Great Merchant advice

[Rancidlunchmeat]

What year is it Pad? You've got spies but no trade route that offers more than 900 gold?

Something seems... off.

[padillah]

No, no. The GM is like a spy. The AI can't see him and I can just wander around looking at everything and taking notes.

Sorry for the confusion.

IIRC it's about 2500BC. Temple of Artemis popped the GM.

Tom P.

[Arrian]

I generally settle GMs in my shrine city. I haven't used one on a trade mission in quite some time.

-Arrian

p.s. I'm pretty sure the AI can see and kill great people...

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

The numbers game makes settling a Great Merch irresistible. Drop him in a city with Wall Street, Market, Bank and Grocer, and you're looking at 18 coins per turn. Plus the food and culture. Unless there's less than 100 turns left in your game, it seems like an easy choice.

[Yosho]

I've gotten more then 4000 gold from a great merchent before. If you can get to a large city on a different continent, it's worthwhile. Of course, that's not possible 150 BC.

By the way...is that confirmed that the AI can kill great people? I've never seen that happen...

[eris]

Originally posted by Yosho
I've gotten more then 4000 gold from a great merchent before. If you can get to a large city on a different continent, it's worthwhile. Of course, that's not possible 150 BC.

By the way...is that confirmed that the AI can kill great people? I've never seen that happen...

I have gotten up to 7300 on a huge map Marathon mode. I use the chunk of change to upgrade obsolete defender units on all my border cities. It makes an identifiable vertical jump on the power graph at the end of the game. "I know when that was!"

Yes, the Great Folk can be killed. Had a Great Merchant get too close to the war zone on the way past and ZAP! There was much cursing and mumbling and throwing of tantrums.

[rah]

On standard maps I've seen 2000-2400. Early in the game with nowhere far to go to. I'll settle it in my cap or a good city that's going to need food. In the middle game I too look for that 2000 grand that I'm going to use to upgrade my best 16 calvary units to gunships.

Side note. Culture bombs are good for AI capitals, THEN target the cities surrounding it. That way as you take them you can use the space between them and the cap since that area will be claimed by the cap as soon as you take the surrounding cities. If you take the surrounding cities quickly, the cap won't starve down to uselessness and you can take advantage of all the sweet buildings there.

[Yosho]

Yeah, very true. The best use of a culture bomb is to set it off right after you take an AI city, especally if you take a key city inside enemy terratory and aren't probably going to be able to take any more before you need to make peace.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by eris


I have gotten up to 7300 on a huge map Marathon mode.

That's because it's marathon.The equivalent at normal speed would be 2800 which, although good, is unlikely to be better than settling for 18 gpt unless you have a pressing need for cash. The alternative is to simply run a cash surplus to get your upgrades or even build some new units.

By the time you get nearer the end of the game, the golden age option will often be better unless you have played a very timid game

[KillerBean]

I find the merchants are great tools for upgrading your army especially defensive wise.

Great Artist's works are awesome for building colonies! You set up a city, boom and you have acess to all the resources near you...as well as greater LOS for defending against barbarians...AND most importantly it blocks off the other civs from establishing strong colonies near you b/c your culture advantage blocks them off.

[Yosho]

The golden age option for any great leader is almost never better then just cashing great people in for technologies, if they've got any techs you want. Even the first golden age is terribly under-powered, unless you've got a huge empire with a lot of economically developed cities (in which case you should win anyway).

Anyway, very early in the game, it's better to settle him. However, if you can get 3600 gold from cashing him in, or 18 gold per turn for settling him, you shouldn't even consider settling him unless you expect the game to last 200 more turns. (Take a look at the "turns left" thing in the victory conditions; if there's less then 200 turns left until the game would end with a score victory, and you think you can get 3600 from cashing him in, don't settle him). And even if the game will last 200 more turns, it's much better to get 3600 gold now then later; gold now=faster science=even more gold later. However, at that point, you can take other factors into account as well, like the extra food, and it becomes a more intersting decision.

Cashing a great merchent in is usually better then trading him in for a tech, if you can safely get to a large distant city; the money you get is generally a lot more then the beakers you'd get from the tech, in my experence.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Yosho
The golden age option for any great leader is almost never better then just cashing great people in for technologies, if they've got any techs you want.

In the end game, though, lightbulbing gives a pittance. Even for a modest but economically strong civ (eg: with good Oxford & Wall St cities). 1000-odd beakers will only shave a turn off a modern era tech. You'll get more than that with a GA, plus the hammers.

[joncnunn]

Myself, I almost always prefer the trade functionality. But that's because my military tends to be small and so I occansionly need a major cash infusion to upgrade my army.

[Yosho]

Originally posted by Cort Haus


In the end game, though, lightbulbing gives a pittance. Even for a modest but economically strong civ (eg: with good Oxford & Wall St cities). 1000-odd beakers will only shave a turn off a modern era tech. You'll get more than that with a GA, plus the hammers.

I figured it out in a different thread, and this was the conclusion I came to.

By the way, lightbulbing a great person is usually a lot more then 1000; in my experence it's closer to 2000 beakers for each great person.

Originally posted by Yosho
(shrug) The real question, it seems to me, is how many people do you have working the land?

Doing some quick BOTE (back of the envelope) calculations, so feel free to correct any mistakes I make...

If you have 150 people working the land (10 cities x 15 people per city, with no specilists) that's +150 commerce per turn, for 8 turns (1200 commerce), times whatever multipliers you have. If the commerce multipliers for all the cities for the type of commerce you have it set to throughout your empire average out to 50%, that's 1800 commerce; if they average out to 100%, that's 2400 commerce. So you'll probably be somewhere in that range.

You also get extra hammers, but only from the land that already produces hammers; not from grassland cottages, or water tiles, or flood plains, ect. If half of your tiles produce hammers, that's +75 hammers a turn, which comes to +600 hammers times modifiers. If the average modifier is +50%, (say, half of your people are working in cities that have forges, and half have forges and factories and coal plants), that's +900 hammers total.

1800-2400 commerce and 900 hammers are a lot, but that's still less per great leader then what you would get if you traded both leaders in for technology, or if you spend an engineer building a wonder, or a great merchent on a trade misson, ect. (shrug) Generally speaking, I don't think Golden Ages are worth it, unless you have a HUGE empire and good multipliers; I would say, you want to have at least 200-250 people working the land before it's worth considering, I think.

[couerdelion]

The 10 cities is not really a large empire. By the late game you should have at least 20 and probably 30+ cities.

I'd consider the Golden Age at around the 25+ mark and before that probably look to settle in the Wall Street city