Great Merchangs or Great Scientists?

[Gorey]

just curious what other peoples preferences are.

im a total great merchant whore myself.

in a typical game, 60-70% of my great people will usually be great merchants. most get settled in my wall street. 2-3 usually get sent on trade missions. Most of my scientists get popped early on.. and they're mostly used for building an academy or two & for popping a few key techs.

from mid-game on... it's all about gold baby!

i guess my reasoning is that with a good gold city, i can do anything i want with its profits. using a scientist for a builb is pretty much a one way thing.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Scientist bulbs allow for faster access of later techs though, including those that unlock better multipliers to put in your cities. They also allow trade potential.

Generally on high levels scientists win out due to their trade potential and the fact that between selling resources, selling techs, begging for gold, and building wealth it's often possible to stay in deficit-research at high science % without any gold multipliers at all...so the beakers are still giving higher returns.

 

[NKVD]

i play without tech trading.

i prefer Great Merchants...giving you 3900 gold right off the bat and allowing you to run negative budget for a millenium is unbeatable

 

[6K Man]

I tend to prefer Scientists because they tend to be more flexible. Bulb, Settle, Academy.

I sometimes wonder if others find trade missions sometimes carry a bit too much risk. If you're at war, will you often risk sending a Merchant on a long journey to get that 3900 ? And I don't lose a LOT of Caravels to barbarian ships, but it happens enough to make me a little leery of putting Mr Merchant on them, if it's going to be a long trip.

 

[Grey Fox]

I love great merchants but, scientists probably win out overall.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

i play without tech trading.

i prefer Great Merchants...giving you 3900 gold right off the bat and allowing you to run negative budget for a millenium is unbeatable

Tech trades off is a substantial rule change. Maybe you'd still want an academy and possibly a bulb on philosophy and education, but it might be a little harder to come by gold (you can only lean on resources and begging to get gold then), in which case merchants have more potential...especially if you need upgrades or a war bribe NOW.

Although with tech trades off medieval war is a lot more viable so one could conceivably just go 1 academy ----> merchants while teching toward engineering or guilds. When the threat of the opponent getting cuirassers, rifles, or grenadiers is lower, you have a bigger window to gain a game-breaking advantage when counters are HARD counters (medieval times).

As usual it will depend on game context but indeed it is reasonable that such a setting would effect which GP you'd want to push towards.