Mercantilism is terrible?

[azzaman333]

As I play on maps where there are multiple continents, mercantilism is fairly useless IMO. I'd generally either go Free Market if I'm going to build Sushi/Mining or State Property if my empire is too big to handle the high maintainance corps. Foreign trade routes give a lot of money, and keep in mind that if you aren't trading with the AIs, they'll just open their borders with other AIs and get their money either way.

 

[Single Malt]

Mercantilism is quite useful, as the majority of AI switch to it when available, cutting you off from trade routes anyway. I always bag the free specialist when I notice that other civs are switching. It usually ends up with an extra 10-20 GPT when those specialists are assigned as merchants in your gold rich cities.

 

[Larklight]

Now, if trade was handled in a more realistic fashion, the attraction of mercantalist policies would increase, becuase of the oportunity to direct trade as you wish. Instead of simply giving free specialists, merchantalist policies really would protect your industries, keep prices steady and the like.

And if you didn't want the hassel (or like efficiency ) you could simply laissez faire

 

[azzaman333]

Mercantilism is quite useful, as the majority of AI switch to it when available, cutting you off from trade routes anyway. I always bag the free specialist when I notice that other civs are switching. It usually ends up with an extra 10-20 GPT when those specialists are assigned as merchants in your gold rich cities.

But unless you're Spiritual, it's rarely worth the turn(s) of anarchy IMO.

 

[mboettcher]

It entirely depends on the map, how many cities you have available (for internal trade), If you are in Rep/Pacifism, whether you are philo or not etc. Just like any other gov its subject to game specific conditions and play style.

I will say this if you are a large Civ, say have 15 cities before industrial era, have pyramids and don't necessarilly have a lot of coastal cities under say Freddy then running merc does a lot for you in a couple of ways. First it cuts off all those trade routes from the AI. This can drain them alot when you have 15 cities (probably 60 less available trade routes). Secondly thats 15 cities times 3 beakers (before modifiers). Thirdly if you are a large empire chances are you have a couple or so undeveloped cities. The extra specialist gives these cities the biggest shot in the arm. Combine this with a religious economy for excellent early large scale effects.

If you have a vassal and are somewhat large its almost mostly in your interest to undergo merc and force your vassal to do the same as you can still trade with your vassal. (This system also works well when running a late corporate economy and can help in a rep/free speech hybrid economy as well.)

 

[Killroyan]

Culture games with merc is also very common. I switch a lot of times to mercantalism then to get the extra artist. And I will be running Repr/caste system/mercantalism/pacifism for most of the game.

Also if you have 15 cities that means 15 * 3 beakers (before modifiers) and the extra's from all the GP's. 2 hammers in all cities from engineers is never a bad thing to get. So 45 beakers and 30 hammers is nothing to sneeze at and that at the cost of something like 90-120 commerce and a loss of 60 commerce or so for the enemies.

 

[Virtual Alex]

yeah hmmm thats pretty hard to judge.

I would be curious to see some kind of... Graph or something to show at how many cities the switch becomes profitable.

If that even matters. The more cities the more free specialists, but also the more trade routes.

 

[MrCynical]

So 45 beakers and 30 hammers is nothing to sneeze at and that at the cost of something like 90-120 commerce

It's a pretty lousy return on 90-120 commerce. If you use a more direct comparison of running scientists instead of engineers (you only have 1 engineer slot for much of the game - and therefore will gain a different specialist type in many cases), you're trading 90-120 commerce for 90 science plus some GPP (which will probably be wasted in most of the 15 cities). I also have to query where you're getting the 90-120 figure from. You're losing 6-8 commerce per city, so about 2 per trade route? Have you factored in the trade route from Free Market, because it doesn't look like it?

a loss of 60 commerce or so for the enemies.

As I've said, I view damaging the AI of far lower value. I can use the extra commerce, whereas the AI probably won't do significantly better with that.

 

[Killroyan]

It was just a wild estimate. So I checked my latest game based on a fantasy map I am just playing (Mansa). I am getting 79 gold right now from trade routes in free market from 9 cities (1500 AD, yes no warring yet, just having fun). Only 2 cities have harbors and no custom houses yet so I do have to say that the average trade route income will be higher then the 9C it is bringing in now per city. More likely something like 11-12 gold per city. On continental maps even a lot higher. So in that case you will be loosing about 200 commerce versus 45 beakers and 30 hammers. Yeah I guess it is a bad investment then.

So would that mean that it is only usefull in always war games and cultural victory games?

