Mercantile route

[DSN]

I'm new here, so I don't know if this has been covered yet...

The - what I call - mercantile route is most useful in scenarios where you are under-manned (i.e. you don't have enough troops) or your troops are of insufficient technological dvelopment to attack your enemies (i.i you have cannons and they have marines defending). What you can do in such situationsis using a diplomat or spy, bribe the city to revolt. This is also useful if you are going onto another island and need a safe place to land your troops.

Also having some spare money i useful in case you need to rush buy a unit or wonder (to build it before someone else). I raise this money by not concentrating on science and building markets, banks etc. Also it is important to build lots of roads as they add money as well.

Science can then either be exchanged or stolen, although this means you can never get really ahead of the other civs.

 

[Stegyre]

Welcome, welcome.
Are you talking specifically about scenarios (i.e., specially-created scenarios) or are you talking about playing CivII in general? With regard to non-scenario play, the "mercantile route" is certainly the most successful, but I wonder if you are really employing it in all its glory. Properly applied, the good merchant will never be in the situation of having only cannons against marines. Quite the opposite.
Instead of building markets and banks, build caravans, and trade, trade, trade your way to a healthy, wealthy and wise civ.

Let me also direct you to some excellent discussions already collected by ElephantU: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=94644

 

[DSN]

Well in normal play I find I'm either the most powerful or the least powerful. Must reflect my ability.

I didn't mention caravans. They are very useful, though if you're at war they can be difficult to deploy to enemy cities. I usually use them for building wonders, as then you can build a wonder in just a few turns (if you amass the caravans). Caravans are especially useful in modern eras when the returns are largest (sometimes several thousand coins).

By scenarios I meant for example the East-wind scenario (WW2 in pacific) where I bribed a Japanese city on their home islands when I was US, thus establishing a safe centre to send my units.

"the good merchant will never be in the situation of having only cannons against marines." I was exagerating slightly. I think such a situation would probably be pretty hopeless...

I must say that I haven't played civ 2 much lately and probably play call-to-power better. I have always felt that civ 2 favours the defenders, as unlike in ctp you can't simultanously attack with several units. Also it's annoying how you have to move units seperately along long distances (even if you use 'go') when they're going to the same place.

 

[DSN]

Sorry to double post, but it occured to me that it may be useful to (as it were) re-cap on the benefits of bribing cities:
1) You don't need any military
2) You get an advance from the other civ (if they have one you don't have)
3) You get the military units in the city
4) The other civ looses any units supported by the city
5) The city's size does not decrease as it would if it were attacked with military units.

 

[Ace]

6. the bribed city does not lose any improvements.

 

[DSN]

"5) The city's size does not decrease as it would if it were attacked with military units."

In actual fact, I think it looses 1 pop, but in an attack it may loose much more than that.

 

[DSN]

From my present game I've learnt one problem with this; the ai might have demo in every civ, so you can't bribe them. However, I now have diplomats positioned in strategic positions waiting to bribe them, should any civ change from demo.