Useing merchants?

How do I use merchants?

Merchants are your traders, and your entrepeners. When stood next to a resource on the map, they will start trading that at a number of florins per turn. The best strategy is to place a merchant on every type of a resource in the region, which gives your merchants the "Monopolist Trait". Better merchants get more money, and can resist and carry out buyouts of other merchants.

It's all in the Manual :book:

And a merchant will get you more money for the same trade good the farther away that the trade good is from your capital. So it behooves you to send merchants to far corners of the map (accompanied by a couple decent assassins, to fend off other countries' merchants from taking you over).

It's best to focus on things like gold and ivory (southern Africa), amber and furs (Scandinavia), silks and fabrics (Byzantium) or marble (Italy).

I am confused about how to gain a monopoly

I always see people specify having a merchant on every resource in a "region".

So I tried to monopolize the wine in France but I've been sitting on all the wine I can find there even some in the Germany region but I am not getting any monopoly bonus.

I do see other wine resources like in Italy but I thought since it is not in same region it wont matter.

Do I need to monopolize all the resource son the entire map?

Also, what exactly is the bonus for monopoly?

Do I get more cash in trade per resource?

Or is it just a trait bonus to my merchants?

I think there cannot be a foreign merchant in the territory as well and also you will have to wait awhile to get it.