Here's the basic idea behind not running Merchantalism:
Here's a decent trade city. It's actually Paris minus the undesirable French elements and I built the Great Lighthouse there. My capital is landlocked.
Check out those trade routes and that is what you should expect to see in a size 15 city with a harbor and WL 2.08 or later AI's, or 1.61 AI's later in the game.
Now here's the power. I have 3 such trade-monster cities, each is bringing in approximately 30 extra pure commerce in trade at this point in the game, for some perspective that's as much as working 5 mid-game Towns - except without needing the workers. It's as much as 5 rep scientists.
But the effect is actually greater than it appears. Because all the good trade is concentrated in a few cities I can place Academies in those cities. I thus get that 30 commerce being further multiplied by the academies - while only one or two rep specialists would be being multiplied.
Now the truly awesome trade-monster city is a coastal capital running Bureaucracy - because trade routes are pure commerce they get increased by 50%. So lets say you have a size 20 coastal capital and some good trade partners (large cities) and have Great Lighthouse and Free Market - this will bring in trade routes along the lines of 15/14/14/13/12 usually - about 60 more than you'd get under Merc and without heavy trade-focus. Now that 60 is then multiplied by +50% from BigB, it's 90. Now you multiply it again by an Library, University, Observatory, Academy and Oxfords University, +225%, becoming ~300 beakers.
The typical city has about +75% science multipliers (the computer labs are fairly late), so that means 6 beakers from a rep+merc free scientist becomes 11 beakers. To match the trade income from the *capital alone* you need ~27 cities with the free specialist and bear in mind that there will probably be that much beakers again coming in from "lesser" trade cities - around 500 beakers from trade, and you'd only need about 6 cities to pull in that income rather than a good 40 cities.
Trade can be hugely powerful if you have the right wonders and right allies, it can massively outstrip the benefits of Merc - MASSIVELY.
The saving grace of Merc is really that you don't need to bother with having friends, you can just be like Tokuagawa and say "Screw the world!". It works well when no-one likes you because you're killing everyone.
So merc works wonderfully for warmongers with large city counts and few friends, but for the true peacemonger giving up trade income will hurt far too much to even contemplate merc.
However for the warmonger State Property usually works better, because SP allows foreign trade routes it will still make a profit over Merc even if it doesn't reduce upkeep by as much as Merc increases income from specialists. Because that trade income counts. Unless of course you literally have no friends, but even then state property watermills and workshops can be great. State Property is actually usually better than Free Market too, unless truly embracing the "trade monster" concept, it may not be betterer enough to bother reseraching Communism or eating Anarchy though (but with any larger than average empire, SP is simply the best civic).
Representation can still be good, mainly because the peace monger doesn't bother with large garrisons, using diplomacy instead to stay safe, as such there is sometimes little benefit to running HRule.
Universal Suffrage is basically useful once Emancipation has driven out Slavery. It's also useful for getting maximum hammers for spaceship building. Combining Universal Suffrage with State Property can result in the best hammer yields in the game.
Here's a decent trade city. It's actually Paris minus the undesirable French elements and I built the Great Lighthouse there. My capital is landlocked.
Check out those trade routes and that is what you should expect to see in a size 15 city with a harbor and WL 2.08 or later AI's, or 1.61 AI's later in the game.
Now here's the power. I have 3 such trade-monster cities, each is bringing in approximately 30 extra pure commerce in trade at this point in the game, for some perspective that's as much as working 5 mid-game Towns - except without needing the workers. It's as much as 5 rep scientists.
But the effect is actually greater than it appears. Because all the good trade is concentrated in a few cities I can place Academies in those cities. I thus get that 30 commerce being further multiplied by the academies - while only one or two rep specialists would be being multiplied.
Now the truly awesome trade-monster city is a coastal capital running Bureaucracy - because trade routes are pure commerce they get increased by 50%. So lets say you have a size 20 coastal capital and some good trade partners (large cities) and have Great Lighthouse and Free Market - this will bring in trade routes along the lines of 15/14/14/13/12 usually - about 60 more than you'd get under Merc and without heavy trade-focus. Now that 60 is then multiplied by +50% from BigB, it's 90. Now you multiply it again by an Library, University, Observatory, Academy and Oxfords University, +225%, becoming ~300 beakers.
The typical city has about +75% science multipliers (the computer labs are fairly late), so that means 6 beakers from a rep+merc free scientist becomes 11 beakers. To match the trade income from the *capital alone* you need ~27 cities with the free specialist and bear in mind that there will probably be that much beakers again coming in from "lesser" trade cities - around 500 beakers from trade, and you'd only need about 6 cities to pull in that income rather than a good 40 cities.
Trade can be hugely powerful if you have the right wonders and right allies, it can massively outstrip the benefits of Merc - MASSIVELY.
The saving grace of Merc is really that you don't need to bother with having friends, you can just be like Tokuagawa and say "Screw the world!". It works well when no-one likes you because you're killing everyone.
So merc works wonderfully for warmongers with large city counts and few friends, but for the true peacemonger giving up trade income will hurt far too much to even contemplate merc.
However for the warmonger State Property usually works better, because SP allows foreign trade routes it will still make a profit over Merc even if it doesn't reduce upkeep by as much as Merc increases income from specialists. Because that trade income counts. Unless of course you literally have no friends, but even then state property watermills and workshops can be great. State Property is actually usually better than Free Market too, unless truly embracing the "trade monster" concept, it may not be betterer enough to bother reseraching Communism or eating Anarchy though (but with any larger than average empire, SP is simply the best civic).
Representation can still be good, mainly because the peace monger doesn't bother with large garrisons, using diplomacy instead to stay safe, as such there is sometimes little benefit to running HRule.
Universal Suffrage is basically useful once Emancipation has driven out Slavery. It's also useful for getting maximum hammers for spaceship building. Combining Universal Suffrage with State Property can result in the best hammer yields in the game.
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