How do you use the Mercantilism civic?

[JayThomas]

I normally switch to free market when available. I never use mercantilism since the loss in foreign trade seems prohibitive.

It doesn't seem to me that the extra specialist really matters that much.

What am I missing?

 

[LuckyAC]

Basically if most other people are running mercantilism, it becomes better. It's also good if you are in representation or with many less-developed cities

 

[Cookie Crumbs]

Or if the world hates you so much that you don't have many open border agreements. For example, if you're declared a heathen by the Apostolic Palace all the members cancel Open Borders with you.

However, in almost all cases Free Market is superior if you can get even one or two civs to open their borders with you, because the commerce is almost always more than the gold/beakers from a free specialist.

 

[jerVL/kg]

Mercantilism is the perfect civic for isolated starts.

Rep + Merc can be very powerful, especially in a large empire, the extra often makes up for the lost commerce plus you get extra GP points and other perks from running extra specialists. Rep/Merc/Pacifism is even better; Rep/Merc/Pac + Philosophical better still; and Rep/Merc/Pac + Philo + Parthenon + Statue of Liberty is just bloody overkill.

Sometimes if I'm ahead on tech but need a production boost I'll run Merc for the extra engineer/priest specialists. And if all the AI's are running Mercantilism (which happens frequently once they reach Banking) you might as well run it too.

However, Mercantilism is just a transitional civic. Ultimately one of the higher civics (State Property in vanilla, Free Market in BTS) winds up being the one you want to keep for the endgame.

 

[Diamondeye]

^agree.

Also, an Always war (especially with rep.) is also fine.

 

[Photi]

Basically if most other people are running mercantilism, it becomes better. It's also good if you are in representation or with many less-developed cities

to drive the point home that has been brought up twice now, if all other civs are running merc, which is often the case for a subsatnatial amount of time, then it does no good for you to be in free market, in fact it hurts you. you are not getting the benefits of the specialists, and you have no foreign trade routes b/c of the AI's civics.

 

[KMadCandy]

Basically if most other people are running mercantilism, it becomes better. It's also good if you are in representation or with many less-developed cities

it can be useful if your cities are better than all of the AI cities. i don't know how much their cities have improved in BtS, haven't played enough games, but in the prior versions, since they were tied to poor automated worker and city governor logic it was a given that my cities were bigger/better than theirs if i wasn't in the middle of a war. and if that's the case, they can often be benefiting from the trade route they get from your city more than you are from them! and if you cut them off from your juicy trade routes, the routes they get from each other don't come near replacing them.

i did a WB test with spies once to watch it. i changed to merc/rep with pyramids, and my tech rate did slow down a bit. say from 4 turns a discovery to 5. but theirs went from 4-5 to 4-7 depending on the civ. and at that stage of the game, it's not the absolute value that matters since you're not pushing against the 2050 clock; it's how fast i am relative to them.

it's situational but it is something to keep in mind. the fact that it cuts them off from you is sometimes a good thing. and that stage doesn't last forever, but it can be helpful if you have a lead and want to stretch it further for a while.