mercantilism or free market

[woodman6035]

I was wondering which one of these civics you guys normally use? You unlock them so close together I'm a little confused. I usually run mercantilism until state property.

 

[Fleme]

It depends. All in all I would say FM beats Merc in almost every situation because foreign trade routes are just so good, even more so if they're intercontinental. However, there is often a period of the game when almost every AI is in Merc so in that case it also makes sense for you to run it.

It's good with Rep too, so there's a nice synergy if you're looking for a specialist driven state.

Personally I'm a Free Market supporter.

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

I usually prefer Free Market, but sometimes Mercantilism makes more sense when you're so big that most of your trade routes will be domestic anyway. In my shadow of madscientist's current RPC, I used Mercantilism from Banking to the end of the game.

 

[joanne]

It depends. I use mercantilism and caste system when I plan to expand; the free merchant/artist helps to offset the initial maintenance costs of new cities or expand their borders to access nearby resources more quickly. You also get additional great people points in all your cities from the free specialist. And if you have Representation civic or the sistine chapel you get bonus or , respectively (note: if you build the statue of liberty you get the benefits of mercantilism without actually adopting it as a civic)

Free market imo is only fully effective if you have other civs with whom you have open borders and also adopted free market. It gets better if those other civs are on another continent and you have astronomy and economics and build harbors and customs houses. If however one of those civs with free market goes back to adopting mercantilism you lose all trade you had with them

 

[Tatran]

Besides the commerce boost from foreign trade routes, another reason
for me to run Free Market is to get the inflation event.

 

[Bezurn]

Mercantilism is a good war civic, coupled with caste system. It's also a great civic for very large empires to run with Pacifism in conjunction to make the best use of the GP points. (Merc + Pac + Nationhood is very nice for large empires). In many of my Marathon games I will delay getting Economics to get more castles and better use of them, as the bombard bonus still exists after they become obsolete I think. Lastly it can be used to deny foreign corporations to infiltrate your cities... not that the AI has every really spread corps to any of my cities, usually because I found most of them

Free market is great if you have friends across the ocean and if your empire is relatively the same size as your friends.

 

[Iranon]

Mercantilism is often good if you care about relative progress ('x techs ahead of anyone else') rather than absolute progress ('tech x by turn y'). If you have a large empire and perhaps a vassal or two, canceling foreign trade will hurt your former trade partner far more than it will hurt you. Especially on high levels where everything the AI gets will be multiplied.

Before corporations, I tend to prefer Mercantilism if I'm capable of running Representation.

 

[Dirk1302]

FM always. With proper buildings those 4 trs can go up to ~32 commerce/turn .No way you can beat that with merc. I often prefer decentralization to merc as well. It's not often that every other civ is in merc.

 

[Smokey McDope]

state property

 

[UWHabs]

FM always. With proper buildings those 4 trs can go up to ~32 commerce/turn .No way you can beat that with merc. I often prefer decentralization to merc as well. It's not often that every other civ is in merc.

Happened in my current game. Teching was slow, and everyone switched to Merc. Nobody switched out for quite a while. And unfortunately, the only couple people who weren't in mercantilism didn't want to open borders with me.

If you have the trade routes, I'll almost always prefer to be in FM than Merc, but if not, it's not a bad alternative.

 

[Kawalimus]

Can you still have Vassal trade routes under Mercantilism? I'm pretty sure you can, unless they changed it. I never use it but I will consider it if you can still do this. I always forget about it.

 

[Insanity_X]

yes, though I dont think they get the 'foreign trade route' bonus.