[Speculation] Great Merchants + Trade Routes

[SalemSage]

Seeing as this new expansion is going to be focusing on a number of things, trade included, why not spice up the Great Merchant a little?

Currently, nobody EVER wants to spawn a Great Merchant. While they're nice, the cost of getting one (aka giving up a Great Scientist or Engineer) makes them undesirable.

With what's been said about starting out with 1 trade route and getting more as the game goes on, what if great Merchants help you out by giving you more of them? That way, if you focus fully on science - Great, you've got a lot of science! But your trade route options will be VERY limited.

This idea probably needs a LOT of fleshing out, but Great Scientists and Engineers are great already, Great Artists are being split into Artists, Musicians and Writers to help with a Cultural Victory, so I think an ability like this could really make Great Merchants viable and worth getting.

What do you think, everyone?

 

[Morningcalm]

Great Merchant tile improvements nearly always suck too, whereas the 8 Science from an Academy early game really pays out in spades. I agree Great Merchants need a boost. Part of the reason why they suck also is that even though trade missions give a lot of money, the 500+ coin they give is only really enough to get one friend or ally.

 

[Zet]

I agree that great merchants need some love. Using them to create extra trade routes or enhance existing ones would be interesting.

The customs house is quite frankly lousy without full freedom tree, and the trade mission is only good with completed commerce tree.

How about being able to settle great merchants in cities where they would give (an) extra trade route(s) or increased trade income?

 

[Glassmage]

What I did for my own civ5 copy is give Dutch UA include a bonus of +2 gold for Great Merchant improvement.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I'd like to see the Great Merchants lay down some maintenance-free roads or railroads that could speed your caravans along their way. The sooner they arrive the sooner your payoff...I think.

 

[Calouste]

We know that rivers and coast will no longer produce gold, probably making gold tighter, so that in itself will make a Great Merchant more worthwhile. An extra trade route sounds good though, I've always disliked the disadvantage that a Great Merchant has that you have to send him somewhere outside of your own empire to use his special ability, which both makes it take longer before you get the benefits and puts you at risk of losing him.

Btw, now that Great Artists etc. make Great Works to put in Museums, will the other Great People also "upgrade" buildings rather than put an improvement on a tile?

 

[joncnunn]

We know that rivers and coast will no longer produce gold, probably making gold tighter

If nothing done to replace it, yup, gold will be extremely tight in early game compared to current.

I'm hoping that there is a change to light house to also add +1 gold in all coastal tiles and that there is a change to water mill to also add +1 gold to all river tiles to offset this. (Either this are remove maintenance costs of several early buildings; gold is extremely important in Civ V and currently a non-river start is really bad.)

 

[Calouste]

If nothing done to replace it, yup, gold will be extremely tight in early game compared to current.

I'm hoping that there is a change to light house to also add +1 gold in all coastal tiles and that there is a change to water mill to also add +1 gold to all river tiles to offset this. (Either this are remove maintenance costs of several early buildings; gold is extremely important in Civ V and currently a non-river start is really bad.)

The river/coastal cash is supposedly replaced with trade route income, which starts to become available at Animal Husbandry and Sailing, so quite early. Still, it's going to have quite a few possible effects. Developing luxuries asap is going to be more important just to keep the cash flowing. Early rushes might become a lot harder because the most convenient target for a rush is also the most convenient target for an early trade route that generates the money needed to keep your army in the field. And Deity players might find it a lot harder when the A(I)TM is almost empty.

 

[Knut_Are_M]

The gold is not a big problem really. just settle on lux, trade with city states and run a small deficit. Also if you have alot of military units gold is of an even smaller issue, you just bully CS for quite large amounts of gold every 15 turns.
As long as you have some excess science a deficit does not matter.
You do not loose units, only 1 science per gold deficit. If you lost units like the tooltip said it would have been a different story.

 

[joncnunn]

The river/coastal cash is supposedly replaced with trade route income, which starts to become available at Animal Husbandry and Sailing, so quite early. Still, it's going to have quite a few possible effects. Developing luxuries asap is going to be more important just to keep the cash flowing. Early rushes might become a lot harder because the most convenient target for a rush is also the most convenient target for an early trade route that generates the money needed to keep your army in the field. And Deity players might find it a lot harder when the A(I)TM is almost empty.

Developing luxuries is already the most important thing to get cash in Civ V early (often sold to the AI when the happiness not needed for a settler). And not just on Deity; the fast wining tactics from Emperor+ are all designed around taking the AI's gold.

I take it you'll have to at least discover city states and/or major AIs to get trade routes? In which case, it basically turns a start where there's no city states near by as bad as the no-river start with few luxuries is currently; only right now you can tell it's a bad start in 4000 BC and re-roll then; it would take a few turns to find out there's not a city state in sight.
At least the A.H. tech implies that you won't need to build a road; (if you had to build a road it probably wouldn't pay for itself)

 

[Calouste]

Developing luxuries is already the most important thing to get cash in Civ V early (often sold to the AI when the happiness not needed for a settler). And not just on Deity; the fast wining tactics from Emperor+ are all designed around taking the AI's gold.

I take it you'll have to at least discover city states and/or major AIs to get trade routes? In which case, it basically turns a start where there's no city states near by as bad as the no-river start with few luxuries is currently; only right now you can tell it's a bad start in 4000 BC and re-roll then; it would take a few turns to find out there's not a city state in sight.
At least the A.H. tech implies that you won't need to build a road; (if you had to build a road it probably wouldn't pay for itself)

Sounds like the fastest winning tactics are going to have to be redesigned if the AI don't have a lot of cash anymore.

You can also have internal trade routes, so if there are no other civs or city states nearby, you can spam cities and trade with them and make them grow faster by shipping food from your capital over the trade route.