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Has anybody done any comprehensive analysis on the Mercantilism civic?
Instinctively, it'd seem to me that Merc would be a pretty bad choice (unless, of course, you are in a state of war with everybody and wouldn't have foreign trade routes in any case). Trade routes contribute a *lot* of commerce to your cities, and foreign trade tends to be the most valuable. On the other hand each of your cities gains a free specialist, which is somewhat useful - but the bonuses they give could just as well be gained by pumping the commerce from foreign trade into science (no, you don't *directly* gain extra production or culture from science beakers, but you do gain it indirectly by inventing forges, factories, and new culture-generating improvements - and if you've already invented the culture slider you could use the trade routes' extra commerce to increase culture that way).
The free specialist helps generate Great People, but that's only of importance in cities that you're already gearing towards GP production - a city which only gets GP points from a single specialist isn't going to be generating lots of them in any case. So according to this, the only case where Mercantilism is useful is a situation where you've either developed most of the tech tree already and have no use for commerce (but then you already have access to more advanced economy civics) or if for some reason don't have any foreign trade in any case. To make things worse, Mercantilism has a Medium upkeep, which makes it the second-most expensive Economy civic - only Environmentalism, with High upkeep, is more expensive.
Of course, I haven't really done much analysis on the numbers - it could be that the impact from foreign trade routes isn't as big as I'm making it out to be, or then there's simply something else that I'm missing (what?).
Instinctively, it'd seem to me that Merc would be a pretty bad choice (unless, of course, you are in a state of war with everybody and wouldn't have foreign trade routes in any case). Trade routes contribute a *lot* of commerce to your cities, and foreign trade tends to be the most valuable. On the other hand each of your cities gains a free specialist, which is somewhat useful - but the bonuses they give could just as well be gained by pumping the commerce from foreign trade into science (no, you don't *directly* gain extra production or culture from science beakers, but you do gain it indirectly by inventing forges, factories, and new culture-generating improvements - and if you've already invented the culture slider you could use the trade routes' extra commerce to increase culture that way).
The free specialist helps generate Great People, but that's only of importance in cities that you're already gearing towards GP production - a city which only gets GP points from a single specialist isn't going to be generating lots of them in any case. So according to this, the only case where Mercantilism is useful is a situation where you've either developed most of the tech tree already and have no use for commerce (but then you already have access to more advanced economy civics) or if for some reason don't have any foreign trade in any case. To make things worse, Mercantilism has a Medium upkeep, which makes it the second-most expensive Economy civic - only Environmentalism, with High upkeep, is more expensive.
Of course, I haven't really done much analysis on the numbers - it could be that the impact from foreign trade routes isn't as big as I'm making it out to be, or then there's simply something else that I'm missing (what?).
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