 

[ese-aSH]

It's a pretty lousy return on 90-120 commerce. If you use a more direct comparison of running scientists instead of engineers (you only have 1 engineer slot for much of the game - and therefore will gain a different specialist type in many cases), you're trading 90-120 commerce for 90 science plus some GPP (which will probably be wasted in most of the 15 cities). I also have to query where you're getting the 90-120 figure from. You're losing 6-8 commerce per city, so about 2 per trade route? Have you factored in the trade route from Free Market, because it doesn't look like it?

As I've said, I view damaging the AI of far lower value. I can use the extra commerce, whereas the AI probably won't do significantly better with that.

90 science pretty equal to 90 commerce ^^ the modifiers apply as well (well, you may have to decrease a few your science rate, but this is compensate by the arrival of banks which increase the gold your earn from commerce)

It was just a wild estimate. So I checked my latest game based on a fantasy map I am just playing (Mansa). I am getting 79 gold right now from trade routes in free market from 9 cities (1500 AD, yes no warring yet, just having fun). Only 2 cities have harbors and no custom houses yet so I do have to say that the average trade route income will be higher then the 9C it is bringing in now per city. More likely something like 11-12 gold per city. On continental maps even a lot higher. So in that case you will be loosing about 200 commerce versus 45 beakers and 30 hammers. Yeah I guess it is a bad investment then.

you wont loose the average trade route, you will loose the worst trade route in each city.

 

[DaveMcW]

you wont loose the average trade route, you will loose the worst trade route in each city.

You won't lose any trade routes in your best cities, you will lose them all in your worst cities.

 

[Guardian_PL]

Yeah, I have to admit that Mercantilism is very situational. I'm having a blast on Emperor with Ramsesses now, wiped Vikings veeery early with War Chariots (boy, these beasts are definitely useful!) and right now with ~13 cities at 1100 AD my trade routes were... Poor, in my opinion. Only in like 3-4 cities they were decent (4-7 per route), rest was 1-2. So i switched to Merc, thinking that my already blossoming SE could use that.

...And I've lost +35gpt while Education takes one turn longer to discover, despite representation-boosted scientists in all my cities (well, under Rep any specialist will work like a scientist xP)
That's before Astronomy and custom houses, and FM is just couple turns away.

Really, if Merc would be available earlier, around bureaucracy perhaps, then why not? But next to Free Market? No chance. Very situational I say.

 

[Iranon]

Mercantilism is a warmonger civic, especially if your idea of diplomacy is 'kick them in the junk until they cease being a problem'. Short, decisive wars (such as enabled by the Apostolic Palace...) can be very gainful with almost no cost, but they tend to annoy everyone. Perhaps so much that most civs refuse open borders anyway.

If your only trade partners are your vassals, Mercantilism will probably do more for your economy than Free Market. Doubly so if you tend to whip/draft your cities to hell and back to keep applying pressure (trade scales with size, specialists don't).

Moreover, it is an excellent culture tool. If your, ahem, new acquisitions are threatened by culture pressure, one artist can be worth an instant 10 base commerce - 4+2, 1+3 which is excellent.

For me, the use of Mercantilism depends heavily on the map. On Pangaea slugfests I tend to stay in it until it's made obsolete by either massive corporations or State Property.
On island maps with several good trade partners and Astronomy in reach, it is probably worse than the default civic and ridiculously inferior to Free Market.

 

[mirthadir]

Entirely map dependant. If you can get 3 nice overseas cities of your own, or better overseas vassals, merc does not lose out terribly much in the way of lost trade. Also one needs to consider the AIs, toko and a few others make merc better.

 

[Single Malt]

If you are running a SE with low science slider, then mercantilsm can be useful. The trade routes yield commerce, not gold, so if the science slider is high you can lose more research than is gained by the specialist. But if the slider is low, and with the free specialist assigned as a merchant (using rep civic), mercantilism can lead to more GPT and BPT. For a CE with high science slider the loss of trade commerce can be crippling, losing both gold and beakers, despite the free specialists.

 

[UncleJJ]

It seems a lot of people here are painting the loss of trade route income a lot more unfavourably than I've found it to be. It does depend a lot on the relative size of the empires, your size versus the size of the empire your trading with and also the sizes of each others cities. If you're in the middle game with Astronomy and could have trade routes with all other civs then unless you're in Free Religion some of the other civs will be upset with you for one reason or another. Either they won't like your religion or you'll have traded with their worst enemy or you didn't join their war or this or that...

