Merchants--Less is more

I've given merchants another go on my current game. I've kept the numbers way down this time. I find that if I produce fewer merchants they seem to come out with more acumen.

The problem with merchants is you have to manage them. Navigate them across the map and attack merchants that are weaker and build up your acumen. This takes time but this game I only have about 5 merchants moving around the map. The best earner has 8 acumen and is making 500 florins a turn. He's on the gold just east of the Venetians cities. Working my way further east to Constantinople where I expect to make about 600 a turn for 1 Merchant. I have higher acumen merchants but they aren't on the gold . . . yet.

So this is what I've learned.

1. Build fewer merchants and they come out better.
2. Use a spy to help you find weaker merchants. (or toggle_fow)
3. Try to end every turn with your merchant on a resource so he makes money and gains experience.
4. If your merchant is on a resource he has a defensive bonus. I didn't read this in the code I just experience it out on the map. I also think the defense bonus is bigger on your own territory.
5. Not all resources are created equal. Find the good ones and camp them. The enemy will send you plenty of victims.
6. You can push enemy merchants off of resources by moving your merchant onto the upper right side of the resource while the fog of war still hides anyone there. For instance, scout the resource with your spy, and then move him away and then move your merchant onto the resource. One of two things will happen: Either the merchant will give up and go somewhere else or he will try to acquire you. Since you are at a resource you have a defense bonus.
7. Once you take out all of a factions merchants it pays to stick around and wait for them to produce more. If they do so consistently then you can bring in low level merchants and train them up there.
8. When you get a few good merchants keep them near low level merchants to protect them from predators. In fact your low levels will act as bait for other merchants looking for a score. Just make sure you get to them first with your high level merchant.

Currently my merchant income is 10% of my trade income which is a respectable income for just a few merchants. This income does not include acquisition moneys. (don't even know where to look for those) Sadly, I can't mass produce my merchants and increase my gains. Success with merchants depends a lot on micro-managing and keep their numbers small. Because you boost their acumen by making acquisitions and because there aren't that many enemy merchants out there then you reach a point of diminishing returns on merchant advancement.


All in all I'm finding it more manageable and profitable to produce just a few merchants. By using them aggressively they build up acumen faster and have more life to spend raking in cash on a high value resource. Problem is that it takes a while to build them up and sooner or later they die. As the game gets going any extra managing I have to do takes away from the game and makes each turn take forever.

Best resources I've found: Silks, Gold, Amber, Sugar, Marble in that order. Sometimes even Tin or Iron can beat have of those, but I'm not sure why.

Hehehe.. I'm using forts now... No need to even man them, just build them over every resource in your territory and your merchants are safe forever (And enemy merchants can't get at them).

LOL funny solution

I would also suggest building Law & Order buildings, town hall levels, in the city you train merchants to lessen the chance of negative finance traits in your newly minted merchants.

doesn't a Merchant Guild give you a higher chance on good merchants?

It gives you +1 or +2 finance to start, but that can still be offset by random bad traits.

Sorry, but you are dead wrong on the numbers of merchant having some kind of impact on the traits.

This is what affects merchants skill when being created:

At creation, start at level 1 for "natural merchant".
You then have 50% of having him advance to level 2 at birth.
If he is advanced to level 2 at birth, you have 33% of having him advanced to level 3 at birth.

If there is no town hall in the settlement, he has 50% to be a level 1 shady dealer.
If he advances to level 1 shady dealer, he has a 33% of being a level 2 shady dealer, right out the gates.

If there is a town hall in the settlement, he has a 50% to be a level 1 legal dealer.
If he advances to level 2 legal dealer, he has a 33% of being a level 2 legal dealer.

If he is created in a city with a cathedral or higher, and the population in the region is 80% YourReligion,
he has a 50% chance of becoming a Religious Merchant.
(Note: in my mod I raised it to 95%)
If he is a level 1 religious merchant, he has a 33% of being a level 2 religious merchant.

If he is created in a city with a master merchant guild or above, he gains the MerchantGuildTrained level.

If he is created in a city and the faction owns the Merchant HQ, he becomes a MerchantGuildMember.

Ancillaries:

If he is created in a city with an alchemists lab, he has a 15% of getting a counterfeiter.

If he is created in a city with an alchemy school or higher, he has a 50% of getting a merchant clerk.

If a caravan stop or higher exists, he has a 50% of getting a caravn driver at birth.

If a caravan stop or higher exists in the city where he is staying, he has a 10% each turn of getting one.

