The Merchant Stack

[Zorba the Great]

Hi,

This is a nifty tactic that I've been using for one city challenge games up to Monarch level & I'm trying to adapt it to standard games.

Firstly, pick a Philosophical civ so that your GP points are doubled from the word go.

Next, beeline the Oracle COL slingshot and go into Caste System. Put two Science specialists on in the city & build the Science Academy with your Great Scientist.

Then switch to two merchant specialists & maintain as many merchant specialists as you can for as long as possible.

Add all of your Great Merchants to the city. You're hoping for as many Great Merchants as possible because each Great Merchant that you add gives an extra food as well as the gold. So with every two Great Merchants you can add a further merchant specialist which gives you more GP points...

The Pyramids is a nice wonder to have with this tactic as when in Representation all of those specialists then generate two science beakers each for you. National Epic is useful to keep the GP points up.

Pacifism, Bureaucracy & Caste System are the civics of choice.

I find that just the one city can stay level on science with the AI for a long time if you're also trading techs well and encouraging your neighbours to fight each other as much as possible.

I've been a follower of the forums for a while now without getting round to posting anything myself... hope the merchant stack tactic is useful & let me know what you think of it anyway!

 

[jray]

Yes, it's a useful technique, and even better if you can manage to generate a Great Merchant to found Sid's Sushi (or perhaps Cereal Mills) for even more food! The only tweak I might suggest is to switch back to lots of Scientists during periods where you have more research-multiplying buildings than gold-multiplying buildings.

 

[Antilogic]

I think some variation on this idea has been posted before, under the tenative title of ME, merchant economy. To be added to all the other financially-related neologisms that Civ4 has wrought on our innocent tongues...

 

[King of Town]

ME( Merchant economy), SE ( Specilaist economy), EE ( Espionage economy), CE ( Cottage economy), TRE ( Trade route economy)... am I forgetting any? ME is my personal favorite. I just like the word merchant though, and that's probably why. If you are able to run at 100% of science slider or 0% ( where you are making the most money) the cottage economy is far better though. If you aren't running that high then the SE is better, though only if you are running a pure specialist economy ( one type of specialist). I am talking about settling all of your great people in the town that produces them, and not factoring in lightbulbing techs.

 

[Soneji]

If you are able to run at 100% of science slider or 0% ( where you are making the most money) the cottage economy is far better though.

That is no longer the case with BtS afaik. There is no longer any rounding of the numbers, so 0% and 100% no longer have any advantage.

 

[magicalsushi]

What about warmonger economies? Isn't there a "pillaging economy", and also an "anarchy economy", where you rely on switching civics every five turns to postpone the inevitable decline of your warlike civilisation due to a massive deficit...

 

[PieceOfMind]

What about warmonger economies? Isn't there a "pillaging economy", and also an "anarchy economy", where you rely on switching civics every five turns to postpone the inevitable decline of your warlike civilisation due to a massive deficit...

Perhaps, but as I'm sure you know the anarchy economy is shunned by many and strictly banned for HOF games. In the first versions of vanilla civ4 you didn't need to wait the number of turns between switching governments (IIRC) so it was a much worse exploit then. It's utility has been decreased with patches of course.

 

[Neo Guderian]

Production Economy. Pour all your hammers into research. This is especially powerful lategame with the advent of Mining INC.

 

[zenspiderz]

Don't forget the priest/monk/prophet economy.

 

[lutzj]

the corporation economy? spread your corporation to other civ's cities and rake it in while they fold under the maintinence!

 

[Defiant47]

That is no longer the case with BtS afaik. There is no longer any rounding of the numbers, so 0% and 100% no longer have any advantage.

So you're telling me that if I get 55 gold at 0% science and 55 beakers at 100% science, at 50% science I will get 22.5 beakers * multipliers added to my research even though it shows 22 gold and 22 beakers?

 

[Soneji]

Thats what I read anyway... I'll go see if I can find the post again.

 

[King of Town]

The reason why I said that was I made three islands in WB two had cities where every square was farmed grassland, and another where on every square there were towns. If you run at 100% gold production or 100% scince production the town island won easy, I mean it wasn't even close. If you ran a hybrid they started to become equal I think around 80%. I made the cities large enough so that every tile was being worked in the town city and where every farm was being worked and the excess was going into specialists. I even settled like 8 of the specialists to account for that part of the game. According to the polls most people use hybrid ecnomies ( one that I missed earlier) so I think that is probably the best way to go at it.

 

[Zorba the Great]

Thanks for the replies, I didn't realise how many economies there were out there!

Would the best spaceship-win strategy be to run a merchant economy until cottages have developed into towns & then move over into a cottage ecomomy by switching to the appropriate civics?

Would Elizabeth be the leading contender for this sort of play?

And if not her then who?

Thanks again.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

So you're telling me that if I get 55 gold at 0% science and 55 beakers at 100% science, at 50% science I will get 22.5 beakers * multipliers added to my research even though it shows 22 gold and 22 beakers?

I'll put my 2 in here, because I recently 'had it out' on these forums about binary research and always running the slider at 100% ...

It depends on where you're view those numbers from. If you're looking at the city screen, then yes, 22.5 and 22.5 will be applied to your economy.

If you are viewing those numbers in the Financial Advisor window (<F2>), then you are, indeed, losing research and/or gold due to rounding errors.

However, because rounding is only done by the Financial Advisor after all other non-rounded numbers have been calculated, you will never lose more than 0.99 , 0.99 and 0.99 due to rounding errors.

Read Quechua's article on Gold, Beakers, and Deficit Research for a lot of really good info related to using specialists and the science slider to maximize your economy.

-- my 2

 

[Antilogic]

However, because rounding is only done by the Financial Advisor after all other non-rounded numbers have been calculated, you will never lose more than 0.99 , 0.99 and 0.99 due to rounding errors.

This is how I understood it. Unless you are seriously a munchkin, losing 1 of any of those shouldn't be much of an issue. Firaxis didn't take out the rounding thing completely, just changed it so the effect was marginal instead of significant (as it was before the fractional points were used).

Don't forget !