Merchants : how to (get 20,000 florins a turn)

[Doug-Thompson]

I think it's important to note that even if you eventually get the same nominal amount back from a merchant (550 florins), you actually incur a real loss. Why? Opportunity costs. For that amount of money, you could have put it into some other thing, like markets, roads, soldiers, etc., and gotten more out of it. So the real costs of the merchant is more than 550, because you have to take into account what you could have gotten with that 550 in the interim years. </economics major>

Yes, but you've also denied money to your opponents if you've driven their merchants bankrupt. That's part of the calculation, too.

[Sheogorath]

Has anybody else noticed that prices fluctuate? Or maybe its just an error in my game.

As Russia, the silk near Baghdad started out at something like 150/turn, but when I loaded my game the next time, it was 30/turn. The same went for some silver resources in the HRE. It was 220/turn when I first saw it (and I was actually getting 220/turn from that resource) but when I loaded, it went down to a mere 20/turn.
Odd?

[Amon_Zeth]

Yes, but you've also denied money to your opponents if you've driven their merchants bankrupt. That's part of the calculation, too.

But the utility of that is intangible (while valuable), like that of having new units of soldiers, whereas the utility of getting more money is more concrete, since money is a unit of account. With said tangible utility, the bonuses can be more objective if you use something like interest rates for each building- with things like troops and bankrupting enemy merchants, it is more subjective.

[BigTex]

Merchants pay for themselves. But not by standing on a resource. Standing on a resource is only useful to get them up a few levels so they can start eliminating the competition. You can get an easy 1-2k florins from buying out a rival merchant alot of times. You've also denyed the computer the income from him and made them lose the 550 investment.

But through my playing I've yet to see a resource at anything higher then 70. Does anyone know the trick to finding the really high value resources? I know trade rights increase their value but does distance to your lands do also?

[therother]

Merchant skill makes a big difference. For instance, I have 2 merchants on the amber resources in Stockholm (which belongs to my ally, the Danish). The 6 valour one makes 69/turn, whilst the 10 valour makes 112. Other than these two, the highest I've seen is for the two spices in the Aleppe region (which I own). My 10 guy would also make 100+ there. My capital is London.

On the recruitment price, Rufus the Cunning (my current King) is a master of both spies (-30%) and assassins (-25%), which means his agent recruitment is massively reduced. I pay 275 per merchant when he's around.

[Darkmoor_Dragon]

Folks be MUCH more aggressive with Merchants:

Use them to actively attack the opposition merchants - it doesnt even matter if they are on a trade resource or not - if you take them over you get a LUMP SUM from "acquiring" their business e.g I've just taken out a French level 3 merchant who was wandering near to my borders, he wasnt on a resource - but acquiring his business netted me a lump sum of 1100 florins (this is on h/vh fwiw).

So nab the other guys businesses then trot back to you ownl ittle resource, or go on extended walkabouts taking over any merchant you find and can "assimilate".

The ENTIRE equation for Merchants, as to whether they are worth their 550 florins cost, is completely re-written when you use them aggressively and only hog a resource when they've got no available targets to take over.

And bear in mind that that 1100 florins wasn't much, I *think* i netted over 6k from acquiring an Egyptian merchant in Antioch (didnt remember to keep ane ye on the previous balance, but it was certainly plenty of dosh)..

[Spendius]

Has anyone noticed whether having a merchant on a resource increases trade in the corresponding city ? That would make sense and would not require micro management at least...

[Darkmoor_Dragon]

playing english h/vh

I've posted this methodology elsewhere but it got lost at the tail end of a thread. Hopefully not breaking too many rules by making it it's own thread to properly highlight the technique for using merchants effectively and ending the debate over their worth.

(original post follows)
- - -

Folks be MUCH more aggressive with Merchants:

Use them to actively attack the opposition merchants - it doesn't even matter if they are on a trade resource or not - if you take them over you get a LUMP SUM from "acquiring" their business e.g I've just taken out a French level 3 merchant who was wandering near to my borders, he wasn't on a resource - but acquiring his business netted me a lump sum of 1100 florins (this is on h/vh fwiw).

So nab the other guys businesses then trot back to you own little resource, or go on extended walkabouts taking over any merchant you find and can "assimilate".

The ENTIRE equation for Merchants, as to whether they are worth their 550 florins cost, is completely re-written when you use them aggressively and only hog a resource when they've got no available targets to take over.