If a city hasn't built a town hall, he has a 5% of picking up a trick abacus!

I just noticed that merchants won't ever gain the level 2 legal dealer level. The trigger is faulty and does not award level 2. Easily fixed.

You forgot Spices in your "best resources" list.

Slaves are also really good.

Amber is great because there is so much of it in scandinavia and the baltic.

And building merchants in a town with cathedral or huge cathedral is disastrous. He gots quite religious (-1) or extremely religious (-2).

I've found that tobacco has been the best. I have two merchants in the new world. One has a merchant skill of 3 and generates 400 florins per turn. The other has merchant skill of two and generates 350 florins per turn.

Tobacco? i have 6 Merchants in the New World and each trade 1.1k per turn as Spain.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Basileus

Tobacco? i have 6 Merchants in the New World and each trade 1.1k per turn as Spain.

---

mmmm I seriously should consider playing this game past turn 50, some entire new things to discover ... income for example

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by seneschal.the

I just noticed that merchants won't ever gain the level 2 legal dealer level. The trigger is faulty and does not award level 2. Easily fixed.

---

Yup, either lower the requirement to 2 or up the points awarded when getting past level 1 to 2. Right now you can only get 2 points at most, while level 2 requires 3 points.

The ivory around Timbuktu/Arguin is really good too. I keep that area fully staffed on the ivory and gold

Well, it seems I have a rather different philosophy of merchants than the one in the OP.

Mine is all designed around minimizing merchant micro management.

General rules are as follows:

- Cluster merchants in areas that have multiple high value resources. As a rule of thumb, I like to see at least 4 or 5 high value resources in relatively close proximity. (e.g., get a merchant on all of the gold, ivory and slaves in Timbuktu/Arquin, all of the gold, tobacco and chocolate in the New Word, etc.)

- Don't bother much with merchants until you get close to controlling a valuable area. When you take Timbuktu (or at least have your borders start to get close to it), set it up to make merchants, and make them there until the all the resources are covered. When a merchant dies, replace him there. Shift the merchants in a chain to the dead guy's spot so the newly created guy doesn't have to walk all the way.

- If you have room under the agent cap, make the merchants in a core area and put them on lesser value resources in your core areas. This gets them some exp and speeds replacement. Don't bother training them where they'll be 10 turns away from anywhere useful.

- Let your merchants level up at their own pace. They don't need much special training, if you monopolize an area and leave them alone you'll have lots of 6 or 7 rank merchants before you know it.

- Take out enemy merchants who attempt to come upon your cluster. If you have done all the above, you should have a) multiple attempts, b) decent rank merchants, c) home country advantage, and d) easy replacement of any lost merchants.

Doing this as Spain, I got my merchant trading up to over 18,000 per turn with clusters in the New World, Timbuktu/Arquin, Dongola/Alexandria, Baghdad and Antioch. Once the cluster is set up, it takes only minimal effort to sustain.

There's no need to take Timbuktu; as soon as I as the English took Marseilles, I put four merchants on a boat to north Africa with a couple priests and let them have at it. The priests have become cardinals in no time (two became pope) and the merchants have leveled way up, garnering between 400-700 each off the gold and ivory per turn. So I'm sending the merchants home to become Acquisitors, and new ones down to Timbuktu to take their places. :laugh4: But I'm still nowhere near actually owning Timbuktu; it's still owned by the Moors, who have been my allies for nearly 100 turns.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by gardibolt

There's no need to take Timbuktu; as soon as I as the English took Marseilles, I put four merchants on a boat to north Africa with a couple priests and let them have at it. The priests have become cardinals in no time (two became pope) and the merchants have leveled way up, garnering between 400-700 each off the gold and ivory per turn. So I'm sending the merchants home to become Acquisitors, and new ones down to Timbuktu to take their places. :laugh4: But I'm still nowhere near actually owning Timbuktu; it's still owned by the Moors, who have been my allies for nearly 100 turns.

---

I'm not saying there's a need to take the city, but it keeps you from spending a lot of time moving merchants all around the map and gives you an easier time defending and replacing them.

The competition around Timbuktu is low enough and the reward is high enough that it might not be too bad of an idea to march some guys all the way down there.

But, at the end of the day, I view merchants as supplementary income. Conquering is primary.

Not to mention that owning the territory seems to make your merchants make more money there. Personally I buy Timbuktu and Arguin after the Moors take them.

