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Having had my merchant assets siezed on numerous occasions, I wonder how you go about getting merchants above a level 4 experience. It seems just leaving them on a resource over the years will get you to level 4, but after that it becomes tricky to gain more experience by taking another's assets away from more experienced AI ones.
Should have mentioned it was M2TW.
I find that building merchants out of cities that have merchant guilds really helps. I focus on building merchants on a select number of cities to build up the guilds, as well. Anyways, out of my experience with M2TW, I'd say that practice makes perfect with merchants. Worst-case scenario, you'll just have to recruit another merchant if you lose yours. Unless your faction is an economic powerhouse, merchants aren't too useful, in my opinion, anyways. At best, I've only had a surplus of a thousand florins, give or take a hundred, through merchant trade. I have a tendency to train up assassins, and when they're not busy, I send them on merchant-hunts.
merchants can be real money spinners - my style is to turtle so i use them heavily.
1) pick a good trade coastal city and get a merchants guild there (build all your merchants there, build market line/port line/wharf line of buildings)
2) when you have a level 3 merchant, keep an eye out for low level AI merchants that you can eat
3) send them to an out of the way valuable resource. e.g. timbuktu, baghdad even the amber in sicily is good (you can block the landbridge and minimise the competition)
4) try for monopolist traits (you get this when there are two resources of the same type in a region, and you have a merchant on one and no AI merchant on the other one, or your merchants on both)
5) read this thread
good luck!
just reposting that link (dumb newbie stuff)
merchant thread
Put them on gold in Timbuktu if mines are placed there. I got a full level merchent
Remember, always be aggresive with merchants. I find it easier to attack a higher level one than defend from a higher level one