If you're anything like me, you'll probably struggle along a +/- zero bank vault in most of your games, with a reduced research rate for quite some time. Expansion is expensive, and the techs to counter the costs come only a bit down the line.
In my current game, my only opponent is Tokugawa, and while we have ok relations by now, in the beginning his policy of no open borders hurt. But, I was experimenting with GP anyway, so I did some things different and found the solution working quite well. As soon as I could afford it, I set up some merchant specialists. Now, I got several great merchants, but of course I couldn't run them to Tokugawa. So, I settled them down in my cities instead.
This turned out to be VERY profitable, because all cities were producing more money than their maintenance costed. It allowed me to build a pretty big empire just through peaceful expansion (currently 11 cities on a small map), without tech research going down really. Certainly on maps with more other civs around it might be better to run the great merchant to another civ's city for the big cash boost, but don't neglect the boost he can give your home cities too when settled down!
In my current game, my only opponent is Tokugawa, and while we have ok relations by now, in the beginning his policy of no open borders hurt. But, I was experimenting with GP anyway, so I did some things different and found the solution working quite well. As soon as I could afford it, I set up some merchant specialists. Now, I got several great merchants, but of course I couldn't run them to Tokugawa. So, I settled them down in my cities instead.
This turned out to be VERY profitable, because all cities were producing more money than their maintenance costed. It allowed me to build a pretty big empire just through peaceful expansion (currently 11 cities on a small map), without tech research going down really. Certainly on maps with more other civs around it might be better to run the great merchant to another civ's city for the big cash boost, but don't neglect the boost he can give your home cities too when settled down!
