Best Economic Civic

[yanner39]

Out of all the civics categories, the economic civics are the ones I have the most difficulties deciding which to use. The others IMO, are fairly straight-forward and I know when to switch. For example, I stay in slavery and make the switch temporarily to caste then emancipation, which works well because I am a cottage spammer (I admit it). In fact, many of my civics are chosen to to benefit my cottages/villages/towns. I will use war civics to build up an army when needed. Nothing ground-breaking - I'm sure a lot of players do this.

I do struggle between deciding on which economic civic to use. I basically ignore Mercantilism. I just don't get it's benefit. Free Market is nice for the added trade routes and lower corp costs and this is what I used alot before discovering State Property. State Property is great because of workshops and the added production.

As for Environmentalism, the +6 seems like overkill and I rarely build windmills and Forest Preserves.

What should I then be considering when deciding between FM or SP? I realize corporations are a consideration, but I can't say I needed corps to win (maybe I don't know how to exploit them properly). I use to think that SP was great when I was warring but I found that it can be just a great for a Space Race. Also, I could see using State P for a culture Victory (have those workshops build culture).

So what make one better than the other? I thought number of cities, but FM would be good for the add'l trade routes but SP would eliminate my maintenance.

 

[Jet]

some factors for mercantilism:
* every AI has adopted mercantilism and you don't know economics yet
* you're in representation
* you have overseas trade routes with yourself [or your vassals or permanent allies?] anyway

some factors for environmentalism (there aren't many, but):
* you're small and have few resources
* you use the UN to force everyone into it and hose up their corporate costs

some factors for free market:
* you're small and have better trade routes with your trade partners than they have with you

some factors for state property:
* you have multiple cities on multiple continents and don't want to pay colony costs
* you're in the later part of a domination game
* you're at the end of a space race

 

[DaveMcW]

State Property is the best on a standard sized map.

Free Market gets better as you add more civs.

 

[m4gill4]

It depends on what type of game you're playing, what your goals are, and what the world situation is.

Free Market is great if you have lots of open borders pacts, it helps increase your trade route income. If you are in a game where you don't have open borders with anyone, free market is less great. Free Market is also good if you're using corporations. The optimal free market situation is if you are a small to medium sized civ with lots of open borders agreements.

Mercantilism sounds like it isn't your cup o' tea, but it can be useful sometimes, even with a cottage economy. For example, if you don't have open borders with anyone (or perhaps only with one small civ) then you don't really get much benefit from the free market civic. The drawback to mercantilism is that you get no foreign trade routes, but if you didn't have very many (if any) to begin with then that's really no problem and you get a free specialist in every city which will improve your economy beyond what free market would have. The optimal situation for this one is if you have a specialist economy, or if you have few or no trading partners.

If you have a huge civ, but no desire for corporations, state property is good. It helps a ton with maintenance costs which will often outweigh the benefit of the extra trade routes from free market, especially if you have more cities than your trading partners do. It also protects you from the cheese move of an unwanted corporation (although I haven't seen the AI do this to me yet). If I ever have cities on another landmass I will almost always pursue this civic because of the huge maintenance costs. The optimal situation for this one is a huge empire with a city count that equals or exceeds that of all your trading partners combined. The bonus to workshop production that comes with this civic is also really great in the late game for building spaceship parts etc.

Environmentalism is special and I use it only rarely. Environmentalism is good if you need LOTS of people in your cities. For example if you need a few extra votes for the UN or a few extra artist specialists for that late game culture win, you can use this civic to increase your health cap and expand your population greatly. This civic is superb in combination with the sid's sushi corporation because it allows you to get massive cities with all that extra food and health (if you can afford the increased corporate maintenance).

Hope that helps, and good luck

 

[skyclad]

Free market if other civs are still numerous and big, and if I run corps (specifically mining and sushi/cereal)

Merc with rep/sistine. A good point about vassals, you still get trade routes to them and you can still spread your corps to them. So its actually not too bad if the situation is right.

State if Im not running corps.

Corps depend on tech situation, if AIs gets the good ones first and great people, and victory conditions.

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

State property is the best.

 

[qyll]

I'll run mercantilism in the mid game usually when I go to war with someone/several civs on my continent while running representation.

Free market and state property are both endgame civics for me. I'll run free market for peaceful victory conditions and state property for conquest/domination wins since I rarely find use for corporations by the time I get infantry/artillery anyway. That moment when you switch to state property and see your gold per turn shoot up by +300 makes the game for me.

I rarely/never run environmentalism just because getting techs like refrigeration and ecology and eventually genetics more than makes up for the health penalties from industrializing.

All in all, I gotta say state property is my favorite, since I almost always aim for domination wins on large maps.

 

[Infantry#14]

some factors for state property:
* you have multiple cities on multiple continents and don't want to pay colony costs
* you're in the later part of a domination game
* you're at the end of a space race

I think state property only eliminates distance from palace cost, not colonial cost. (Colonial costs are upkeep when you have more than 3 cities on separate landmasses.)