In some games I get tired of all that diplomatic nonsense (since it seems so random), you can't please all of the people all of the time, and so I adopt Mercantilism and I just don't care. It's a predictable steady income unaffected by wars, open borders, blockades, or the other civs adopting Mercantilism. That is about the time that my cannons and grenadiers board the galleons and sail with the frigates looking for a nice lucrative city or two.

If you capture a few foreign cities they become overseas trade and get the +100% bonus. If any of these overseas cities are also large cities (circa size 20) then they are better as internal trade routes than they would be as foreign ones because many of your cities will trade with them with modest multipliers than just one city with good multipliers. With 2 or 3 large overseas cities it doesn't matter if you're in Mercantilism or Free Trade the extra trade route is weak and every city can make use of the overseas gold mines. If you can set up your internal trade routes properly Mercantilism is a great civic.

The maths is quite simple. Take a size 20 city on another continent. As an internal trade source it will give base trade route 2.0 and a +100% to all your cities, so even a size 1 city will get a 4 trade route (and most will). A coastal city with a harbour will get a 5 trade route. Any of your cities of size 15 city will get an additional +25% to combine with "connected to capital" 25% bonus and give +1 trade.

If the same size 20 city was owned by another player then it gives you only one trade route which will give +150% (for sustained peace) and +100% if your city has a customs house. So that's :
2.0 x [1 +100% (overseas) + 150% (sustained peace) + 50% (harbour) + 100% (customs house) +25% (connected to capital) + 25% (size 15)]
= 2.0 x [ 550% ]
= 11 trade route commerce.

Which would you rather have? One trade route giving 11 or 15 trade routes all giving between 4 and 6 depending on city size and whether they have a harbour. Assuming the best alternative internal trade routes would give 2 that's a gain of between +2 and +4 in each of your 15 cities and could be worth 45 trade.

 

[mirthadir]

It seems a lot of people here are painting the loss of trade route income a lot more unfavourably than I've found it to be. It does depend a lot on the relative size of the empires, your size versus the size of the empire your trading with and also the sizes of each others cities. If you're in the middle game with Astronomy and could have trade routes with all other civs then unless you're in Free Religion some of the other civs will be upset with you for one reason or another. Either they won't like your religion or you'll have traded with their worst enemy or you didn't join their war or this or that...

In some games I get tired of all that diplomatic nonsense (since it seems so random), you can't please all of the people all of the time, and so I adopt Mercantilism and I just don't care. It's a predictable steady income unaffected by wars, open borders, blockades, or the other civs adopting Mercantilism. That is about the time that my cannons and grenadiers board the galleons and sail with the frigates looking for a nice lucrative city or two.

If you capture a few foreign cities they become overseas trade and get the +100% bonus. If any of these overseas cities are also large cities (circa size 20) then they are better as internal trade routes than they would be as foreign ones because many of your cities will trade with them with modest multipliers than just one city with good multipliers. With 2 or 3 large overseas cities it doesn't matter if you're in Mercantilism or Free Trade the extra trade route is weak and every city can make use of the overseas gold mines. If you can set up your internal trade routes properly Mercantilism is a great civic.

The maths is quite simple. Take a size 20 city on another continent. As an internal trade source it will give base trade route 2.0 and a +100% to all your cities, so even a size 1 city will get a 4 trade route (and most will). A coastal city with a harbour will get a 5 trade route. Any of your cities of size 15 city will get an additional +25% to combine with "connected to capital" 25% bonus and give +1 trade.

If the same size 20 city was owned by another player then it gives you only one trade route which will give +150% (for sustained peace) and +100% if your city has a customs house. So that's :
2.0 x [1 +100% (overseas) + 150% (sustained peace) + 50% (harbour) + 100% (customs house) +25% (connected to capital) + 25% (size 15)]
= 2.0 x [ 550% ]
= 11 trade route commerce.

Which would you rather have? One trade route giving 11 or 15 trade routes all giving between 4 and 6 depending on city size and whether they have a harbour. Assuming the best alternative internal trade routes would give 2 that's a gain of between +2 and +4 in each of your 15 cities and could be worth 45 trade.

Yes and no. Yes, it is highly lucrative to have big overseas cities for internal trades when you have a large empire. No, in that going merc has nothing to do with this. If you set up your internal routes properly it has no net effect (or goes towards FM). Let's say you have 4 pop 20 overseas cities. If you go FM and there are no trading possibilities you still get +4 to +6 commerce per city from having an additional overseas trade route.

