Economy.mp2

The resources which your cities extract from surrounding tiles are the source which powers your nation's economy. Here each of the three resources is described.
===Food Points===
Your population needs food to survive. Each citizen requires 2 food points per turn. Each Settler requires from its home city 1 food per turn in Anarchy, Despotism, Monarchy, and Communism; 2 in Republic and Democracy; and 3 in Fundamentalism. Except for grassland, all terrain tiles without a special resource yield less than 2 food points, they cannot feed the citizen working them unless they are irrigated.
Every city has a Grain Storage of stored food (not to be confused with the building called a Granary). Cities producing more food than they require accumulate the excess in their Grain Storage, while those producing less than they require deplete their Grain Storage. When food is needed but none remains, starvation kills Settlers first, followed by citizens.
Excess food can increase the population: the city Grain Store has a limited capacity, and when it reaches full the city grows by one citizen and the Grain Store starts again at empty. But since Grain Store capacity increases with population, each growth in population is more costly than the last, making this mode of growth important only for small cities. Grain Store capacity is capped at a ceiling of 70.
There are three buildings which enhance food production and/or population growth:
{| cellpadding="4" width="100%"	
	Granary
cost:35 upkeep:1
requires:Pottery
===Production Points===
Every city generates at least one production point per turn. These points are first demanded as upkeep for any military units, Settlers, Workers or Engineers supported by the city; each unit costs one production point per turn. Under autocratic regimes each city supports a few units for free. If city production drops too low, the units that cannot be supported are disbanded.
Points in excess of any required by the city's units are applied towards whatever unit, building, or wonder has been selected as the city's current production. Just as food points accumulate in the city Grain Store and yield a citizen when it reaches full, so production points accumulate until the cost of the product has been achieved. Products appear in their city when complete — units appear on the map while buildings and wonders are added to the city. Any leftover production points are applied toward the city's next project.
Each player chooses to build buildings, units, or wonders that his technology makes available, with a few restrictions: 1) Each city can have only one of each building. 2) Some buildings require that others be built first. 3) A few Wonders can only be completed by one civilization per game. Be careful—the game gives you the freedom to produce units you cannot support and buildings whose upkeep you cannot afford, which will be disbanded immediately after completion. Note that building Settlers requires not only production points, but 1 citizen as well. A city cannot build a Settler with its last citizen unless you enable this by adjusting its City Options, in which case the city will be abandoned and turn into a Settler.
You can change the production of any city, but you will lose half of the accumulated production points when switching from a building, unit, or wonder to one of the other two categories. If you change production the turn immediately after completing an item, you won't lose any of the production points that were left over from that turn. You can spend gold to complete a project in one turn by hitting the Buy button in the city dialogue. The cost formula for units is: Gold = 2P+P2/20, where P = remaining production points needed. The formula for buildings is Gold = 2P, while the formula for wonders is Gold = 4P. This creates a different "exchange rate" between gold and shields for production in the three different categories, with Gold getting the best exchange rate at making buildings, and Production getting the best exchange rates at making units and wonders.
Costs are multiplied by two if production on an item hasn't started yet (zero accumulated production.)
Should you need gold instead of production points, you can direct cities to mint Coinage. Instead of producing a building or unit, the city will use its labor to produce one gold piece per turn for each production point it generates.
Several buildings enhance production. Note that each city can have only one of the four power plants (that is, only one of Hydro Plant, Power Plant, Nuclear Plant, or Solar Plant):
{| cellpadding="4" width="100%"	
	Factory
cost:140 upkeep:4
requires:Industrialization
The wonders King Richard's Crusade and Hoover Dam also affect production. (Courthouse, Eiffel Tower, Supreme Court, and Temple of Artemis may give a minimal +1 bonus on production.)
====Work Lists====
When a city completes a unit, it normally starts producing another of the same type, and after completing a building or wonder, chooses a different one to build. New cities start work upon the best available defensive unit. Often you will instruct the city to work on something else instead, but this wastes time and attention if you already know the next several items the city should produce. In this case you should access the work list for that city and specify several products in sequence. The city will produce them in the order specified.
===Trade Points===
Trade reflects overall wealth generated in each city. Some trade points may be lost to corruption, which varies among forms of government and increases with distance from your capital city. Each city divides its remaining trade points into three items: gold, luxury, and science. The amount given to each is controlled by the Tax Rates you select for each. Obviously, gold gives money for spending, and science helps research new technology. Luxury controls citizen morale and can unlock different effects in different forms of government.
Though you may alter your tax rates on any turn, you are constrained to multiples of ten percent, and most forms of government limit their maximum value.
Buildings and Wonder directly affect trade directly, or indirectly by affecting corruption:
{| cellpadding="4" width="100%"	
	Palace
cost:70 upkeep:0
requires:Masonry
Notes: Ecclesiastical Palace also functions as a Palace. Voyage of Darwin functions identically to Colossus. The Supreme Court functions as a Courthouse in every city in your nation. Marco Polo's Embassy increases Trade by +40% in every city in your nation.
=== Trade Routes ===
NOTE: Trade Routes were unavailable in the old Multiplayer ruleset. Micromanagement, geographic luck, and volatile revenue formulas made imbalance & too much effort. The Marco Polo Wonder was substituted. This made a better overall game, but the role of economic relations on diplomacy and war was eliminated. MP2 brings back the OPTION to use Trade Routes, but with radical re-balance and simplification. 
/show trademindist - shows minimum distance for trade routes. [Default=12]. /set trademindist 999 to disable Trade Routes.
Besides gaining trade from tiles around a city, you can increase trade by establishing Trade Routes between cities. This is done by creating a Commerce Unit (Trireme, Caravan, Galley, Freight, Caravel, Cargo Ship). The Commerce Unit must go to a foreign city that is at least twelve tiles distant.
The nation who sent the unit immediately gets gold revenue from selling its goods at the destination city. Transportation advances (Railroad and Flight) decrease the premium for goods delivery, reducing one-time revenue by approximately ¼. Thereafter, a Trade Route will produce ongoing revenue for both cities, every turn. 
An ongoing Trade Route benefits its origin and destination equally. Both cities will get trade revenue each turn. In MP2 rules, trade revenue depends on—and only on—the sum total trade of both cities.  
Routes produce no revenue if you are at war with the other nation, but activate when relations improve.
Each city may have one Trade Route with a foreign city. This creates natural scarcity: there are only as many routes as there are cities to fill them. If you attempt to establish more routes, the first Trade Route will be replaced if its revenue is less than the new route. This means high trade cities can aggressively "muscle" their way into foreign cities by replacing the lesser Routes of other nations. To view the current Trade Route info in your city or in a city your diplomatic unit is investigating, click the Trade Route button inside the City screen.
Trade Routes can be a political tool. You can offer them to a foreign nation, knowing that they will lose income if they go to war with you.
In MP2, extra trade income makes average return on investment (ROI) when compared with other top tier investments. The effects may still be significant. Increased trade may be just enough to help a low trade city celebrate, or to stall an increase in the national luxury rate, or to gain diplomatic favour from another nation.
To view the current trade routes of a city, click the Routes button from the city view.
==== Enter Marketplace ====
Commerce Units also have the ability to enter a non-hostile foreign city's Marketplace building (if it has one). If both cities are high population and high in Trade, it's hypothetically possible for this to provide more profit than producing Coinage. In peaceful situations where every conceivable economic improvement is already finished, this could provide a last investment option that never expires. Income from this action goes only to the nation who sent the commerce unit.
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