The Roman, Barbarian, and some other princesses

[Terentia100]

Sounds like a very sensible idea to me (although I would like to see some sources discussing the role of women in business during this period) my only objection is that the merchant until in MTW2 was a terribly boring unit which had limited playability.

I have never gotten anything out of merchants, I'm not sure if I use them right but they are useless to me. If you find the merchant boring it's a good idea since this was a very boring time to be female.

The original poster should have backed up his idea, luckily I have some sources, although I don't remember all the sources off the top of my head, but a few include A Sourcebook on Pompeii (includes a lot of examples), the wikipedia website doesn't have the best article but does list a number of sources, and my namesake Terentia wife of Cicero managed her property and that of Cicero while he was at the real work of politics.

[stratigos vasilios]

I think the merchants were most effective as the Moors. Just send them down to Timbuktu or Arguin and let them trade gold/ivory/slaves freely. Because its so isolated no nearby faction would send a rival merchant to acquire those assets, so its your own personal treasury.

[ziegenpeter]

To have useful merchants, you have to use a mod.Iin MTWII vanilla, they were useless.

[Cyclops]

Its hard to find a consistent role for women in the EB timeframe across the widely varying cultures represented.

Roman women were represented either as stern matrons or wilful slatterns. Eiother way they did not interact with non-Romans in a way that affects the game.

Non-Roman women are sometimes represented as a seductive threat. Kleopatra and Sophonisba both set back Roman aims by sexual wiles. That fits with the "marry nearby prince" button in M2TW vanilla, but its a very rare occurence and maybe doesn't represent what really happened (Egyptian monarch allying with Roman Triumvir).

Persian women rarely appear in anything more than an utterly passive role. Keltic women appear rarely (Boudicca is outside our period), do we ever see Iberian/Lussotannan women other than as slaves or victims of war? Unless princesses can be adapted to a sort of "wailing woman" ancillary...

To have useful merchants, you have to use a mod.Iin MTWII vanilla, they were useless.

I find merchants useful in M2TW, they bring in cash and open up the Merchants Guild tree (a must for my gaming style). If the enemy starts out-competing I use assassins and armystomps to even the score.

[Macilrille]

Agree, merchants combined with Assassins (and guilds for both) is quite nice on your income. There are some treasure troves around to be exploited by your wily merchants.

As for Roman wmen being married off to foreign princes and potentates. It did happen, or rather; it did not happen, but they definately wanted to, Cornelia.

[B-Wing]

To the OP, I'm fairly certain that Princesses in M2TW can only be diplomatic agents. Their functions are hard-coded, as are Merchants'. One could simply modify the Merchant's model and voice to be female, but then they would be recruited instead of coming of age, which may be unfavorable.

As for the value of merchants, they can most certainly be worthwhile, though I agree that they probably don't provide a very interesting layer of depth to the game in most cases. Typically I just send a freshly recruited Merchants to the most valuable resource I can find (you can see resource values through the shadowed fog of war), and if a more skilled merchant is already sitting on it, keep moving to the next most valuable vacant resource. A merchant with a few points of skill could easily bring in 800 or so Florins every turn. With no upkeep and an initial cost of 500, that's a pretty big profit over time. Think of them as mines.

[oudysseos]

There is very little that can be done to mod agents. Their basic functions cannot be changed.

[GenosseGeneral]

To have useful merchants, you have to use a mod.Iin MTWII vanilla, they were useless.

in v. 1.0. from 1.2 on, the merchant income is increased steeply ( iremeber getting up to 1200 per round by a lvl 10 merchant trading spices). however, merchants will cost a lot of micro, but therefore generate a decent amount of income.