Gold / Merchant Strategy?

[Crim]

Does anyone have any insignt into this strategy type yet? I have played plenty of Diplomacy Victory games before where I was able to easily have 100-200gpt, but the strategy around those games still focused on a more classic "Science Focus" in which I focus Great Scientists and Research to gain the upper hand or "Hammer Focus" in which I focus Great Engineers for either massive hpt or rushing wonders.

I have honestly never tried a true "Gold" build, where the goal is to focus Great Merchants. In my mind I have always even considered Great Merchants a curse to get. Since it meant delaying Great Engineers or Scientists.

So let say we do try for an all out Gold build, focusing Great Merchants. Buying commonly Buildings and Troops instead of only on emergencies. Focusing GPT, and buying Buildings instead of squeezing out hammers.

Oh, and lets ignore Venice in these discussions. I suppose they would be the easiest to accomplish this game play strategy. however I feel like we would learn the least from it.

[Crim]

To begin, how should we shape our Social Policies, it might seem obvious at 1st but perhaps not.

Usually the question would beg - Tradition vs Liberty... However Honor shows merit here is as well since they can reduce the cost of having an updated army by a significant amount. After you chose a Primary Social policy, which should you strive for second?

Patronage? Use that gold to more directly enhance your dealings with City States? After all, in the end it is likely that a sizeable sum of your gold will be deposited directly into their greedy pockets!

Commerce? The most heavily focused on Gold, primarily if your kingdom is land based. Commerce not only will reduce your road tax but also provide more Great Merchant

Exploration? While not gold focused, it is also another tree that would massively help this type of empire. Especially since Sea Trade routes inherently provide much more gold than Land Trade does.

Rationalism? Science is still important...

[di eshor ribly]

Rationalism does have gold per turn from science buildings, but you can actually get more gold from the Piety branch. Rationalism is great, dont get me wrong, but once you hit late end-game the science bonus doesnt really do much for you. The Piety branch, on the other hand, can really become a gold producing, unit-buying-with-faith-and-gold, economic powerhouse if you play like i do: with no time limit, and actively trying to screw the computer out of any possible victory scenario (I'm a jerk like that).

Exploration and Commerce are two very good options as well, even if you're not using land or sea trade routes, they help offset the costs of common buildings and help produce more gold.
I have had civilizations with 2000+ gold per turn in late game. Especially since trade routes are such a massive part of your civ's income.

Edit: I forgot to mention that the Trading House (merchant) and Holy Site (prophet) are the two highest gold-producing Great Person improvements in the game (holy site after you get the perk from Piety tree).

[Crim]

Hmm, It stands to reason that different Civs would want different Social Policies

For example, your Piety Gold strategy instantly triggered the name Arabia in my head. Tho I think Portugal would sooner focus exploration and Siam might go after Patronage.

I always glossed over Piety tree as I felt it weaker than Tradition or Liberty, primarily since I feel it has a lot of 'dead' choices. Tho if the goal is only really Theocracy for the 25% gold from Temples and +3 Gold from Holy Sites. Then we would really only need to spend 3 SPs instead of 6, which means we might be able to also fit in Liberty or Tradition as well.

Ignoring Religion tho would be foolish, Church Property and Tithe are able to produce absolutely massive amounts of gold and we can likely get other very powerful bonuses from other Religious options. Not to mention it actually provides us the mean to faith buy our Great Merchants if we do focus Commerce after.

[di eshor ribly]

I agree it depends on which civilization you are playing as, as well as if you made your own religion or not.

The way I play (recently) is to turn off most of the victory conditions (I was ALWAYS accidentally winning through culture when I wanted Science for example). Most of my games now are played with Conquest and Diplomacy on, and everything else turned off. For some reasons this feels more realistic to me as no one has built an interstellar spaceship, and no civilization has "won" through culture.

So which victory conditions are enabled also has an impact on what policies you would choose for an economic powerhouse. I like my games to last a LONG time, so you'll reach the end with or without the Rationalism tree.

In general, I fill out either Liberty or Tradition (depending on what size I want my civ to reach, obviously), then Honor (gold for killing stuff? Yes please!), then Religion, and get parts/most of Commerce/Exploration before I finally focus on my idealogy. Sometimes more if the game just goes on forever (I had one game where I filled up pretty much every policy tree and then had to store my extra culture away forever.)

With the right religious choices and utilizing the Great Improvements, you too can have more gold than you could possibly use in a single playthrough. On my latest game my treasury was sitting around 300,000 something gold with 2600-ish gold per turn, a very respectable army (my military score was around 3 million), I only had 8 cities if I remember right, and I could have bribed every civilization left into declaring war on each other just to watch them fight for my enjoyment.

I only recently starting playing around with Piety over Rationalism and it's made a huge difference. If you can start a religion early enough you can make insane amounts of faith per turn (my highest was around 800 faith per turn) and save even more gold by buying units with faith (with the correct religious perk). It starts to snowball after a while.

The moral of that story: Just like in real life, the Church is a massive money making venture.

[Danny]

Exploration is pretty strong and can get a great start with carthage as your civ. Mostly for the x2 gold income from trade routes but the biggest thing would be getting the major wonders that add more trade routes and plus big ben is great too. I forgot how but I read online that you can also get buildings and units to cost 65% less so that would work great.

For later game policies after tradition I would say a rationalism commerce combo if you have a ton of hills around you. I say hills because food is great from farms, and because we buy everything inthis build then hills would be great to put trading posts on for the production at the same time for minor things.

Patronage maybe you can get the gold gifts are 25% more but other than that the others dont help much.

For ideology Im notsure which to choose because I dont really everremember which policies each has.

