Are Merchants Useless?

[Tratorix]

Honestly, when I first started playing this game, I liked the idea of an agent that could control and bring in trade income. But, they bring in virtually nothing and will probably be bought out constantly, meaning you have to micromanage for very little gain. Anyone actually used merchants to a positive result.

[Yaropolk]

Train up your merchant first - the easiest way is to find a safe spot in your kingdom with more than 1 resource of the same type in the same province. Stick your merchants on all of the resources and they'll gain "monopolist" trait. This should get you to 3 stars + natural talent. Then go take out some low quality enemy merchants, this will train you up to 7+ stars altogether. Now go enemy merchant hunting for 1000+ florins per takeover, or go park your merchant on a valuable trading spot. The further away from your capital, the more he'll make. Try ivory or gold in bottom left corner of the map, or slaves in middle east. You can make 500+ florins per turn.

[Zajuts149]

like Yaropolk said. Also, train your merchants in one city only, to gain points to trigger merchants guild. That'll help his survivability.

[Galain_Ironhide]

As above. Merchants can be a huge factor in the income of your kingdom.

[PBI]

Monopolise the key exotic trade goods with your merchants and you can easily rake in 10,000+ a turn; on the right resource a merchant can easily recoup the initial 550 florin outlay in a turn or two. It helps to have an outpost in the vicinity (like a Crusader state) so you can replace any merchants which get bought out, and send in assassins to deal with any troublesome competition. Don't bother trying to buy out high level foreign merchants, just eliminate them with assassins.

Which particular spots are best varies depending on what faction you are and where your capital is; I tend to go for the spices, silk etc in the Levant as Western factions, and the amber in northern Europe as Muslims. Otherwise, the gold and ivory in the far south of the map is always a good moneyspinner. Don't bother using the resources in or close to your home regions, like wool as England or wine as France, the returns are barely worth it.

[Prussian to the Iron]

there seems to be some odd glitch where you are getting 400+ dollars 1 turn, then for the rest of the game merchants only pull in a max of around 260. not sure if it was fixed with kingdoms, but last i checked it still worked like that.

if you send them out to africa, they are money factories. you know the settlement all the way south under the moors, with 1 road in and out? there are a few gold mines down there, plus ivory, that get you like 340 a turn depending on skill(the 340 is with a 5-star)

also, in the mid-east there are alot of ivory and silk spots. put them on those and you are set.


if you are playing a game where you want every lst man you can get, then you want merchants. if you are just trying to lay low and conquer a few here and there, they are a unneccessary hassle.

[Owen Glyndwr]

I don't find them so useless once you get a nice monopoly going. I find that if you put enough of them down, you can get a decent income from it.

I just get tired of constantly having my assets seized by those damn Milanese/Venetian merchants!!

[Maltz]

For some reason their income reduce significantly after a while.
I make merchant just to rob other merchants. A smaller opponent gives 500, while a major gives 1000 or more.
So a few merchants will certainly make you money.

[NodachiSam]

Merchants aren't useless but they certainly can be incredibly annoying, enemy merchants that is. I find it quite a lot of work to have to micromanage them all and protect them. I lack the will to always watch out for them and raise them up high enough to sieze other merchants' assets.

One trick I did learn is simply to surround an enemy merchant (and its possible this works for any enemy character) with military units, I think 8 at most, and then move a nineth on top of him and he'll die like he deserves. You don't always need so many units if you can corner the buggers by some impassable terrain like mountains, rivers, or whatever. I think of it as hunting the agent down and executing him as an enemy of the state.

That is if my assassin's can't get him. Often my best assassin's are busy at the borders and I don't find it worth it to waste 4 or 5 turns getting them down there so that they can possibly kill a high level enemy merchant. Surround and pound is just easier, and actually quite satsifying.

If that wasn't bad enough, allies will seize the assets of my merchants aswell. With my assasin's I will usually kill any merchant I can that even goes near my borders regardless of who they belong to. If you use the surround and pound technique on an allied unit I don't know if it lowers your reputation.

Not that my kingdoms ever end up having a salvagable reputation anyways. I never ever betray allies but any of my princes who become king eventually get the master of assasin's trait anyways, their chivalry always takes a hit or two. My subterfuge networks are possibly as important as the navy afterall.

So there you go, more info on how to kill merchants than to actually use them :)

[tigger_on_vrb]

They are only useful in three situations:
1. Timbuktu
2. The New World
3. Getting merchants guilds

Otherwise I found them to be not worth the cost due to AI buy outs

[anweRU]

Merchants can be very useful, depending on which campaign (Vanilla, Kingdoms, etc) you are playing. Even in plain vanilla, a properly used merchant can pay for himself in 5 turns or so. Just remember that the further a merchant is from his nation's capital, the more he will bring.

I've had merchants bring in 800-900 gold per turn per merchant in the Kingdoms campaigns...

[Galain_Ironhide]

And in some mods (Broken Crescent 1.05 comes to mind) they can be VERY beneficial.

My word of advice - An Assassin is your Merchant's best friend.

