Merchant civilization

[chotteadore]

Hi everybody,

I think a very good strategy is to take profit from your civilization's strength, and take it to the limit. For instance, I made an interesting experiment by building a very trading civilization (map of Earth, customized Phoenicians with Cirus personality).

From the very beginning, I mainly researched economic and seafaring technologies, established colonies along the sea, where interesting resources could be exploited, and built the Great Lighthouse and the Colossus. So far, five great merchants have been born in my cities.

The result? I am very wealthy, and have no problem in switching tech and culture rates to high levels while not loosing any money, even if I maintain long-distanced colonies in the Mediterranean and Africa, so I don't have a lack in those senses. I trade all my surplus resources with other civilizations, which adds more revenues and improves my diplomatic relations. So, with a relatively small army I have been able to expand as I always have 'friends' to deal alliances with (and they have been quite efficient in our wars, I must say).

So, in the end, you can buy happiness

 

[svv]

It may not fit in with your plans, but the other way to aquire lots of cash in a city is religious shrines. I just played two games where I kept to one city until I got 7 and then 6 religions, and built the shrines there and made great prophets. Farm everywhere, and build great library and have science specialists until you can hand off science duties to a second city with lots of cottages. Then switch to priests and merchant specialists, and build national epic and wall street.

In both games I had enough cash to keep the sliders at zero percent gold throughout the game and, after building the Kremlin, buy anything I wanted in my cities.