What are the benefits to Mercantilism?

[Uncle_Rico]

Could someone explain what the benefits to Mercantilism are? I do not understand why you would choose that over another civic. 1 free specailist per city is good but you do not get any foreign trade routes. That to me seems as if it would kill your economy.

Thanks for all your input.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

Could someone explain what the benefits to Mercantilism are? I do not understand why you would choose that over another civic. 1 free specailist per city is good but you do not get any foreign trade routes. That to me seems as if it would kill your economy.

Thanks for all your input.

The benefits are as you said, one free specialist per city. Remember these specialists have their various , , , mulitiplied by civics and buildings, and they can be quite effective in some situations. Merc to me, is generally a transitional civic before Free Market.

Its best uses are when you are a) isolated or b) have very few open borders and cities to trade with, which can happen through wars and religious differences. It can also be used as a "spoiler" civic, as the no foreign trade routes works both ways, but that usage is very limited. A hellbend warmongerer might find it quite useful, i.e if you've been at war with so many other nations, that nobody else wants to trade with you.

To me, Free Market or State Property are nearly always better civics, when you get them that is.

 

[DarkFyre99]

Could someone explain what the benefits to Mercantilism are? I do not understand why you would choose that over another civic. 1 free specailist per city is good but you do not get any foreign trade routes. That to me seems as if it would kill your economy.

Thanks for all your input.

For starters, it has good synergy with Representation, Pacifism, Caste System, and the Philosophical trait. If you've got a specialist economy, Merchantilism is very useful.

In addition, as an empire grows, fewer and fewer of your cities end up with foreign trade routes, while foreign civilizations end up with many trade routes to your cities. IIRC, each civ only gets one trade route to each city in the game. If there's thirty-five cities in the game, and you own five of them, you have thirty potential foreign trade routes. If you own twenty of them, then there's only fifteen potential foreign trade routes. In other words: in a large empire, foreign trade routes favor your rivals, rather than yourself.

Also, foreign trade routes require open border agreements. If you've been conquoring your neighbors, you may not have a lot of people willing to sign one of them with you. Other conditions, where a lack of open border agreements exists, include: isolation , having a different religion from all your neighbors, or having Tokugawa as a neighbor.

All this means that as you move towards a domination victory, a lack of foreign trade routes may become a non-issue.

 

[Uncle_Rico]

Thanks for the info. I guess I did not look at it that way. I can see how depending on your particular strategy Mercantilism can be useful.

 

[KMadCandy]

this recent thread had some discussion about it. opinions varied, of course!

 

[Dnomal]

I rarely use Mercantilism, but when i do i usually have representation and cast system on. That means each city can have one extra scientist giving 6 research, which is the same as having one extra town for every city, and having 100% research from it!

Mercantilism gives a strong bonus, but the cost is high, unless your isolated anyways, in which case it's win win win.

 

[porto_alegre_xP]

well, i just use it if no one of my cities have foreign trade routes, what is rare.

 

[azaris]

Free Market is overrated. With enough cities, running merchants under Mercantilism will easily recover the lost revenue, plus you get extra GPP points, plus you get beakers under Representation, plus you deprive all the AIs from foreign trade routes to your cities. Do the math and it can easily be worthwhile.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

Free Market is overrated. With enough cities, running merchants under Mercantilism will easily recover the lost revenue, plus you get extra GPP points, plus you get beakers under Representation, plus you deprive all the AIs from foreign trade routes to your cities. Do the math and it can easily be worthwhile.

Don't want to start another Free Market arguement, but map size must be also taken into consideration as well. If its a huge map with say a dozen civs left in the world (fairly typical for me), then there are probably 120 ish cities on the map. If you have 20 of those (large cities), and have open borders with 3 or 4 others with similar large cities, then the extra trade route is worth a lot more than a merchant can generate. Also, on these huge maps, you're not really depriving anyone of anything by not trading with them, there's plenty of other ais out there to trade with.

 

[PimpyMicPimp]

The econmic civics are the most situational ones in the game. Merc, Free Market, and State Property all have times when they shine, and when they are next to worthless.

 

[Defiant47]

When you have many smaller cities, then mercantilism is good. When you have fewer larger cities, then free market is good.

 

[Swedishguy]

There was some patch who changed Free Market upkeep to medium. Mercantilism could be quite useful in that case.

 

[futurehermit]

Couple of things:

1) Mercantilism is a key specialist-economy civic. Remember specialists give you great person points which generate great people.

2) If you are at war you can lose foreign trade routes anyways. This makes mercantilism a war-time civic.

3) There is a period of time in the game where most other civilizations have adopted mercantilism since there isn't any other option in that civic route. During that time you won't be getting any foreign trade routes either, so you might as well follow suit and adopt it.

All of these points suggest a warmongering, specialist-economy approach to the early game, which actually has a lot of synergy with a lot of the other early civics (slavery, caste system, vassalage, theocracy, pacificism), especially if you get the pyramids (representation, police state).