- - - -

After posting the above I went and did some experimentation by using all of my "senior" merchants to attack the foreign merchants around high-population areas such as Italy using 11 merchants and attacking in the same turn (to make it easier to check results).

Using merchants with 3 levels or more I racked up over 20,000 florins (yes, 20K) in a single turn with 7 successful take overs and 4 failure. (Or to put it another way - I made a 14,000 florin profit AFTER the cost of the merchants and in just one turn)

After the initial wave I pulled the merchants back to allow the AI to bring out more merchants and moved my own to other parts of the map to hunt down other merchants.

By the end of 10 or 12 turns I netted in excess of 35k from mercantile take overs alone.


From continuing mercantile warfare it appears that the money from merchants falls outside of anything to do with factional money - so even if a faction is bankrupt the merchants still have large amounts of money that can be taken from them by acquisition.
Similarly when you lose your merchants the money does not come from your own coffers.

The amount of money is determined by the mercantile (acquisition) rating of the merchant and is not fully dependent on the resources they may, or may not, be sitting on. (Somebody may want to experiment to see if acquisition money is higher when a merchant is sitting on a resource as opposed to just wandering around the map).

Too produce merchants with higher acquisition ratings the following may help:

Get a merchants guild as soon as one is offered to you (you only need one as it seems that the effect is faction wide).

Place the merchant on a local resource in order to gain a rank or two, the money from this is low as most people have discovered but its better than nothing at this stage - just regard it as training.

Move merchants to a foreign resource to gain ranks such as "knowledge of customs".

Don't leave merchants on a resource a long way from your capital (other side of the map) for too long as they start to pick up negative traits.

Use a spy or two to scout out foreign Merchants and make a note of where they are (The ai tends not to move them around very much. although they do move around a fair bit in their local area, especially if there is a juicy merchant target of their own within the "radar" of their faction troops/agents)

If you see foreign spies, diplomats or assassins in your local area, especially near merchants, kill them off ASAP - they will encourage foreign merchants into the area in acquisition bids.

It *appears* that if you clear out all the resources in your local area then foreign merchants will stay away form the area (don't repopulate the resource with merchants) - hence the reason to scout out areas a few turns away, attack, then withdraw. (leaving them their also tends to draw the attention of assassins)



So there's a fair chunk of micro-management in there but it is most assuredly worth it. What I've been doing is attacking in a wave then moving the merchants back to pet resources to allow the AI to re-populate their merchants and resource spots. It cuts down on having to manage them every turn but is a great cash reserve if you get strapped for florins.


20k in a turn was a beauty of a result, and not typical for a turn (obviosuly you wont always have the number of viable targets), however 1100 florins a bash for taking over a wandering low level merchant who came into radar is something that is almost management free and definitely pays off the cost of the merchant in one turn, with some profit.


So, try it: get aggressive, rake in some florins.

[Eques]

Very nice posta! Thank you for this tip.

[chunkynut]

Cool :) I've been fairly passive with my merchants and worked out that at 40 florins on a resouce a turn they will pay for themselves before they die anyway and I normally take out merchants that come my way pre-emptively to protect my low level merchants.

1100 florins makes a fair difference to that, I wondered where I got extra cash from sometimes :)

[AussieGiant]

Excellent stuff Darkmoor_Dragon.

Thanks for stating your difficulty.

[Maizel]

I'm making 599 bucks a turn with my merchants in the holy lands

[Doug-Thompson]

Excellent post, Darkmoor_Dragon


You should post that as a separate topic and it should be stickied.

[Barny Bangs]

I think you forgot: with a high-level merchant you can destroy other merchants, seizing their funds. When my level 10 merchant seizes the assets of level 5-8 merchants, I generally get around 1.000 - 2.000 florins. That way your merchants will have bring in their recrution cost quite easily.

If you choose to monoploise one resourced (e.g. wool, wine or textiles, you will find, that even low-level merchants will suddenly bring in 20 to 40 florins in one turn.

Also, enemy merchants run away from your high-level merchants: For example when I moved my level 10 merchant into northern Italy, seized the assets of one merchant, four other merchants in the region (all low-level) packed their things and moved away. This way, you can easily disrupt the trade of enemy merchants, especially in areas where merchants tend to mass (northern france, Holy Land, Northern Italy).