 

[jwez11007]

I've been quite the fan of State Property since figuring out it's usefulness, but recently I've found new use in switching to enviro. early in the indutstrial period. I prefer to use it early on after grabbing Assembly Line and before getting the additional health boosting techs, since it allows you to pump up your cities with factories and coal power long before alternative power sources are available while still keeping your cities large and healthy. I'll actually switch out of it later when I have the time to build hospitals and supermarkets and maybe even research genetics so that health is no longer as much of an issue or when I start spreading corps. I picked this up in one of TMIT's videos and have found it useful in combating the unhealthiness that becomes much more of a problem in BTS. Other wise I prefer SP or FM, although like others have said Merc is viable when all the AIs are also in it or when foreign trade is not bringing in much profit, especially when also in Rep.

 

[Andvare]

I think state property only eliminates distance from palace cost, not colonial cost. (Colonial costs are upkeep when you have more than 3 cities on separate landmasses.)

Colonial cost is calculated by the distance to the capital, so in effect it does eliminate colonial cost.

 

[dinner9001]

State property is very powerful in the hands of someone who is a warmonger with a large empire, while free market is also strong but in order to get it into full potential, you need to have found and spread corporations. It takes a while to set up depending on how large your empire so it's a good idea if you run this civic when you are not going for a warmongering strategy. If you are, you need to save those hammers and money to build military units in SP.

 

[mirthadir]

SP is normally the best in the short term, food, hammers, and gold (lower upkeep) with no effort.

FM has the best return in the long run. Depending upon your setup you can often get more food from sushi/CM than you get from SP if you've gone heavy cottages. Mining gives in the cities where you most need them and AlCo/CreCon/CivJ packs an obscene economic wallop. Even SE can give you very nice returns if you can trade for enough resources.

Merc is a mid game civic that is essentially +2 which is vastly inferior to SP without corps. With corps it doesn't take all that much in the way of expenses to make even rep AW priests get beaten by a bonus trade route. It can be useful to deny AIs trade without closing borders, but rarely is that the primary concern.

Enivironmentalism is strictly for windmill fests and screwing the AI. Spying/voting the AI into environmentalism when they have no health issues (and you do) and they have AlCo/SE or some other treasury sapping combo can easily be the biggest relative winner (it goes without saying that a heavy WM/WS AI in SP is going to be hurting worse than a human by swapping to this). Yes you generally hurt yourself by going into this civic, however you can often hurt the AI far more.

 

[UWHabs]

Representation/corporation warring endgame can make mercantilism work better than FM. Some games, everyone's mad and closed borders with me anyways (or stay in mercantilism), so the extra trade route only ends up giving me an extra 2-3 coins per city, which isn't as good as a free specialist in each city (which can actually help developing cities a great deal).

That being said, usually my choice is FM or SP, and that comes down to whether I have the time, resources, and power to spread a corp. I can get 10+ food and 10+ hammers a turn from corps. If so, then I'll go that route with FM. If I can't get that much, or I don't want to spam execs, or if I do have a very sprawling empire, then SP can be better. Or, I'll also lean towards SP if my empire isn't highly developed, since spamming watermills and workshops late game is a lot faster to get cities online than any other way.

 

[sherbz]

Not many people are speaking up for enviromentalism so i will

I find it really useful. If you dont have a merchant to build sid sushi's then it comes at exactly the right time to use when you are throwing up factories and coal plants. Its life lasts about 50-100 or so turns on epic speed until you can tech and build hospitals and public transport. Its more useful in a cottage spammed economy because generally you will only have enough food to work all of your cottage tiles. So even a small penalty on health means you work less cottages, which means less money and research, which is . Once you have health buildings up then you can switch out into either free market for added cash, or state property for added hammers.

If you have Sid sushi then you can ignore enviromentalism and just run free market because the food bonus off sets the health penalty of factories.

 

[mirthadir]

Representation/corporation warring endgame can make mercantilism work better than FM. Some games, everyone's mad and closed borders with me anyways (or stay in mercantilism), so the extra trade route only ends up giving me an extra 2-3 coins per city, which isn't as good as a free specialist in each city (which can actually help developing cities a great deal).

That being said, usually my choice is FM or SP, and that comes down to whether I have the time, resources, and power to spread a corp. I can get 10+ food and 10+ hammers a turn from corps. If so, then I'll go that route with FM. If I can't get that much, or I don't want to spam execs, or if I do have a very sprawling empire, then SP can be better. Or, I'll also lean towards SP if my empire isn't highly developed, since spamming watermills and workshops late game is a lot faster to get cities online than any other way.

Well for starters, most of the time you can just vote free trade with everyone and get trade routes to all cities via the UN in a long game. Most of the AIs seem to like it and a strong Corps setup normally means high pop (particularly if you are in rep).

