Linear-time GP generation with merchants?

[ig2r]

Wow, I did not quite expect to return to such an insightful discussion when I left for vacation a week ago... I did try out the underlying principle in a demonstration game yesterday (settler difficulty, Ghandi, only 3 cities), and while the general idea did work out rather well (able to run 100% science throughout the entire game while still making about +100 gpt by turn 200), the overall results were somewhat disappointing -- even on easiest difficulty, forested and religion-hogging, my GP city ran into its health and happiness caps mid-game, which might render this strategy useless for realistic difficulties. Population growth rate for extra specialists did never become a problem. GP generation rate did keep up rather nicely, however as some of you have pointed out, the final rate in the end game will probably be to small to make a difference. Oh well, back to the drawing board...

 

[Grey Fox]

This strategy is probably best combined with a cottage spam for all other cities, except maybe one or two additional merchant farms which contribute with extra merchants, until their GPP produce isnt enough, at which time you convert these cities into cottage farms or production cities.

Reasoning being you can run 100% science or 100% EE when utilizing merchants, so you want that commerce going.

 

[Iranon]

The constant rate of GP assumes starting with a single merchant; while this is sustainable it is simply too low to be useful. If we can support multiple specialists, our GP rate will experience decay.

Having said that, I consider merchants for more merchants one of the better choices if we seek to settle Great People, and will often to this if I have no use for academies.

 

[Artichoker]

This strategy is probably best combined with a cottage spam for all other cities, except maybe one or two additional merchant farms which contribute with extra merchants, until their GPP produce isnt enough, at which time you convert these cities into cottage farms or production cities.

Reasoning being you can run 100% science or 100% EE when utilizing merchants, so you want that commerce going.

Yes, that's one method...or you can use the Great Merchants to provide the food needed to work food-poor tiles such as Gold or Plains.

 

[ig2r]

The constant rate of GP assumes starting with a single merchant; while this is sustainable it is simply too low to be useful. If we can support multiple specialists, our GP rate will experience decay.

Having said that, I consider merchants for more merchants one of the better choices if we seek to settle Great People, and will often to this if I have no use for academies.

Mathematically, I assumed a single-merchant start of the series to perform a worst-case evaluation. (Just like the point of running "half" another specialist. In reality, there's no need to micromanage -- just work a single additional farmed tile.) In fact, starting with 2 (3, 4, 5, ...) merchant specialists supported by terrain will alter the relevant part of the final formula into something like (n+1) / (n+7) instead of (n+1) / (n+2), which, however, will still converge to 1 for sufficiently large n. In reality, of course, you are correct that the initial decay is more pronounced, and the asymptotical behavior will probably not matter until long past the mid-game, if at all.