[Darkmoor_Dragon]

I'm making 599 bucks a turn with my merchants in the holy lands

Oh it *is* possible to make decent per-turn amounts, especially on easier difficulty levels where I believe (in caps) that the amounts in revenue are higher.

But my point was rather that the money you can gain from per-turn income on a resource pales into insignificance against that you can earn via "acquisition*

How much, does one imagine, would be made by acquiring your stated merchant?

Which would be something very interesting to find out: 5K, 10K? More?

[Biggus Diccus]

One hot tip to save loads of money on recruiting of Merchants (or other agents as well) is to check if one of your family members get a discount for recruiting agents. If you are fairly active with spies and assassins it seems that the espionage line trait easily triggers for your faction leader. In addition there is a fairly good chance that the faction leader will aquire the Spymaster retinue. Both of these give a discount on agents recruited, and the discounts stack.

My current faction leader has a Spymaster retinue which give 20% discount, and a Master of espionage virtue (lvl 3 espionage I think) which give 30% discount. In the city where he is the governor I can now recruit merchants for 275 dough, that's half the price

[Carl_Kincade]

I've been playing my first test campaign as England I'm at about turn 100 and getting ready to start fresh on VH/H. I've found that sending teams of merchants out as two's works well.

I originally found that my merchants where being taken over far to often, so I began teaming them up with spies to act as look outs for enemy merchants, now I have a heads up before they reach my merchants. I've also found that resource camping only works if your merchants are a great distance from your capital. Playing as England and having merchants camped in Gaza I was gaining some 4000 Fl a turn per merchant.

For merchants closer to England I just bounce them from resource to resource taking over other merchants when I can seems to work okay for me.

[beard]

this takes a little time but once you have an good idea of the entire campaign map- you can literally monopolize a resource by placing a merchant on all or most of the spots. Example- silk is a fairly rare commodity- once you have found all the places that silk is produced- put a merchant on every silk "deposit" and welcome to the profits of global commerce- I had already played a lot so I knew before starting my most recent campaign where silk was- I chose the turks specifically for their immediate economic prowess- after around fifty turns I had enough merchants and had stragically placed them around the map- building many of them up on crappy resources to increase their likelihood of success- Then I took over the worldwide silk trade in one fell swoop- It was something to do- I prefer battle to economics but enjoy

God has low self esteem

[Kobal2fr]

Yes, but you've also denied money to your opponents if you've driven their merchants bankrupt. That's part of the calculation, too.

Actually that's a moot point. Spending money to cripple one faction is counter-productive. The end result is that while you have lost x*550 florins to destroy his y*550 florins (give or take the ressource profits), every other faction but you two have lost nothing (you might even say they've won something, since they may very well have spent the same kind of money on ports & trade houses (generating even more cash) or stacks of knights and the like ("gamble" expense - a successful conquest might net them much more cash longterm than a bigger port, but there's always the risk of not being able to use those soldiers for, or worse yet lose them).


But the fact that winning a merchant face-off gives insta-cash is *very* interesting, and it completely trumps that issue.
But now I wonder : if you lose your merchant, either by having your attack fall on its head, or the enemy merchant attacking yours and winning... do you lose a lump of cash ? Or is the cash generated by a hostile take-over generated out of thin air ?

[Skott]

I havent gotten the game yet. Its on order but I did want to ask a question after reading this thread. I read wheresome people suggested putting two merchants on a resource. Is there a limit as to how many merchants you can place on a resource?

Thanks,
Skott

[therother]

Ok, to summarise my case for using them:

• Merchants cost 550 florins, absent any discounts.
• They age, as all characters do, at the rate of 1 year per 2 turns, so can be expected to survive, absent other factors, for ~80 turns.
• Therefore they need to make at about 7 florins/turn to make your investment back, assuming they survive to die of old age.
• Over the course of their lifetime, the likelihood is that they will make significantly more than that, unless they stand on a very low value resource that can be obtained close to your capital. They should also gain financial prowess from just trading, so an older merchant should make more money than a rookie.
• A hostile takeover of a rival faction's merchant can net 1000s of florins. Try not to "attack" your allies merchants too much though: it'll annoy them, affecting your relations (*).
• When travelling between high value resources, or going after a rival merchant, try to find resource to temporarily trade.
• If there is more than one instance of a resource, try to monopolise it.
• Protecting new merchants by having them trade resources in safer parts of the map allows them to valour up, and gives them a chance to survive against merchants from other factions. Try to train them in a settlement with a Merchant's Guild, if you have one. Also look for governor's with agent recruitment discounts.
• Merchants can be used as strategic weapons, costing your rivals money (the 550 florins to train) and preventing them for gaining access to profitable markets. Economic warfare.

