Great merchants>>great scientists postpatch?

[avl8]

Some details about great merchants can be found here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=398647

Great merchants come earlier and much easier

Great scientists come way too late and way too hard to get during medieval/renaissance.
First scientist specialist slot comes with Education, late medieval technology that require huge number of beakers spent on Civil Service and Theology.

Assuming one wants to win via culture/spaceship/diplo, or just wants to runaway via tech lead, RAs are the best choice to improve research rates postpatch.

But RAs are rather expensive toys, especially when you are era ahead of your partner. Even if your in the same era, you cant just spam RAs unless you have some serious economy working.

Comparing to GS, great merchants now come much faster. Tech required is early medieval Currency, one can reach it with a SHORT BEELINE:
Archery>>Mathematics>>Currency

Then we have market (120 hammers) vs univercity (200 hammers), and both get us 1 specialist slot.

Next GS specialist slot comes via Astronomy/Observatory, early renaissance tech, BUT requires a mountain hex in a first ring of the city. One slot, 180 hammers, rare hex required.

Compare this with Banking, which is also early renaissance tech that lets you build banks. 220 hammers, TWO merchant slots, you can build bank in any city, no mountains or any kind of rare hexes required.

Then comes late renaissance tech Scientific theory with Public schools, no specialist slots, but with a small bonus of +1 great scientist bonus. Yes, it has nice beakers boost, but it wont get you extra great scientists!

Then we have Electricity/Stock exchange building that has ONE merchant slot, early industrial era, 650 hammers worth.

And finally, in early modern era we have Research labs, 600 hammers, two (or one?) scientist specialist slots, that requires public school.

Well, as we can see, merchant slots come earlier than scientist' and we have 3 reliable merchant slots in early renaissance when one can have only 1 reliable scientist per city.

What benefits we have?
Both great people can start a golden age and build an improvement. Both improvements comes kinda late to have a decent ROI.

Great scientist can bulb a tech.
Great merchant gets you raw cash depending on era your in AND gives you 30 influence points with a desired CS (around 250 gold saved?)

Heres old table that shows raw gold numbers you get from trade mission:

Era/Gold
--------------------
Medieval 450
Renaissance 500
Industrial 550
Modern 600
Future 650

As we can see, with each successful trade mission you can start almost 2 research agreements!

Well, some people mentioned that they got more than 1000 gold via trade mission in a distant CS, but it still needs to be proved via screenshot.

Even if you get 450+ gold via medieval trade mission it lets you get 2 FREE technologies later. Unless RA is broken, your partner has been conquered etc etc.
Its however needs to be microed, but still its

2 technologies per one great merchant!

Comparing to bulbing its a bit unstable, but gives you more beakers per great person points spent than with great scientist.

Onto the cool strategies
Great merchants are cool postpatch. They also awesome.
They fit very well into spaceship strategies since youll need every RA you can get.
They make a great addition to fast diplomatic victories, since its scientific/commerce victory and these guys brings shiny things AND influence with CS.
I can imagine great merchants boosting culture wins via RAs and influence with cultural CSs.
Well, warmongers also need mass research agreements postpatch to keep up with AIs on immortal and above!

And Im not the guy who says "forget libraries/univercities/national college and observatories". We still need'em, but we can rushbuy these pretty buildings with cash great merchant brings you!

We can also start with great merchant to pump early RAs then switch to GSs when we have enough slots.

And last but not least, extra cash can be spent on bribes. That means damn Genghis will fight Gandhi instead of you

Still got some questions...
Which civs are best for this kind of strategy? Arabia, Greece, France, Persia?

Am I missing something with these great merchant abilities?

Which path gets you to space faster: early national college or early market/bazaar?

Does bazaar currently bugged?

 

[aball]

I haven't tried this yet, but I will do tomorrow. Arabia probably would be best for this because they can augment GM gold with gold from extra lux sales, but that's just my opinion. Maybe Egypt as a second to build Machu Picchu or GM point and extra gold when currency hits, as you're beelining currency.

Compared to civ IV, it really seems like the devs intended for ciV to be driven by gold production. Rush buying is available from the start of the game (investment into production) rather than at the end minus the occasional pyramid rush, and the player is able to invest gold directly into beakers (RAs), culture, and food (via CSs).