[di eshor ribly]

I think Freedom is the better money choice in the idealogies. Order reduces the cost of some buildings, and Autocracy makes the army cheaper, but Freedom lets you get great people faster, which means more Merchants and Prophets. Really, any of them would work fine, but I give the advantage to Freedom, slightly.

[Danny]

Originally posted by di eshor ribly:

I think Freedom is the better money choice in the idealogies. Order reduces the cost of some buildings, and Autocracy makes the army cheaper, but Freedom lets you get great people faster, which means more Merchants and Prophets. Really, any of them would work fine, but I give the advantage to Freedom, slightly.

I thought order and freedom both have a +25% faster great person ability? Except you are right as freedom gives the half food consumed from specialists and half happiness cost from specialists. PLUS statue of liberty could make up for any production lost from building trading posts on hills (reffering to my strat)

[hateu1]

test

[♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥]

If you're going with that strategy, the best empire to use is England due to it's naval superiority.

[Twelvefield]

As far as I am concerned Patronage is the only mandatory branch of the Social Policy Tree that needs to be maxed out. A gold-building strategy is not just gold, but gold+happiness. Science is okay, since it unlocks things, but that's all it does. Gold buys things, and happiness lets you buy as many of them as you can. With a happy gold producing empire, you can go very wide. If you run into unhappiness, you just buy more happy buildings. If your run out of gold, you use your wide empire to crank out gold-producing buildings.

So, Traditionalism is not great, but it's not useless. Liberty? Sure, why not. Piety is very good if you like religion. But Patronage = Absolute Must Own. Once you start allying CS's, you get huge boosts in happiness and lux resources, which you can turn into gold to buy more CS's.

The OP talks abouut 200 gpt. In a truly successful world, you can approach 1,000 gpt. This allows you to insta-ally (yes that's a word) any CS on the map regardless of how they feel about you on each and every turn. At that point, you are essentially Dr. Evil, and Austin Powers and his meddling father are both dead before the opening creadits.

My favourite for this are the Dutch, since they get happiness for trading away the last of their resources. You trade away everything (offering the last resources as bribes is especially good), and then your people become overpoweringly happy. Since you don't need to spend gold to keep them happy, you can spend it on other things, like CS's, or buying armies, or expanding wide with a wave of settlers. The only thing you cannot afford to do is to break trades, so you generally have to play friendly.

[Crim]

I managed to complete a Small Quick game today testing Portugal for this Strategy. I played MP, Small Quick Continents. I was lucky to be isolated so I did not need to worry about Military. By industrial Era I already owned every city state and was producing just under 500 gpt. I only had 3 cities since my isolated area was fairly small, but it hardly mattered since the VAST majority of my gold was coming from Trade Routes out of the Capital. Each route was making 40-45g (even to City States).

Opening - Great Lighthouse -> Colossus -> Masoleum, building things in between research times, and I think I researched Calender somewhere in there for Happiness
I maxed out Tradition and was able to get a decent religion because of Pantheon, After Tradition I took went Exploration for the +3 production and +3 Happiness, then 1 point Commerce and then finished Exploration. I do regret this slightly however, I do not feel getting the hidden sites or admirals was worth it. However since I lacked Rationalism I was behind in tech of even the guy who had 400 points less than me. This was with every one of my cities having maxed science specialists and having the highest population in the game. Oh, and I went Freedom.

Late game the Mayan player noticed I was basically just going to win thru Diplomacy, and declared a pretty massive war against me while I was completely unprepared but holding 10k. Out of nowhere there were like 10-15 frigates and ironclads at my door. I quickly bought units and wall upgrades, but they still took my city. They then moved to my capital but I got lucky again, a GS spawned and I bulbed it to unlock Flight. With Red Fort in the town(160 def), I bought 6 bombers and destroyed every Frigate across a few turns. Waited a few more turns after the Navy was down to bomb my old city and take it back. The rest of the game was uneventful (except for the part that Maya came back like 50 turns later and dropped 6 nukes on my Capital, but wasn't able to take it since I had a small navy this time blocking him from getting a melee close).

Overall I felt having this much gold to be insane! I had every City State EASILY under control, I did not have Happiness troubles since the moment I did I would just insta buy a Happiness building. In other games I would often feel that Wonder Spamming delayed Infrastructure, in this game I just bought infrastructure in my Capital and had Wonders going 24/7. Quick starting Cities felt great, instead of waiting for them to slowly molasses into something decent, I just bought 3-4 buildings and it was instantly a decent city.

Issues... Rationalism is still too important to pass up. The early game felt a little weak, but I think I could fix that. Trade routes are important, and it hurts to lose them! Since trade routes are such a massive part of your economy, you take a massive penalty during war. Not mention if your opponents plunders all your routes, he makes huge bank!

[Matthew]

Massive puppet empire + trading post spam + free thought + max commerce. More difficult to do with BNW (puppets will add to city science penalty), but it can still be done. Try and get some sexy jungle tiles (preferably with +1 culture pantheon).

Alternatively, play as Venice on a island-based map. Kind of difficult not to break 1k gpt...

High gold strategies are fun. Not often talked about because high science will just flat-out win you the game, but if you aren't looking for record finish times, a lot of fun to mess around with. Drop the difficulty down to Emperor for a slower paced game, bump up to large with 12 Civs/ 24 CS's, and play it almost like a sandbox game where the goal is to buy the world.

The war-monger version of it is actually a lot of fun, too. Stack Big Ben, Honor (yes I know it is a weaker tree), and Autocracy. If you are aggressive enough, the amount of gold you get per turn from killing enemy units will be enough to rush-purchase more, snowballing into a massive wave of death across the map.