Big cities, Mercantilism and Happiness

[frob2900]

Now, in my games, I often end up with pyramids. I build 'em if I can, I capture 'em if I can't. Sometimes it isn't possible though, but so it goes.

Nevertheless, due to this, and the fact that I usually have a largish empire, I have a habit of going to Mercantilism when I get it, since that representation enhanced scientist is pretty swell (I mostly have libraries by that point )

So, I started up a game as Mehmed/Monarch. Three nice early cities and cheap workers meant I was working a bunch of bonus food + mined plains hills in no time. With fur+silver in my second and third cities I also had a nice happiness boost. End result: Shakas and Julius capitals early on.

Now, as usual, this causes a GNP drop. No problem there, it's to be expected, so I got CoL and whipped out Mehmeds cheap courthouses. Now, I got CoL via currency, nabbed Calendar/Civil Service/Machinery (surprisingly fast I thought. More on this in a moment..)and through trades I managed to get feudalism.

By now my cities were rather huge due to lots of happiness + Hammams. I therefore went for Guilds, since I wanted a grocer in a few of my larger cottage heavy cities. Again, I thought the tech came along unusually fast since I hadn't been growing cottages that heavily. After that I went for banking for Mercantilism (postponing the Liberalism beeline for a change).

Without thinking, I switched to Mercantlism. This usually boosts research, and as my research was already mystifyingly good, I was very confident I'd be first to Liberalism.

After the switch my research got slower. I didn't notice it at first, but after a turn or two I cycled through cities, checking tiles/specialists as usual. It must have gotten better from that extra scientist, I thought.

Then it hit me: I'm Mehmed. I've got Hammams. Most my cities are 10+ (a few 15's).

I checked the GNP graph. Hoopla. I'd killed my trade routes!




I think the key here was early calendar happiness and that almost all my tiles were improved (due to a truckload of cheap expansive workers). It had made me rather wary of whipping (unusual for me..). Hence über-traderoutes.

I think I like this large city/super trade route thing. Now I'm going to try it out with Hannibal/GL.. all I need is a bunch of fish, clams, dye and silk

[EDIT] And as a PS, in the end most of the population in my large cities ended up being drafted as janissaries and sent on "diplomatic missions" to the AI

 

[UncleJJ]

Trade based economies are great until your trading partners research Banking and adopt Mercantilism. Then the income plummets and you have to adopt Mercantilism yourself, unless you can give / trade them Economics, and bribe them to adopt Free Market. Even then you have to keep reasonable relations with your partners which means wars and different religions mess things up. It can get quite complicated diplomatically and literally impossible to please everyone.

Trade based income can be nice but unreliable. Mercantilism is unimpressive, by comparison but is reliable, especially if you are at war and have a strong army. Then you can ignore threats or requests and the consequences-be-damned.

I'm currently playing Mehmet and running big cities with HR, Nationhood, Slavery and Theocracy and 2 of my trading partners have just adopted Mercantilism So after the Golden Age, from Taj Mahal, is over I'll have to switch to Mercantilism before crushing my last trade partner Augustus. I could go for Free Trade but it seems more reliable to take my own advice from above. I want to conquer my own continent or at least enough of it to give me an unanswerable amount of resources. The other continent has been discovered but they are too complicated diplomatically to try to persuade. Diplomatically it is sort of like this; civ A likes civ B, civ B likes civ C and civ A hates them and so on. Besides that, I have Colossus and a Golden Age my income from sea tiles 2F4C and that makes Astrology a bad deal and intercontinent trade is out at least for a while. The civs over there are beginning to adopt Mercantilism anyway.

So in summary, big cities and trade get you off to a great start but runs out of steam in the Renaissance and you need to learn to not rely on it. You need an alternative source of income at that stage of the game.

 

[frob2900]

So in summary, big cities and trade get you off to a great start but runs out of steam in the Renaissance and you need to learn to not rely on it.

I never do Except ages ago when I used to do some Great Lighthouse theme games. What I thought was so odd about the above situation was the lack of Great Lighthouse, harbors etc. The trade bonuses happened "by accident".

I didn't even know that I had a huge trade economy going on in the background, until I switched to Mercantilism I was just focusing on specialists and cottages as usual... I thought it was amazing that city size is that important for trade..

 

[UncleJJ]

The loss of trade is most noticeable because the main effects hit you where you have the best multipliers. In my game I had trade routes worth 8 and 9 in my capital. Put that through library, academy, 2 monastries and a university (total = +120&#37 and it is worth a large proportion of total beaker income for the empire. At the same time the 4 riverside towns only give 5 each before before Printing Press, fortunately, gold + marble and sea tiles with Collossus make up a good alternative income source. Right now the 2 trade routes make up 16 out of 73 base commerce which is 22 %. Adopting Mercantilism would give combined trade routes of about 4 and a free scientist worth only 3 beakers for a net loss of 9 commerce and given the multipliers that would be a loss of about 20 beakers / turn from this one city ... just when the techs start getting really expensive. A few free scientists in other small cities with low multipliers don't compensate for the loss in the big well developed cities.

Oh and I'm running Nationhood now, instead of Bureaucracy. That +50% commerce boost before the other multipliers makes trade rock in the middle game

 

[Roxlimn]

Only one of the reasons why Spiritual rocks!

 

[Innawerkz]

Similar discovery with Hannibal. Obviously developing all of your cities on the coast, building Cathons, having the Colossus, Great Lighthouse & Temple of Artemis in your Capital results in the easiest Spaceship victory.

My army wasn't that big but, with a tech lead and many great merchants arriving throughout the game, it was always advanced & current.

 

[futurehermit]

Yep, just trade banking around so that all the AIs go into mercantilism, then adopt it yourself until you get free market.

You take a slight hit to your research in the short term, but I believe it is covered by the extra gpp the scientists are generating. This is another reason why SE is nicer in the early game.

I believe there is a reason why representation (with pyramids), caste system, mercantilism, and pacificism all come in the first 1/2 of the tech tree and universal sufferage, free speech, emancipation, free market, and free religion come in the second half.

Combine that with the fact that cottages take time to mature and specialists do not and you see why more and more I am convinced that a transition economy is the way to go.

Especially since you want to be doing a lot of whipping in the early game because you will be going to war a lot to get the land. Once you settle down, you don't need to whip as much and can focus on growing large cities.

I find when I grow large cities early and work cottages early that I am not expanding horizontally as fast as I would like meaning a lot of protracted battles later on.

 

[Charou]

If you have open borders and your empire is not so big, better stick with decentralization as long as possible.

Mercantilism is my most used economic civic, because post renaissance I won´t usually have enough trade routes to benefit from.
The AI usually stick with it for quite a while, or at least some of them leave it quite late in the game for different reasons (mainly tech lag).
By the time they move on to free market, my empire is huge and I don´t want to import more than I export.