Mercantilism

[DaveMcW]

I agree with Refar. Jump into Mercantilism if you run out of foreign cities to trade with.

The world's economy will suffer much more than you.

 

[Artichoker]

I often find my strongest opponents adopting Mercantilism. If I find the bulk of world power adopting Mercantilism, then I will do so myself, in order to compete with the top leaders.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

I don't buy the arguments about helping the AI more than you. If you have 18 cities and they only have 6 then quite frankly you don't care how much you help them - you are going to beat them. But both of you are stronger through trading than you would be on your own.

My rule for mercantilism is simple - if I make more with it then I'll use it - otherwise not. In an SE game, its worth 6 commerce units per city approx and in a CE game typically 3 per city. If there are enough trading partners then usually just one foreign trade route at that stage in the game is enough for a CE city to be as profitable without mercantilism. With two trading partners of roughly equal size then my good cities will all have three international trade routes making probably around 15 commerce units - far better with free market. Obviously if there are no trade partners run mercantilism.

I like the mutual benefit of the trade routes - the AIs that I am helping are my friends. My future allies in battle and tech trading partners. If they are bigger and stronger than me - then I get proportionately more benefit from the trade routes. If they are smaller than me then I am happy to help them keep up - they are more useful to me that way.

 

[DaveMcW]

I don't buy the arguments about helping the AI more than you. If you have 18 cities and they only have 6 then quite frankly you don't care how much you help them - you are going to beat them.

How about if half of those 6-city empire are allied to your tech rival?

 

[InvisibleStalke]

How about if half of those 6-city empire are allied to your tech rival?

Actually trading to the weaker allies of your rival works pretty well - including their vassals. The AI isn't as good as a human at managing its tech trades and a lot of those beakers are going to get sunk into techs that aren't going to benefit your rival anyway. And if the weak civ is allied to a strong rival of yours chances are they may have already maxed out their foreign trade routes, so you aren't adding any. It works purely to your gain.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

There's also an undocumented change to mercantilism in BTS. You can still trade with your vassals which makes it even better for pre-state property warmongering.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

There's also an undocumented change to mercantilism in BTS. You can still trade with your vassals which makes it even better for pre-state property warmongering.

Do these count as international trade routes fully? That seems quite a decent bonus.

 

[DigitalBoy]

I've noticed the being able to trade with vassals under mercantilism, but the yields don't seem especially big. Maybe they count as domestic trade routes.

 

[UncleJJ]

I don't buy the arguments about helping the AI more than you. If you have 18 cities and they only have 6 then quite frankly you don't care how much you help them - you are going to beat them. But both of you are stronger through trading than you would be on your own.

This isn't really true as I demonstrated in my example Mercantilism can, depending on relative sizes, both reduce the AI income AND increase our own. It does matter how much trade income you give the AI if you intend to attack them due to their large bonusses to research and production. It is very much hader to overcome defending riflemen with your own troops than taking on longbows or muskets. So an invasion will be more costly in material or time.

I like the mutual benefit of the trade routes - the AIs that I am helping are my friends. My future allies in battle and tech trading partners. If they are bigger and stronger than me - then I get proportionately more benefit from the trade routes. If they are smaller than me then I am happy to help them keep up - they are more useful to me that way.

I find many of my most lucrative trade routes are with rivals (AI that could win the game) that I need open borders with to keep good relations and to help spying, they are not really my friends. So Mercantilism is a good way to keep good relations with them while limiting the commerce benefit in many situations. If you really want to help an AI ally just make them a gift of technology or units. The trouble with using trade routes to help them is the AI decides what they research and that might be against your interests. I tend to play for Domination victories so helping any rival AIs makes the number of targets harder to find and delays the game. For me intentionally helping any AI, other than a vassal, with trade routes doesn't make sense. It is always against your own interests. And of course Mercantilism gives a vassal normal trade routes with your civ with open borders, another benefit of the civic.

 

[Charou]

as mentionned earlier, bonuses given by mercantilism are very flexible.
IMO that's better that a raw advantage over your whole empire. Civ 4 is about city specialization.

I can barely recall a game in which I didn't use this civic.
A usually have a large empire by the time I hit banking.
statue of liberty on top of it, on a continent game is ... incredible.

 

[AmazonQueen]

I'm rumming merchantilism atm.
An SE pre-astronomy on a continent with 4 other civs the largest of which Toku is also running it and my choices atm are Decentralisation or Merchantilism. It has its uses.

 

[AlessioCerci]

I like free market.

 

[cabert]

Yes, free market is great if you have corporations (it reduces the cost!).
But when you don't (because you're playing warlords for instance ), mercantilism has its uses.

Short list of situations where you can make good use of mercantilism :
1) Everyone hates you (or runs mercantilism). You can compare a free specialist to 1 domestic trade route. It's pretty rare that the trade route is better than a free specialist.
2) you're the big boy (=more than 30% land). This means that most of your trade routes are going to be domestic anyway. Almost same situation as 1, finally. However, your best trade routes may very well be in your best cities. It's even very likely. So if your best cities are really better than the others (happens often when running for domination, your last cities are fillers more than anything else), you may still be losing out.
3) You're running a SE. It's very likely that you don't have all the buildings in all the cities. Your cities probably aren't ready to use the commerce to its full power. This means that 1 specialist that you can choose brings in more than commerce that you use for culture anyway to keep your big cities happy.
4) you don't care about techs or gold. You want production. A free specialist can be an engineer or a priest, or in any case a citizen (1 hammer is still better than 0).

 

[DrJambo]

Like others, uses for mercantilism:

1. You're the largest empire, most of your trade routes are domestic and your rivals are benefitting more from open borders trade routes than you are from theirs.

2. No-one likes you and you don't have many open borders agreements.

3. You're isolated and pre-Astronomy.

4. You're warring and want your newly conquered cities to get up to speed quicker, either using an artist for culture or an engineer for production. After music or drama, one can always produce culture using hammers, so it's not a major pro.

5. You're running representation, have built the Statue of Liberty and are running a strict SE.

It's specialised civic and overall, unless my civ is globally despised, I'm at war with a lot of civs, or I have by far the biggest empire, I tend to avoid mercantilism.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

One additional addendum, if your empire is intercontinental (not all on the same land mass) you can get domestic Intercontinental routes which come close to the value of foreign ones. (this can be done with a few Island cities)

 

[Philo_Beddoe]

I use it with representation all the time, works great until state property.

I rarely use free markets.

 

[Milly]

It's a SE civic that synergizes with the other SE civics (rep/pac/cs). Also, a good warmongering civic prior to SP. Another of the many reasons why SE goes well with warmongering.

SE? CS? SP? o__o;; *Clueless, and can't find the acronyms in the glossary in the War Academy*

 

[DigitalBoy]

SE = specialist economy
CS = caste system in this context, also commonly refers to the Civil Service technology
SP = state property

 

[Immaculate]

If you are running Mercantilism and you have open borders with rival civs do they still get foreign trade routes with your civ?
I ask because it is sometimes important to keep open borders for reasons other then the trade routes (military access, spying, etc).

I.

 

[DrJambo]

no, they don't.