 

[biohazard72]

I see some, including yourself, wondering whether or not commerce-heavy strategies are competitive due to the nature of RAs. I disagree with this analysis because of the ability to easily sell surplus luxuries/resources to Deity AIs which is more than enough cash to cover your RAs.

On-continent RAs are not generally safe. You also won't want to sign them until techs begin to become expensive (or to be more precise, 30 turns before). Signing three to grab Education, Civil Service, and Astronomy seems to work, and luxury sales more than cover it for me. Off continent RAs are covered by selling them surplus luxuries/resources. So the benefit of the early Merchant is dubious - the money can be used for bribing AIs into wars or to rush buy a military, but is that stronger than a Great Engineer (Workshop) which can be used to grab a wonder of your choice?

The analysis is less clear on lower difficulties where you can't sell luxuries and grab RAs (stupid poor AIs), but there is far less need to sign RAs in order to keep up in tech.

 

[Monthar]

I can see the potential in this, no matter what difficulty level you play on. After all:

1. You don't always have excess luxuries to sell.
2. The AI sometimes has the same luxuries you do.
3. You shouldn't be forced into warmongering to achieve other types of victories.
4. You shouldn't be forced to ICS to be competitive.

If this is a viable way to keep up with the AI on Immortal and Deity, with just a few cities and not steam-rolling over all the AI, then great, we have an alternative. I for one, will give this a go to see if I can do better with my play style. I'd like to challenge the top dogs to at least try this out on Immortal and/or Deity before chopping it to pieces, or berating the idea.

 

[lilnev]

RAs are ridiculously cheap for the value they give. But in my experience, the limit is not my amount of cash, it's the number of AIs who are willing to sign.

That said, early GMs may still be a good idea. I think the competing plan is a couple of GEs to rush Wonders. Generally hammers are more valuable than gold.

If you want to see how far you can push this idea, try Darius. Satrap's Court allow 2 extra Merchants. And if you want to burn GMs on golden ages, his are extra-long and extra-good.

 

[mondry]

I'm playing a game that unintentionally ended up like this, immortal difficulty. I randomed Japan and spawned with 3 grassland cotton and a gold so after the typical national college I expanded to yet another grassland cotton and another gold, settled directly on the cotton. Can't remember exactly what turn it was but pretty early on I was selling 3 spare cotton and a spare gold, rushed to currency and my first 3 gp were great merchants. I also had Iron and samurai popped out in time to really avoid any danger and also be semi agressive if I wanted. Upgrade starting warrior, purchase one, and built one out of kyoto and suddenly had 3 samurai. (gotta love all that gold)

Long story short on only 5 cities I'm neck and neck with the run away civ in tech and have been allied with 3 maritimes and a cultural city state basically the entire game while spamming research agreements with any one that will sign. Kyoto has grown like a weed with that much bonus food. Went with Tradition -> freedom for vertical growth in kyoto and specialist perks. Built taj mahal, big ben, and statue of liberty so far. (pretty random on the taj but wanted to see my golden age stats and didn't need any thing else at the time)

At least with this kind of start I don't think you need Commerce, but I did take the 1 gold for 2 people since kyoto is at 31 pop and the hospital / medical lab means it turns out another citizen every 5-6 turns it looks like. It would be mighty interesting to see the same map played as siam to really abuse all those allied city states or like others have said persia / arabia could be interesting.

I'll be playing the rest of this game out later today hopefully and may have more / different input but so far it seems to be viable but perhaps spawn dependent. Really want multiple luxuries to sell off and establish the maritimes for much faster vertical growth to keep up with the AI. Then great merchants just add even more gold and "top off" any city state that's reputation get's low. I have no idea how this would do with an ICS mind you, so someone would have to test that as well.

Oh btw most of my core cities are near mountains too (kinda the perfect storm of luck here) so the observatory's are really helping my science out with such high populations. (While I'm middle of the pack in every thing else my population score is leaps ahead of everyone else) Actually Ghandi could be kind of interesting, not sure, my happy meter is like "10 from number of cities and 72 from population" lol.

 

[avl8]

Im on these kinda strategies right now, going GM 1st while selling and reselling staff via bazaar.

And regular banks provide 2 merchant slots just like satrap's court does. So everyone can get 3 merchant specialist per city once banks are there.