Attempting a Successful Acquistion of Another Merchant's Assets

Dear All:

Happy 2008 from Canada!!! I hope this finds you and yours not really hungover!! :2thumbsup:

In my game as Venice, I am assigned the mission of taking over a merchant's assets. The target merchant is the one from Portugal whom the Council of Nobles think has plenty of KA-CHING! I've tried acquistions in the past and failed miserably. :no:

Question: How do I go about making this and any future acquistions a success?

Live long and prosper, take care and thank you kindly!!!

Sincerely yours always,

Indy.

Fair way:
Use as good merchants as possible. (Don't know what buildings should be in city you make them (surely merchant guild), sit with them on resource which there are two instances in province you are sitting them, send them far from capital, stay few turns in setlement with caravan stop)
And use multiple (does not improve chance of sucessful take over, but if you use enough of them (use best first), you likely suceed in the end (only resonable if its for guild mission though, or you wnat to get rid of your own merchants)

Not fair (not realy cheating, but...):
Assuming that rand seed is saved with game (i think it is, but i'm not sure)
Save, try, if fail, load and do something else that involve random generation (eg use spy, hire mrecenary, autoresolve battle, ...) and try again.
If rand seed is not saved (so after each load it is different), just load and try until you succede.

The seed is saved, in a way. You will sometimes get a different result after loading once, but if you reload after that you always get the same (second) result. It also seems to me that this result is usually worse than the first one, although this doesn't really make sense so maybe I am just paranoid.

Gents:

Good afternoon from CANAda!!! I Hope this finds you and yours well. As for me, I could complain...yadda, yadda, yadda.

You guys lost me when you started using the word, "seed." What is the best way to take over the Portuguese merchant's assets? He's standing right there, waiting to go into either the Holy Roman Empire or Hungary. I"Ve just been taken over by somebody, and I'm toying with the idea of sending out TWO merchants.

Would it be a good idea to send two merchants after the Portuguese merchant?

Live long and prosper, take care and thank you kindly!!!!

Sincerely yours always,

Indy.

Seed = seed for the random number algorithm used (along with unit stats) to determine success or failure in auto-calc'd results, such as merchant takeovers, assassination attempts, etc.

On some games you can reload over and over, and eventually get the result you want. M2TW saves the state of its random number generators so that you cant really do this.

And yeah, 2 merchants will give you a better chance - if one fails the other can have a try. However bear in mind that if the first one succeeds then the enemy merchant will gain skill from this, and your second merchant will be less likely to succeed.

Unless you need the reward, it might be more viable to assassinate the merchant, providing you have a good assassin on standby.

Assassins success is also based on the targets skill so it might not be any easier. It depends whether you have been levelling up merchants or assassins I suppose.

Acquire, acquire, acquire.

1) The more merchants resources you acquire, the more savvy your merchants will be.

2) It's not considered a hostile move, unlike spying and assassinations.

3) It adds a chunk of change.

4) It hurts you opponents economies.

5) Everyone's doing it. You enemies and allies are going to do it to you and each other. It's the name of the game.

6) It causes your opponents to have to build new and inexperienced merchants, which will be easier to take out the next time.


Build up your own merchants by having two of them sit on similar goods in the same province, such as those two silver up around Austria or those two blankets around Milan. Sit them there until they get to Monopolist (acquiring passing merchants as they come) . France has a good set up for this with two dual wine provinces, or also around Constantinople is le pousse-pousse.

Trading in foreign lands can add virtues as well.

If you lose a merchant don't cry about it, just build another and start over. You'll be giving your gov merchant experience, and attracting merchant guilds.

If you're concerned about keeping your money men about, save before you attempt your little financial maneuvering. Your get a different percent on the second take if you fail the first. If the second doesn't work, change some things about, such as moving other agents or military men, and try-try again. Eventually, because of the laws of numbers you will win, even with small chances.