The secret to making florins:

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Originally Posted by Sinan

I don't get the normalisation trigger when allied.

It tests when the attitude is update (and when is that ?), it tests for allied factions, it will normalise 100% if these conditions are met, and what is 400 ?
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GHow I understand it (from reading the header of the document) is there in Normalisation you find the different between your present factionstand (with a particular faction) and the target vale (1.0 in this case) and divid tha number buy 400 (again in this case) and modify the faction standing bytha amoun recalculated each turn.

So the normalisation trigger when allied will very slowly move you faction standing with an allied faction towards Perfect over time. But the rate of this change is totally overwhelmed by the golbal negative on positive relationship generated by difficulty level; Very Hard, hard and even Medium. So in those cases being allied will simply slow the rate at which your relateionship deteriorates (of course at Medium it will bottom out at neutral.

Oh and I was mistaken about Hard difficulty, it is not normalized at Abysmal, it is Very Poor I think... If that makes any difference... :laugh4:

It is actually interesting that ransoming prisoners can hurt you, as if they don't pay you end up executing them. And you also get the Dread associated with Execute. So basically Ransom is just Execute with a chance to make money.

Here I thought it was a sort of neutral stance...

Over time it would average out as neutral, assuming they payed up half the time. Unfortunately they dont seem to pay up very often.

You know I sack every settlement I take and I am always at reliable to highly reliable... I don't see any big hits here. You just can't back stab. Let them attack you first or attack excommunicated factions.

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Originally Posted by Ice

So where are the best places to put merchants? I know their are silk deposits by Constantinople and Gold/Ivory near Timbuktu, but where else is good, besides the new world.

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The best places I've found so far:

Timbuktu (and the far southeastern portion of Arguin next to Timbuktu):

2 gold and 2 ivory
2 ivory and 1 gold (technically in Arguin province)

The advantage of this are is its remote locale. you only have to worry about enemy merchants if you aren't the Moors and the Moors take Timbuktu; in which case they will try to take out your merchants by acquisition.

Baghdad has two silk right next to the city. Constantinople and Nicaea also have silk spots. The drawback here is that every faction with a high level merchant will try to take these spots from you.

In the area between Vilnius, Riga and Novgorod are a bunch of amber sources. Several of these are high value amber and several are lower value. Just like with the silk near Constantinople, you can expect competition for these sites.

Another good resource seems to be iron, and there appears to be a value increase if you have a castle in that province; because the castles need iron for producing weapons, I suppose.

There are several "protected" resources which you can use if you have a problem with aggressive enmy merchants. There is an ore site in Ireland which keeps most merchants away since the AI rarely uses ships to transport merchants. There is another ore spot in the forest southwest of Stockholm, as well as some amber as I recall. You can protect this resource from enemy merchants by planting a useless general on Stockholm side of the landbridge to Denmark. This will keep enemy merchants out.

Wine and textiles can also be moderately lucrative, but you'll have problems with enemy merchants trying acquisitions. There's a good textile spot next to Antwerp and wine all over France.

For merchants, nothing really compares to the 3 gold and 4 ivory near Timbuktu, though. It's relatively safe from enemy merchants and concentrated in one area with the two highest value resources all together. The big drawback is replacing deceased merchants. This can be mitigated by taking Timbuktu and building a market . Then you can easily replace merchants when they die with a new one right next door. And if you take Timbuktu and Arguin, you can also build mines which vastly improves your take from the gold. :wink:

bump.