Mercantilism

[The Beer Baron]

Does anyone use Mercantilism much playing as any of the civs? I have never used it. To me I think it's never worth it to have no foreign trade routes. There's usually someone I can get Open Borders with Also I think Banking is close enough to Economics that I just go get Free Market anyway.

 

[Edungeon]

I use Mercantilism when i am expanding my Empire ( when playing with America or Russia ), Free Artists are nice!

 

[Jet]

Compared to vanilla civ the dynamic is different, and Mercantilism seems weaker. (This is all based on my understanding, which I'm sure is flawed.)

• There's a stability incentive for open borders, so you're going to be struggling for those anyway.
• It's a huge and crowded map, so like you said you can usually find partners.
• There's no big motivation to deny your trade routes to other civs, because (a) no civ including you can be that dominant (b) all the other civs can also find trading partners other than you, especially with Aggressive AI being the default.
• In vanilla there's a dynamic where AIs switch to Mercantilism for a while, so it can become a civic that you adopt temporarily. But that's less in RFC due to huge/crowded, and in Europe because of England always beelining Economics. Furthermore there's a strong stability disincentive to switch to anything temporarily.
• In vanilla someone, more often the human than an AI, will have the Pyramids and early Representation
• With the stability bonuses for Police State and Nationhood, it seems designed for hegenomic civs with either large designated expansion areas, or synergistic UPs: Germany, Spain, Turkey, Persia ... ? But besides the problem of many civs being limited in the regions that they can expand into without stability hits, what can you really do with a hegenomic play style anyway, besides win the German UHV? The map is huge size, normal speed, and domination is effectively disabled. I guess you could force a time victory by expanding into a large area and razing cities of your space rivals. Or maybe a hegemonic style could get you a space or diplo victory earlier - but it seems like it would be quite tricky. For space, the hegemonic civics are economically weak and there are problems with switching out of them. I think you'd have to stay in Police State for stability, so you couldn't run Representation for synergy with Nationhood or Mercantilism. I could see using Nationhood/Mercantilism/Occupation for the extended land grab and switching to Free Speech/something/Commonwealth for the space win. For diplo, you'd have to make as many friends as you have made enemies, because the land+population that is practical to conquer in RFC gives you less of an edge in a diplo vote, compared to vanilla.
• On the other hand Mercantilism does seem like it could be a protection against Great Depression, because Environmentalism/State Property are a long way off and require dead-end techs. I'm not familiar with Depressions.

 

[ohcrapitsnico]

I use Mercantilism when i am expanding my Empire ( when playing with America or Russia ), Free Artists are nice!

Exactly how I use it, I played a game as the ottomans and used it because I had quite a large empire and was at war with nearly everybody in the world. That was the time when I decided I would benefit from it.

 

[senturus]

After a few games, I would say exactly the contrary.

I found very difficult to have trade boarder agreements, especially if you don’t have a navy that explore oceans and get contacts with Asians/Americans civs. And when you have only one economic partner, I’m not sure the benefits are enough sufficient.

When playing Rome by trying a domination Victory (I failed the Historical one), I had mercantilism and nationhood , which was a good combination for stability (and my worst enemy was collapsing risks), as well as expanding frontiers with great artists or producing tribunals (engineers) for poor cities. I only had Mali for vassal/economic partner (not a very good one), all the other civs didn’t rely one me (I finally managed to get open borders with Babylonians... and they declared war one just one turn after!)

And if you build the Sistine, with many cities the benefits is huge (but I missed it in my play).

 

[Lone Wolf]

Statue of Liberty + Caste System + Mercantilism + Representation. Wackoness.

 

[memdee]

I use mercantilism quite a lot.
Whenever...
-I have not yet met any civ that's nice enough to sign open borders or I don't want them to move any settlers through my territory, grabbing land I was going to settle eventually
-I was successful building the Sistine Chapel and/or Angkor Wat (or whatever RFC's pendant is spelled like).

In combination with representation and/or caste system, it's quite nice, too.

 

[Edungeon]

And with mercantilism your chances to get the plague are reduced.

 

[ltccone]

Mercantilism will be much more useful in BTS with the ability to keep foreign corporations out of your civ.

ltccone

 

[amaterasu]

I use it a fair bit,a lot of the time the civs don't like me enough for OP, or I am playing as a civ like russia where I want to stop them from acessing siberia or going through me ( also helps for things like army movement, gives me more map control)

Also the avoid the plaugue thing is important for me.