Commerce tree = useless?

[adwcta]

Oh, it's also pretty useful for smaller empires. I mostly go tall and Commerce is one of my favorite trees. I'd probably pick it over Patronage if I had to choose. The Opener and Wagon Trains increase your gold regardless of the number of cities you have, and the 25% gold bonus in the capital has very good synergy with Tradition. And while +2 per luxury may be more useful for larger empires, you can never have too much happiness for Golden Ages and culture from Fine Arts. The ability to buy 40% cheaper with Big Ben is also very useful to get your national wonders early.

Yes.

And who says you can't trade post spam your capital? I have a 4 city empire with a capital, I run 3 food routes to my capital for most of the game, and run the other 5 (or 6, I love Colossus) as international trade routes to all generate gold from my capital for the 25% bonus.

Then, when it feels right, I start trade post spamming tiles I'm not currently working, and eventually start converting my old farms into trade posts. Trade posts are +3 gold +1 science. You can't beat that. Especially when you have other sources of food.

When my economy is good enough that I never need to hard-build anything anymore, I start converting the mines into trade routes.

I end all my 4-city tall Immortal/Deity games with Commerce with 0 farms, 0 mines in my capital. All trade posts. My city outputs close to 1k gold by itself (after I hit critical point, and switch my domestic trade routes to international trade routes).

I'm still very annoyed by the +2 gold for caravans policy though. I go commerce even with a coastal start, and it's a 100% useless policy. =/

 

[argblarg3]

I'm still very annoyed by the +2 gold for caravans policy though. I go commerce even with a coastal start, and it's a 100% useless policy. =/

Yes, it definitely wasn't very well thought out, but as it stands right now the commerce branch is already dwarfing many of the others.

 

[Martinus]

I think Commerce has been reinvented in that it is now more of a tree for large empires and warmongers and less about Diplomatic victory. This is because the late game dynamics changed because now you have direct benefits from ideologies when going for a Diplo win - unlike G&K where choosing Freedom, Autocracy or Order did not help you directly so you were much better off with Commerce.

In fact, if you think about it, it seems to be a conscious design choice that Commerce is useful to warmongers - only one, very early (and minor) policy deals directly with the income from trade routes - everything else is designed to boost your gold intake from other sources. As such, this seems perfect for times when you are not going to be running many profitable trade routes, i.e. when you go to war against many people.

 

[killmeplease]

3) 25% reduced rush buy cost (15% from Big Ben Commerce exclusive) - the most powerful skill in my opinion. <...> This benefit is further boosted with Autocracy by reducing rush buy on units by an additional 33 % - thats a 58% (73% w/ BB) on buying units. If you have a city that happens to have Brandenburg Gate, then you can rush out so many Elite units at a really marginal cost with gold - FASTER- then you can probably build with hammers.

+1
rushbuing is the thing why one should take this tree
imagine creating an armada of Siege III bombers in one turn...

 

[Do0ms]

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/866092676041715398/B2D02ED17D75E603544756FFD1E5403D1E83C191/

You can NEVER have enough gold

 

[Martinus]

Yes, it definitely wasn't very well thought out, but as it stands right now the commerce branch is already dwarfing many of the others.

Perhaps making this also add +2 food or hammers to appropriate internal routes would be a good boost - and also further making this tree useful to isolated empires.