An intriguing aside in the Civ4 manual

[Son of David]

Pages 60-61: 'Only commerce generated by your cities can be turned into research: monies you earn from trading, pillaging and looting, and merchant activities, and so forth are not available for this purpose.'


So if I, for example, trade a technology to the AI for several hundred gold pieces I am not able to use that money for researching other technologies?

And what is meant exactly by 'merchant activities, and so forth'?

Seems like this could be doing with a bit more explaining - maybe one of you could elucidate.

[gilfan]

there's a difference between commerce and gold.

commerce is what you get from tiles, represented by an image of gold coin. They probably could have chosen a less confusing image. Commerce is diverted by you into either science, culture (once you have the right tech, I believe Drama), or actual gold.

You can use gold to pay maintenance costs, give to other civs, or hurry production in cities if you're using universal sufferage.


You can turn commerce into gold, you cannot turn gold into commerce.


[edit]
If you suddenly get a huge gold influx from another civ, you can't turn it directly into science, but you COULD max out your science rate and run your civ at a deficit until your gold reserve is down to 0 again.

[Son of David]

Ahh! I see.

Gold is an output. So if you get say 200 more gold from another civ that doesn't directly have a bearing on what your cities are able to produce although it could finance your ability to run deficits by getting your cities to run at higher research rates than you could support before.

Perfectly logical. Thank you

[Crossfire]

Another example is the Great Merchant. If you send him on a trading mission and pull in $1500 this goes straight into gold and is not added to commerce to up your research level.

[Enigma_Nova]

Does the Great Prophet's 5 gold go through commerce first, or straight into the treasury?
I seem to notice my funds taking a large leap forward when I settle the GP somewhere.