Assuming a maximized internal trade system in both cases (and going with a median value of +5 per trade route on average), you end up with 5 commerce vs 6 beakers (rep scientist) and +3gpp (I'm assuming that you are already running more efficient specialists like AW prophets). So if everyone else is merc, even with a maximized internal trade system, you should go merc for the benefit. However you only need, on average, ~2 commerce per city from foreign trade (depends on the valuation of the bonus gpp) to make FM superior. Eight foreign trade routes going into Oxford and WS can often make FM superior.

Like I said before it is map dependant. If you have no overseas land or vassals, merc is much weaker. If you have exactly 3 large overseas cities, merc gets relatively stronger. If you have 4 it gets comparatively weaker. Obviously, the bigger you get, the stronger merc is. The bigger your vassals, the better merc is.

 

[UncleJJ]

Mithandir, I think with 4 size 20 cities you've picked a situation that is particularly favourable to FM and it's somewhat unrealistic. In most situations in the Renaissance or early Industrial age when you are making this decision there will only be one size 20 and a couple of other nice offshore cities (say size 18 and 15).

In that situation the extra trade route that FM gives is often weak - that is the point I'm making. In many cities the free specialist from Mercantilism is then compared with the extra FM trade route which might only be worth 2 commerce. That is the situation in most of my cities in most of my games at least until I can extend my conquests of prime cities. Or I might grow some of my offshore cities much bigger but that usually needs Sushi and Biology and takes time for them to grow. That means there is a long period in the middle of the game when Mercantilism is better than FM, it not only gives more income (including the free hammers and GPPs in the few cities that benefit) but it is also much more reliable.

Even if you're at peace with the other civs they might not be at peace with each other, and you'll get repeated requests to help one side and then help the other, and then to break trade routes with one and then the other. I like to make war in this period and that means some foreign trade routes will be unavailable and some civs might bribe others to break trade with me or simply adopt Mercantilism as they research or get the tech from trade. I find relying on foreign trade to be an unreliable source of income. Many people mention their best trade routes, in their best city, at the best time in the game. The trouble is they forget how short that optimum time for their best city was and they forget how weak the little ice city in the arctic was and how long it took to grow. Mercantilism is low risk and reliable and helps the little cities.

 

[Bostock]

Statements are usually not followed by question marks?

(Sorry so silly, could not resist.)

 

[mirthadir]

Mithandir, I think with 4 size 20 cities you've picked a situation that is particularly favourable to FM and it's somewhat unrealistic. In most situations in the Renaissance or early Industrial age when you are making this decision there will only be one size 20 and a couple of other nice offshore cities (say size 18 and 15).

In that situation the extra trade route that FM gives is often weak - that is the point I'm making. In many cities the free specialist from Mercantilism is then compared with the extra FM trade route which might only be worth 2 commerce. That is the situation in most of my cities in most of my games at least until I can extend my conquests of prime cities. Or I might grow some of my offshore cities much bigger but that usually needs Sushi and Biology and takes time for them to grow. That means there is a long period in the middle of the game when Mercantilism is better than FM, it not only gives more income (including the free hammers and GPPs in the few cities that benefit) but it is also much more reliable.

Even if you're at peace with the other civs they might not be at peace with each other, and you'll get repeated requests to help one side and then help the other, and then to break trade routes with one and then the other. I like to make war in this period and that means some foreign trade routes will be unavailable and some civs might bribe others to break trade with me or simply adopt Mercantilism as they research or get the tech from trade. I find relying on foreign trade to be an unreliable source of income. Many people mention their best trade routes, in their best city, at the best time in the game. The trouble is they forget how short that optimum time for their best city was and they forget how weak the little ice city in the arctic was and how long it took to grow. Mercantilism is low risk and reliable and helps the little cities.

Look all I'm saying is that high value internal trade routes ALSO help FM. And no you don't lose your worst trade route when you swap out of FM, you lose your foreign routes and only after that your worst. If there is any foreign trade, at all, going merc loses you what is normally your BEST route and the city gets the next best three it can find. For certain key cities (like an Oxford GS farm) this can be an extremely substantial amount of cash as the AI may find such a large overseas city to be its best option.

Again its MAP DEPENDANT. Do I have 4 overseas cities of good size? Do have merc AIs everywhere? Can I spy someone into FM? Am I cost hugging or inland? At the end of the day, it comes down to what is the expected value of foreign trade and one extra trade route vs a free specialist. Having large overseas cities does not substantially change this tradeoff (or if it does it favors FM).