Even if you can't get sufficient foreign/overseas/high pop trade you still have to recall that harbor modifiers are in play and that reducing the costs of actually running the corps is substantially greater with merc than FM. Perhaps you might have a save showing a situation where Merc beats FM - but isn't also beat by SP. I just find it astoundingly hard to envision. Afterall in a rep heavy game you are already running your most efficient specs (normally spies, priests, and engineers) and are likely just picking up a marginal spec who gets effectively 6 . Half to thirds of that disappears even with crappy trade routes and the rest normally goes away in lower corporation costs (and for rep/merc to compete with SP corps costs have GOT to be high). Merc can beat SP, Merc can beat FM - I find it extremely hard to believe that it can beat both beyond needing it for diplo/spiting the AI (particularly knocking AI corps out).

Sherbz: Environmentalism can give you no more than +6 . This lends us to several cases:
1. You aren't in mass cottages; SP is almost certainly better as you get more so your health infra goes up sooner and you can easily get more than 6 food per city in SP.
2. You are in mass cottages; but aren't going to industrialize (rushbuy economy); you have no health worries, continue to tech to tanks and bombers and ignore the factories.
3. You have mass cottages are going to industrialize and are right at the healthy cap. If a factory is worth building, it is worth rushbuying the health buildings (in most cases). Alternatively after medicine it is a quick detour to refriguration (with vastly cheaper health) or even genetics (free). I should also mention 3GD and the fact that you can afford to slowly starve whilst getting some new health resources through tank based territory acquisition.

To whit you have to flit a very narrow window where additional and from SP aren't determing to go that route (say use SP to get up all your hospitals then go into FM) or where any option is invalid. This is pretty rare. Also the high cost of anarchy for a non-Spi leader lets you build a lot of infra to not have to pick up an extra revolt until it finishes building.

 

[georgjorge]

I've used Environmentalism when going for space with a small empire (10 cities) and corporations, since I had to industrialize almost all of my cities, even those with cottages, as most of them had to build space parts. To my surprise, the wealth gain from the windmills was greater than the loss from trade routes and corps, and the health was very crucial.

 

[jabberwalkee_]

I think SP is really land dependant. If you have settled a tonne of rainforested grassland SP can turn all these cities into monster production sites.

 

[Mutineer]

Free market tend to work best with many open border and/or use of corporations.
One can get more production out of mining corp, then out of state property.
State property is cheap and dirty way to get hammers. Mercantilism work very good with pacifism in isolation or when everyone else is in mercantilism too, so you do not have foreign trade routes anyway.

Environmentalism work good on latest stage specialists economy. Especially if before one used Forest preserves happiness a lot in order to support drafting. When farms is the most common improvement, environmentalism let you run max specialists late in the game, but I would not call it a best civic, it is best only in very specific situations.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Even if you can't get sufficient foreign/overseas/high pop trade you still have to recall that harbor modifiers are in play and that reducing the costs of actually running the corps is substantially greater with merc than FM. Perhaps you might have a save showing a situation where Merc beats FM - but isn't also beat by SP. I just find it astoundingly hard to envision. Afterall in a rep heavy game you are already running your most efficient specs (normally spies, priests, and engineers) and are likely just picking up a marginal spec who gets effectively 6 . Half to thirds of that disappears even with crappy trade routes and the rest normally goes away in lower corporation costs (and for rep/merc to compete with SP corps costs have GOT to be high). Merc can beat SP, Merc can beat FM - I find it extremely hard to believe that it can beat both beyond needing it for diplo/spiting the AI (particularly knocking AI corps out).

TBH I don't use merc a whole lot, but I can picture it being the dominant choice in the following:

1. No SP yet, and FM doesn't help much (you addressed this)
2. Diplo/foreign corp rape block (same)
3. You have vassals/colonies and a generally large # cities (in this situation, slowing down the remaining AIs who can still win is arguably a better draw than absolute output of FM)
4. Always war.

#3 is the interesting one. At what point does denial of your trade routes to the AI overtake the benefits of switching to FM or SP? Slow global tech and culture pushes can make a big difference, especially if you are not relying heavily on workshops but are production rather than tech-limited to finish the game off. Vassals and colonies matter because they allow foreign trade under merc, partially (or maybe entirely if you have enough) offsetting the primary drawback of the civic. I am pretty sure that permanent alliance partners still get foreign trade with each other also, so in teamers/PAs merc looks more attractive also.

The denial value is hard to quantify however.

I agree that the #1 draw of environmentalism is that if you set up for the switch, it only hurts you a little while other empires forced there can really be hosed by it.

 

[Silu]

^ One situation that isn't that uncommon is wanting to have OB (like, for diplo or not being able to reopen the borders later due to bad diplo status) with overseas Civs that have Astronomy, when you don't have it yourself. Leaking intercontinental TRs when you don't have themselves is a hugely disadvantageous position. Whether it's worth a revolt or not depends on a number of things.

TRs to team allies do not count as foreign trade (equal yields to domestic TRs), so I would assume PA partners don't count either.