In response to an old post that was resurrected recently I tried a game using a merchant economy ... specifically using a GP farm with merchants to support a high science slider.
I still only have vanilla, so this may be of quite limited interest to most. I thought that 2 leaders might be ideal for this ... Mansa Musa spi/fin, and elizabeth fin/phi. I decided to go with MM figuring that I might want to switch civics more than usual, and because my strategy would probably result in founding 2 religions and cheap temples should help.
Also, I thought this strategy may be a good option for MM with an isolated start. The reasons I think this is that it is a strategy that does well with no war, builds a robust economy to survive isolation, and with MM financial, coast squares will be put to good use. So I restarted until getting an isolated start. Small map, continents, monarch level.
Turns out it wasn't the best test. I made no effort to beeline optics and meet the others, and didn't get optics until just before liberalism, waiting to get astronomy free. Usually when I wait this long, the AIs find me. Well, after building my caravels and scouting around, I found that the mongols where on their own island, I already knew Cyrus was on an island right next to me from the beginning since he would never trade techs despite being friendly, and that the last 2 civs started on their own continent ... and Alexander had apparently made quick work of Isabella. As early as 400 AD, the list of the top civs in the world had only 4 civs listed.
So there were 5 civs on 4 continents, with 1 getting quickly conquered, resulting in an interesting case of everyone isolated until about 1100AD when pretty much everyone got optics very soon after one another.
Given this, it would have been a cake walk on Emperor, and probably even immortal just because the AI can't deal with an isolated start very well.
Also, I started with 2 gold tiles in my capital, so another reason the map made this a pretty easy game.
But, overall, the strategy was fun, and seemed to work rather well. My second city was my GP farm, and after getting BW, a couple worker techs, and pottery, I went straight to CoL for caste system and started running merchants. Then, as I had planned, after a couple more key techs like fishing, sailing, currency, and CS, I grabbed philosophy. Running caste system and pacifism (a big reason I think an isolated start is good for this ... pacifism is just about required not being phi and depending on Specialists so much), the merchants and great merchants brought tons of cash.
The game is now just a dozen or so turns into the modern age. The GP farm has 8 settled GM + 2 GA, and is running 14 merchant specialists at size 17 with free ones from mercantilism and SoL. That's just shy of 300 gold from the city with Wall Street with the science slider at 100%. That +8 food from the settled merchants helps a lot.
Some benefits to running the economy this way ...
1. Ability to expand a bit quicker in the beginning, and still not harm research, basically turning the extra wealth into more cities and population earlier, which is very powerful with an isolated start when a quickly built economy is paramount.
2a. 3 of my key cities were production poor ... my commerce city which needed to be my capital for beauracracy, and needed oxford would have taken probably 200 turns or more to get all those building built. Also, my key 5th city for universities and banks for oxford and wall street would have taken forever to build them, and the same with my GP farm (which I didn't really want to whip. `I could have whipped, but the to be new capital had only a corn square to support it's dozen riverside grassland cottages, and whipping would have had a huge cost in commerce. So at a key point, just after getting education, while working on optics for the free astronomy, I made a short civics switch to US and Theocracy. To prepare for this, I spent about 8 turns, at about +150/turn with science at 0% to build up cash. Then I bought a forge, library, university, and palace in the capital, university in both city 5 and the GP farm, and also a harbor in GP farm. Switched back civics and now my new capital had benefits of forge and beauracracy and could start on oxford right away.
2b. Of course, I built the pyramids, doing a great deal of chopping, as I considered them key not just for early representation, but also for the planned switch into US to use all my shiny cash.
So now it's in the early 1600s, and I haven't traded a tech yet, as by the time I could, anything the AI had to offer I could research in a single turn. Used a GE from the former capital to build half of 3 gorges, and completed it with 2400 of my now 11000 reserve cash (have run 100% science the whole game except for about 10 turns at 90% right after getting all my cities out and 10 turns to build up the cash to buy the buildings mid game). Also bought factories in all my cities that couldn't build them quickly. Looking to be a very quick for me space launch sometime in the 1700s. Not too bad for monarch researching everything yourself.
In hind sight, I didn't switch civics as much as I thought would be necessary. Maybe if there was a little more food around, switching back and forth between slavery and caste system would have happened a lot. Only the GP farm had really good food, and even that not spectacular, with ocean fish, plains corn, and a grassland pig. Of the other key cities, the capitals (both old and new) each had but 1 food resource. 2 other cities had 2 food resources, but otherwise soso tiles.
The gold helped a lot, but aside from that, there were no spectacular city sites. The new capital became a powerhouse city early only because I was able to use the gold from my merchant economy to buy it's buildings. In the end, it was a game with 3 strong cities, one gold, one beakers, and one production. I think it demonstrated more than anything that the merchant economy has it's place in specialized circumstances. I'm convinced that on this specific map, any other economy I would have run would have come up a bit short in comparison (although with the AIs being isolated, still would have easily won). The initial capital had problems ... it could not specialize well as commerce, production, or GPs. Only with lumbermills and workshops later in the game did it really become a better than above average city. But moving the capital was problematic as well. The only real alternative was the spot I moved it to, but it had neither the food to whip nor raw production to straight build the required buildings to be a good cottage capital. The merchant economy solved all this by allowing the eventual capital to simply work the corn plus all cottages until the point I was ready to buy it's buildings, and then it became a mega-commerce city.
As I said, not really a strategy for all occassions, but it is fun (which is why we play the game), and can be powerful in its own way. I am curious to see if fin/phi would work better, and think it would have on this map, with cheap universities and more GP probably more valuable as I didn't switch civics much.
