Mercantilism

[NintendoTogepi]

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.

[BalbanesBeoulve]

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.

[TRJS]

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.

[PimpyMicPimp]

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 from forign trade.

[vormuir]

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

[PimpyMicPimp]

Vormuir makes good points, but I think that you are underestimating the sheer amount of 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).

[Gliese 581]

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.

[Refar]

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.

[Gliese 581]

Originally Posted by Refar

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.

[King of Town]

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.

[Andvare]

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.

[UncleJJ]

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.

[futurehermit]

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.

[madscientist]

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.

[dutchfire]

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.

[DigitalBoy]

Originally Posted by dutchfire

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.

[futurehermit]

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.

[CivDude86]

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

[Gliese 581]

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?

[Iranon]

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.