I often send my merchants out in packs (say 1 good one with 2-3 novices), the good one often takes the good resource, while others mill around the cheaper resources until they gain better experience. I ALWAYS keep a Spy around these packs to keep look out ahead so I know whats coming, plus I keep an assassin in close range to kill the enemy merchants if my novice merchants cant do the job. Plus , using the novices to do the dirty work is another way to get their experience up. If they have their assets seized, thats just bad luck, go enlist another.

[Servius Maxintius]

I personally never pay particular attention to merchants, to me there just not worth the bother

[cambovenzi]

I personally never pay particular attention to merchants, to me there just not worth the bother

alot of times im like that, or forget about them.
if you dont commit to them enough, its just throwing away 550 florins when better enemy merchants come and take them.
frustrating as hell.
but if you get the strategy down of training and improving merchants, they can be extremely useful.

[The New Che Guevara]

Yes it is difficult to use the merchants at first, but play a number of campaigns, you start learning where the good income is, and then you can get so much more... what the highest anyone's ever got out of merchants? Mine was around 1,500, but I might have been on one of the kingdoms expansions.

[Empirate]

In a Hungary game I made more than 1000 fl. each with five merchants parked near Timbuktu (gold and ivory, the latter being better than the former). The best I ever saw was 2048 fl/turn from one merchant. I trained merchants up at Constantinople, which quickly got a Merchant's Guild Headquarter. The silks there attract other merchants like moths, so easy buyouts all around (assassination where buyout seems too difficult). Once my guys reached level five or so, I sent them out to Timbuktu, ending turn on resources every so often. Once at Timbuktu, "graceful traveller" etc. had upped their levels to 7 or so, and they started making serious money every turn. Another batch of four merchants went for the spices and sugar at Antioch, each making between 250 and 750 fl per turn. Those nine merchants taken together netted me many, many thousands of florins over the course of their careers!
How much money a resource gains you depends on four factors: one is base value (ivory>gold>amber>wine>wool>iron, for example). Another is the merchant's skill level. The third is the distance between the nearest resource of the same kind and your capital. The fourth is whether you have trade rights with the nation who owns the province your resource is located in. The first three are simply multiplied with each other in some way, while the fourth adds another multiplier (if you have trade rights) or not (if you don't).
The distance-to-capital thing is very important. For example, if Constantinople is your capital, and you park a merchant on silks anywhere on the map, you'll get next to nothing for your trouble: there are some silks right next to Constantinople, so the distance factor is minimal, meaning silks are mostly worthless to you. If you park your merchant on ivory or amber, however, the distance factor is huge, sine there are none of either near Constantinople.
Yet another thing to consider are monopolies. If only you have merchants on a specific resource in a specific region (these seem to be larger than single provinces; does anyone have better info on mercantile regions?), you gain a bonus to income earned, and possibly the "monopolist" virtue on your merchants. Taking the silks near Constantinople for an example again, try to park merchants on each of them. There're no other silks near, so the four spots near Constantinople and Nicea are the only silks in the region. As long as there are no foreign merchants on any of them, you'll gain more income from them. If I'm correct, a monopoly will double your trade income from each resource spot.
Well, that should be enough for now. Merchants are far from useless, you just need to understand how they work. In some situations, they can really be the only thing that keeps your economy afloat! It happened to me.

[/miniguide]

[Seabourch]

Cannot be bothered with them. Byz, Milanese and Venitians always kill mine.

[Megas Methuselah]

Build a fort on a rare resource, and put a unit of cheap militia in it or something. Then you can garrison up to 20 merchants in that fort, who will all be making their share of profits.

You can make a ton of money by doing this in distant colonies, on the really good resources (gold, spices, etc.).

[Seabourch]

I didn't know you could do that but alright then!

[Agent Miles]

Well actually, IIRC, you can only do that with the early unpatched version.

[Galain_Ironhide]

It works all through out vanilla and most other mods too.

I forgot all about that exploit - Don't use it myself. I'm a bit surprised no one mentioned it earlier. However definately the best way to keep your Merchants in business.

[Agent Miles]

Well I have the M2TW Gold pack that came with the patched versions of everything M2TW and this no longer works. So if you like it, don't upgrade.

[where's yur troosers]

Replying to and old thread on an old game, but I'm an old(ish) chap who can't quite get into work mode yet.

I find merchants very useful if managed carefully. For Scotland and Byzantium they are particularly useful as they can get you merchants guilds which are the only way of getting cavalry (albeit weak cavalry) out of cities.

[Myth]

Merchants are great - their income is "pure", meaning it does not lessen by corruption. In fact, the more distant they are from your capital, the better the income. Also, each faction values different resources, so be sure to check which give the most to you. Moving your capital around and placing merchants on key resources can give you a lot of gold quickly.

And they don't get bought out that often once they are not in your frontier regions.

[oldandcrotchety]

I wouldn't say useless, but They are more trouble to mess with than what I think they are worth. I usually ignore mine and let them die of old age.

[Egypt]

One word: Timbuktu.