From a economic pov, Merchants make a great deal more sense than other agents. You don't make a lot of money from spies or assassins, and they cost you a lot more in the long run.

Having said that, the title of this thread is now somewhat misleading though. You can possibly make 20,000+ florins in one turn, but it would be highly unlikely that you could sustain that for more than a few turns at the very most. Regardless, a just one successful buyout will pay back your money for that agent, and potentially many more than just the one.

From a strategic pov, I think the case is strongly in favour of maxing out your meagre Merchant limit. I suspect this is the reason why there is a limit in the first place!

BTW, the manual doesn't say it's the distance from your capital to the specific instance of a resource that your merchant is standing on that counts. It says, "The further the closest instance of a trade resource is to a merchant's capital, the greater a bonus he will get to the trade income he will earn from it." So if you are standing on a gold resource on the other side of the map, it won't be all that more valuable (if at all) than one closer to home if your capital has gold in the next province. Of course, if it has gold in its province you get nothing.

From what I've seen and heard, the top resource appears to be gold, followed by silk, silver, spices, ivory and amber. I guess the new world resources may be pretty good too, but I haven't got there yet. Bottom of the pile would seem to be tin, wool, fish, grain, sulphur, coal, and lastly, and certainly least, furs.

(*) Actually, I do tend to go after all merchants, regardless of their faction, simply to help my merchants gain experience. However, if I want to maintain good relations, I often give back a percentage of the cash (usually 1000 florins) to the faction via diplomacy, which helps smooth things over and may help improve your diplomat.

[Darkmoor_Dragon]

A hostile takeover of a rival faction's merchant can net 1000s of florins. Try not to "attack" your allies merchants too much though: it'll annoy them, affecting your relations

Merchant activity has NO effect on faction relationships - clearly stated in the manual and visible in the campaign game due to total absence of any "relationship" changes around any merchant activity.

[therother]

Acquisition is not an act of war, though it may well annoy the faction that you are attacking in this economic manner.

It has been my experience that it does affect your relationships: I often go from reasonable to so-so relations with the Danish after acquiring 2 or 3 of their merchants. If it doesn't, then it would seem to be a bug.

It may also affect your reputuation, although mine is bad anyway as I tend to use spies and assassins a lot.

[econ21]

Merchant activity has NO effect on faction relationships - clearly stated in the manual ...

Untrue - read p34.

[Darkmoor_Dragon]

Untrue - read p34.

Indeed - apologies to all - that'll teach me to rely on my ageing memory!

(Although I've never had a diplomatic incident when acquiring other merchants - can anybody confirm they have?)

[Proletariat]

After reading this thread, I decided to start taking my merchants seriously, and spent a turn making about 7 or 8 of them. Most of them were bought out after a few rounds (think I had two left after two more turns), so I'm wondering what's the easiest way to get your merchants those first few finance levels? I had been just letting them sit on the nearest resource, but that seemed to just leave them vulnerable to other roving merchants.

Is there an easy way to cheese through those first few levels? Maybe I just had a bad round, or my neighboring factions just have too strong a foothold with their merchants by now in my campaign, but on page one of this thread there was another poster describing the same situation, but saying it was because it was too early on.

Think I'll do another turn just creating merchants, but this time pair them up with assassins and try to keep a close watch for other merchants, but odds are my assassins will all die trying to clear out the opposition.

[Darkmoor_Dragon]

Scout out an area that isnt populated by AI merchants (using your spies) and send them there, or send them to the UK. I've never seen an AI merchant in the UK unless it was english/scottish, so if there are none there you may be safer.

Certainly though merchants seem to suffer the same issue as beginning assassins - they really struggle to get off the ground. once going theya re fine, but that first level is often fatal.

[therother]

Of course, if it has gold in its province you get nothing.

Is this actually true? I've just started a games as the Scots, plumped my newly minted merchant down on the local dyes supply in the Edinburgh region, and he's happily reporting that he'll be adding 10 florins a turn to my coffers.

(Although I've never had a diplomatic incident when acquiring other merchants - can anybody confirm they have?)

