Great Merchant advice

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by couerdelion
By the late game you should have at least 20 and probably 30+ cities.

Why should I have 20-30 cities if I'm playing a peaceful game? I just got a spaceship win on Monarch with 10 cities.

[Cort Haus]

Yosho, your analysis doesn't include the town-hammer available from Uni Suff, which makes a very big difference. By the end-game, there's every likelihood that there will be plenty of towns and Uni Suff being run.

My end-games are usually about SS parts. GE's won't help there, though they are nice a little earlier for the resource wonders. Golden Ages can speed up a SS substantially.

I'll check on the beakers, but even if it's nearer 2000 on normal speed, standard maps, that's still less than two turns research. I'd expect to gain more than two turns off the SS and around two turns off research from a GA at this time. If, OTOH, my research was very slow compared to my hammer output, then I would consider blasting a chunk out of a tech with a GP.

[orange]

If later in the game, I just airlift them close to the largest friendly nation's city. I usually get between 3000 and 3800 with 'em. Nice chunk of change

Earlier on you can ferry them somewhere far away to get the same effect, or pop 'em into a nearby foreign metropolis for some quick cash.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Cort Haus

Why should I have 20-30 cities if I'm playing a peaceful game? I just got a spaceship win on Monarch with 10 cities.

Then don't use GPs for Golden Ages if you have another use for them

[Tokyo Sexwale]

Biggest I've got from a GM is 9600 on a large map (on marathon, which is all I play). I usually settle if it's before 1500AD. If making a trade route, I use the money to upgrade units.... actually I sometimes wait until discovering Rifling or Assembly before using the GM to do this. It's a great way to keep those already promoted troops current.

[grassmarket]

Yes, I had 6100 for my GM last night. It's worth shopping around because for some reason the 17 pop Roman cities were only offering 4000 or 5000 for him, but a 13 pop city gave me 6100, which is now being used to finance the dismemberment of the Japanese Empire. But the principle is correct, in the early game any Great Units is better being invested in joining a city, or founding their special building or (in the case of engineers) building a wonder that won't go obsolete than in creating a golden age or researching a tech, unless it's one of the techs that founds a religion.

[couerdelion]

I’ve never been a great fan of upgrading units simply on the grounds that, for many of them, you don’t get your monies worth by doing this. Now, I can accept the logic of upgrading the reasonably well promoted Axeman or Swordsman to Maceman to Grenadier but this is if they are particularly useful/important to a war.

But the choice might also be to simply build some new units and if production is high enough the cost of building new units might be much less than the cost of upgrading.

Now if I am making enough money to run a strong tech rate I can use the GM money either to rush build or to upgrade. For me, the rush build gives much better value for money while continually upgrading can be a big drain on gold