I still only have vanilla, so this may be of quite limited interest to most. I thought that 2 leaders might be ideal for this ... Mansa Musa spi/fin, and elizabeth fin/phi. I decided to go with MM figuring that I might want to switch civics more than usual, and because my strategy would probably result in founding 2 religions and cheap temples should help.
Also, I thought this strategy may be a good option for MM with an isolated start. The reasons I think this is that it is a strategy that does well with no war, builds a robust economy to survive isolation, and with MM financial, coast squares will be put to good use. So I restarted until getting an isolated start. Small map, continents, monarch level.
Turns out it wasn't the best test. I made no effort to beeline optics and meet the others, and didn't get optics until just before liberalism, waiting to get astronomy free. Usually when I wait this long, the AIs find me. Well, after building my caravels and scouting around, I found that the mongols where on their own island, I already knew Cyrus was on an island right next to me from the beginning since he would never trade techs despite being friendly, and that the last 2 civs started on their own continent ... and Alexander had apparently made quick work of Isabella. As early as 400 AD, the list of the top civs in the world had only 4 civs listed.
So there were 5 civs on 4 continents, with 1 getting quickly conquered, resulting in an interesting case of everyone isolated until about 1100AD when pretty much everyone got optics very soon after one another.
Given this, it would have been a cake walk on Emperor, and probably even immortal just because the AI can't deal with an isolated start very well.
Also, I started with 2 gold tiles in my capital, so another reason the map made this a pretty easy game.
But, overall, the strategy was fun, and seemed to work rather well. My second city was my GP farm, and after getting BW, a couple worker techs, and pottery, I went straight to CoL for caste system and started running merchants. Then, as I had planned, after a couple more key techs like fishing, sailing, currency, and CS, I grabbed philosophy. Running caste system and pacifism (a big reason I think an isolated start is good for this ... pacifism is just about required not being phi and depending on Specialists so much), the merchants and great merchants brought tons of cash.
The game is now just a dozen or so turns into the modern age. The GP farm has 8 settled GM + 2 GA, and is running 14 merchant specialists at size 17 with free ones from mercantilism and SoL. That's just shy of 300 gold from the city with Wall Street with the science slider at 100%. That +8 food from the settled merchants helps a lot.
Some benefits to running the economy this way ...
1. Ability to expand a bit quicker in the beginning, and still not harm research, basically turning the extra wealth into more cities and population earlier, which is very powerful with an isolated start when a quickly built economy is paramount.
2a. 3 of my key cities were production poor ... my commerce city which needed to be my capital for beauracracy, and needed oxford would have taken probably 200 turns or more to get all those building built. Also, my key 5th city for universities and banks for oxford and wall street would have taken forever to build them, and the same with my GP farm (which I didn't really want to whip. `I could have whipped, but the to be new capital had only a corn square to support it's dozen riverside grassland cottages, and whipping would have had a huge cost in commerce. So at a key point, just after getting education, while working on optics for the free astronomy, I made a short civics switch to US and Theocracy. To prepare for this, I spent about 8 turns, at about +150/turn with science at 0% to build up cash. Then I bought a forge, library, university, and palace in the capital, university in both city 5 and the GP farm, and also a harbor in GP farm. Switched back civics and now my new capital had benefits of forge and beauracracy and could start on oxford right away.
2b. Of course, I built the pyramids, doing a great deal of chopping, as I considered them key not just for early representation, but also for the planned switch into US to use all my shiny cash.
So now it's in the early 1600s, and I haven't traded a tech yet, as by the time I could, anything the AI had to offer I could research in a single turn. Used a GE from the former capital to build half of 3 gorges, and completed it with 2400 of my now 11000 reserve cash (have run 100% science the whole game except for about 10 turns at 90% right after getting all my cities out and 10 turns to build up the cash to buy the buildings mid game). Also bought factories in all my cities that couldn't build them quickly. Looking to be a very quick for me space launch sometime in the 1700s. Not too bad for monarch researching everything yourself.
In hind sight, I didn't switch civics as much as I thought would be necessary. Maybe if there was a little more food around, switching back and forth between slavery and caste system would have happened a lot. Only the GP farm had really good food, and even that not spectacular, with ocean fish, plains corn, and a grassland pig. Of the other key cities, the capitals (both old and new) each had but 1 food resource. 2 other cities had 2 food resources, but otherwise soso tiles.
The gold helped a lot, but aside from that, there were no spectacular city sites. The new capital became a powerhouse city early only because I was able to use the gold from my merchant economy to buy it's buildings. In the end, it was a game with 3 strong cities, one gold, one beakers, and one production. I think it demonstrated more than anything that the merchant economy has it's place in specialized circumstances. I'm convinced that on this specific map, any other economy I would have run would have come up a bit short in comparison (although with the AIs being isolated, still would have easily won). The initial capital had problems ... it could not specialize well as commerce, production, or GPs. Only with lumbermills and workshops later in the game did it really become a better than above average city. But moving the capital was problematic as well. The only real alternative was the spot I moved it to, but it had neither the food to whip nor raw production to straight build the required buildings to be a good cottage capital. The merchant economy solved all this by allowing the eventual capital to simply work the corn plus all cottages until the point I was ready to buy it's buildings, and then it became a mega-commerce city.
As I said, not really a strategy for all occassions, but it is fun (which is why we play the game), and can be powerful in its own way. I am curious to see if fin/phi would work better, and think it would have on this map, with cheap universities and more GP probably more valuable as I didn't switch civics much.