The French declared war on me the turn after I put three of their merchants out of business. But relations were poor between us anyway. Other than that, as I say above, I've linked worsening relations with various factions to me bankrupting their merchants. True, it could have been for other reasons but -- given what the manual says -- I think there are solid grounds for believing it does have an effect. The reputation thing is entirely speculation on my part though. Perhaps I'll test it out in this new game: I'll refrain from using spies and assassin, and only use economic warfare and see what happens to my reputation.

[therother]

Well, this is all very confusing. Started up a new game as the Scots, VH/VH, trained a merchant and toggled the fow off. First odd thing, as I mention above, it that my merchant can trade the dyes in the Edinburgh region for 10 florins/turn. Odd. Even odder is this is more than I can get for any of the local dye resources in other provinces (generally 7 florins/turn). So not only can I trade items available in my capital, I get more money from them? (*)

Other observations: if there is more than one resource in a province, the base (single) resource value appears to roughly double. For instance, fish resources would give me 4 florins/turn when there's only one, but 9 when there's two. Interestingly, when there's 3, it's still just double.

Another oddity is that the distance to the closest instance of a particular resource didn't seem to be having a great impact on the value of the resource. For instance, the nearest ivory resource to Edinburgh is 170+ squares away, yet with two in a province, each resource was only worth 21 florins/turn, which is half what I get from a single silver resource only 25 squares away from Edinburgh. Similarly, amber, which is also quite close, was trading at 11 or 21 florins/turn for 1 or 2 resources respectively. Which suggested that the "distance from your capital to the nearest resource of that type" mechanic wasn't working as I expected.

So I loaded up my old English game, where I have a much greater spread of settlements, to find that the instant I changed my capital to Antioch (from London), the value of merchant trade changed significantly (as the manual suggests it would). Odd. Even stranger is that, yes, my merchants trading silk close to Antioch went down a bit, but my merchants trading in Europe shot up by far more. From earning 800 florins/turn, I was earning 4000+. Fair enough says I, obviously the choice of capital does matter. Strange thing, though, is that I have to switch it back to London because of public order problem. When I do this, the numbers in the mid east rocket up as well, again to for significantly more than I was getting previously. No idea what is going on, but it must be a glitch in the system of some sort. I doubt just changing your capital back and forth was intended to increase your merchant revenue 5 fold...

Which all means I think I know less now about the system than before I started. Gah! Has anyone else observed this odd fluctuating merchant income behaviour? Is it a bug? It would seem to be on the surface.

(*) I suppose it's possible that, due to the lack of any trade agreements and that I'm at war with the Rebels, this suppresses the value of trade resources in their regions. Might also explain some of the odd behaviour I mention further down the post too. But this is all unsubstantiated handwaving.

[Kobal2fr]

Think I nailed a big commerce/merchant bug, that may very well be what's causing so much confusion regarding what ressources are worth what when.

I had a 6 finance mogul on his way to Venice to sit on that gold ressource in Zagreb. When I first considered that trip and wether it was worth it, the value given when glancing at that ressource was 188. 188 gold each turn, when I'm poor as dirt ? Sounds good. On your way, little fellow.

A couple of turns later I reloaded from autosave, because my best princess had gone from 6 to 1 (1!) charm in one go, thanks to a botched negociation which not only destroyed her +4 experience bonus, but ALSO saddled her with a stalker (-1 charm, -2 security). I'd been carefully building that hottie up for the longest time, and was understandably a bit miffed. Reload autosave, redo the same nego, this time is works (might be a comeback of the "AI forgets diplomatic relations/plans/state after a reload" bug from Rome).

But the interesting part is that, checking on my merchant, I noticed that each and every ressource I knew on the map had switched back to their base values. Especially that gold nugget, which was now worth a mere 40g a turn. And here comes the best part : when I switched my capital from one city to another, then back to the original Leòn, the gold ressource again was worth 188g.

So, in short, what I believe happens is that

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

on reloading, the game doesn't automagically re-calculate the relative value of ressources (liable to severely bork your economy in the process)

. You have to give it a nudge.

I'm not sure wether it's just a display bug (ie it shows up as 40, but it really gives you 188), nor if it corrects itself after a couple turns playing like the diplo eventually did in Rome (I just rushed in here to tell you guys ;) ). I don't know if it affects the AI either, which would be quite severe a bug then, considering the AI probably doesn't switch its capital around so often...

Anyway, take that into account when you're doing tests and trying to understand how those pesky ressources work : always hop your capital right after a reload.