant you can support. So it can feed on itself.

I like the idea; I'm not sure it's a strong enough move to be worth the effort. Compare it against the idea of using Science specialists

Problem #1: your gold multipliers (market/grocer/bank) come much later in the game than your science multipliers (library/monasteries, which are on the tech tree leading to CoL).

Problem #2: there's no merchant equivalent to the great library (free science specialists)

Problem #3: there's no gold equivalent to Representation (extra beakers per specialist).

Problem #4: there's no gold equivalent to winning by Space Race.

Problem #5: you likely to be building many markets and grocers anyway (for the health and happy). The libraries and monasteries are less critical outside of "science" cities. This is partially balanced by the fact that Philosophical gets cheap universities, so you would rather build many universities and few banks than the other way around.

Also, there's the problem of opportunity costs. If you put Wallstreet in your GP Farm, you aren't applying that multiplier to a shrine (what? you don't have a shrine? Time for some Pointy Stick Piety[tm]). Missionaries are 40 hammers each, and each then turns into a gold per turn when you convert a city. And those hammers can come from almost anywhere in your civ, whereas the specialists have to run locally.

But if your GP Farm has a shrine? Go for it - it's certain to be an interesting game. So perhaps you gear your opening strategy to achieving that, trying to time things so that your perfect GP site gets picked as the holy city. An ocean view gives you a chance to build the Great Lighthouse and the Colossus as well, for more Merchant points. When the time is ripe, you may make that your state religion and kick into Pacifism as well. The free missionary converts a science city, who then builds a monastery and has the job of spreading the religion around.

Meanwhile, your production cities desperately churn out axes in the hopes of defending all this discretionary spending.

I agree VoiceofUnreason,

I think that I can't choice the holy city when I found a religion, if the holy city of my religion have enough food to be the holy and mechant's city, it's perfect.

However, my plan isn't "merchant's city only" to win, I will use that city like a guide to decide that I can suport more cities without crash my research. I'm sure that I will need a "research's city" too. I will need a good army too...

You can't get that many great merchants. If you want to have a city generating enough gold to support your entire empire, consider Sirian's Hydra strategy (TM)

Pick a spiritual civ and try to sweep 2-3 early religions before you even found your second city. This guarantees that 2 or 3 relgiions share the same holy city. Build shrines and then all the gold multiplier buildings in there as well as aggressively spreading all the religions.

After corporation, this can easily pull in 300 or so gold per turn. I've gotten it close to 700 before.

katank said:

You can't get that many great merchants. If you want to have a city generating enough gold to support your entire empire, consider Sirian's Hydra strategy (TM)

Pick a spiritual civ and try to sweep 2-3 early religions before you even found your second city. This guarantees that 2 or 3 relgiions share the same holy city. Build shrines and then all the gold multiplier buildings in there as well as aggressively spreading all the religions.

After corporation, this can easily pull in 300 or so gold per turn. I've gotten it close to 700 before.

Click to expand...

Great idea...

This is a way to choice your holy cities…. If you have only one city…. I will try that, but combined with Merchants and SuperMerchats…. I can see the cash “fly”….

Thanks

Supermerchants are honestly better off being used in your GP farm city to get even more food to support specialists. GP fam should have globe theatre/national epic.

Wall Street is what you want in the shrine city. I suppose you can merge those two but it might be tough to deal with happiness without globe theatre.

I got a city to 40 pop with 19 super merch specialists before getting bored in 1990AD, probably could have gotten several more, as it was making 320 GPP/turn. It was kinda fun, but not particularly powerful.

katank said:

Supermerchants are honestly better off being used in your GP farm city to get even more food to support specialists. GP fam should have globe theatre/national epic.

Wall Street is what you want in the shrine city. I suppose you can merge those two but it might be tough to deal with happiness without globe theatre.

Click to expand...

Wall Street + National in a holy city, using some merchant specialists, and it gets all the super-merchants.

Globe in a hardcore GP Merchant farm.

You'll generate more merchants with both of those using specialists.

Or wall street + globe in holy city. Either way, two cities is better than 1.

Oops, old thread. ;0