I thought it was the other way around--you make more money from a territory you don't own. Otherwise you could just safely park your merchants on your own goods and never send them out a-roving.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by gardibolt

I thought it was the other way around--you make more money from a territory you don't own. Otherwise you could just safely park your merchants on your own goods and never send them out a-roving.

---

You're both half right. You make more $$ the further your merchant is from your capital, and typically lands you don't own are further from your capital than lands you do own. But owning the land really doesn't make a difference. What does make a difference in income is trade rights. Your merchants produce more trade income if you have trade rights with the country that they are trading in. I found this out when all of my merchants trading Danish amber suddenly experienced a drop in income when Denmark declared war on me.

Dirty buggers, those Danes...

I tried putting a merchant in a fort and I found that not only does that protect them but I can put twenty merchants in that fort and get the same income from each merchant.

So then it isn't necessary to go all the way to timbuktu when you can go to the gold just east of Italy and build a fort there and plug in all your merchants on that gold.

Except that the gold in Timbuktu is worth twice as much ;)

Maybe so but right now I can only get there by land and it takes like 20 turns to do it. 10 or so of those turns I am just walking and not making any money. (but honestly I have never been there and not sure my merchants that are heading there now will make it over land. I know they can't by sea.) So while I might make more money per turn in Timbuktu I have to factor in the opportunity cost of travelling there and not making money while in transit when I could be sitting on gold in Venice and perhaps picking off a few enemy merchants while doing that.

The gold in Arguin is just as valuable as the gold in Timbuktu, and you can get there by sea.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Musashi

The gold in Arguin is just as valuable as the gold in Timbuktu, and you can get there by sea.

---

Don't think you can, actually. Maybe with a caravel or better you can.

Argh. You're right. That's kind of stupid actually, there's no reason a galley wouldn't be able to sail around the curve of Africa there...

Either way though, you can drop your merchant off on the north coast and it should only take 7-8 turns to walk from there to timbuktu, even if the moors haven't taken it and built roads...

Nope, Arquin looks plain inaccessible, even with carracks. Just gotta take a trek down to Timbuktu and then another long one to the coast.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Goofball

You're both half right. You make more $$ the further your merchant is from your capital, and typically lands you don't own are further from your capital than lands you do own. But owning the land really doesn't make a difference. What does make a difference in income is trade rights. Your merchants produce more trade income if you have trade rights with the country that they are trading in. I found this out when all of my merchants trading Danish amber suddenly experienced a drop in income when Denmark declared war on me.

Dirty buggers, those Danes...

---

Absolutly right. I checked the trade income from a merchant in a province belonging to a trade partner just before I attacked him. Significant drop after war was declared. :charge:

I'm walking to Timbuktu right now and it is taking more than 7-8 turns. More like 15-20 and that is just to the city and doesn't include the resources. Next time I will just send a general and some cavalry and run there and take the city with some mercs and then build my merchants on site. I think that would be more efficient. That is actually what I'm doing in Antioch and I'm making a bundle there.

That's weird... I drop my merchants off north of the city just across the straits from Cordoba, and they can walk from there to timbuktu's gold in 7-8 turns without a road.

PS: Click to see the best route over the mountains:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

http://xs510.xs.to/xs510/06515/0028.png

Exploit? Well, maybe, but I think it fits within the rules of the game... This is how to generate fortune using merchants.

How do you use merchants most efficiently?
How do you monopolize the most expensive resources?
And how do you protect your merchants from take over?
Well, if you want to achieve the above, there is neat trick available, that I have not seen posted elsewhere.

Well, most of you probably know that you can that you can attach you agents, such as spies , priests etc. to an army. The merchants are no different. In order to protect your merchant from a take over by the enemy, simply place an army unit (I usually use depleted, obsolete units to keep upkeep low) on the resource, and then march your merchant (stack it) onto the army. This way, no hostile merchants can ever destroy your income. Not only this, but you can march a whole bunch of your merchant on that single army unit and have a full stack of merchants generating the income from that single resource. I’ve done that in Timbuktu, where I’m generating about 17,000 per turn from a single gold source (my wealth is in the $700k range :egypt: )
So, there you have it.

That is simply an variant of the fort exploit... (Though a bit less of an exploit if you ask me... simply think of it as Merchant Guards...)

A bit more risky your depleted unit is fair game to any enemy unit passing by and retreating will carry over all the merchants while a fort would require at least a turn of siege thus enabling you to prepare a counter-attack...

Thread necromancy = bad. :thumbsdown: Better to just start a new thread.