Quote Originally Posted by The_Doctor
Q. How do Merchants work?

A. The campaign map is sprinkled with resources that can be harvested by using your merchants. These agents can travel to foreign lands to gain a monopoly on these resources for your faction. The value of the resource and the skill of the merchant will govern the amount of money they can make.


Q. Can you use Merchants to seize another factions resources?

A. Merchants can also be used aggressively to capture resources monopolised by rival factions in order to disrupt their economy. They can attack rival merchants on the campaign map. Merchant clashes are auto-resolved to decide the victor.
OK - so does this mean a merchant has to remain alive for his faction to get the income from the resources he's captured? Or will his faction retain the income from resources regardless, only losing them if a rival merchant captures the resource?

Either way, it seems to complicate the trade and income side of things, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Looks like you'll need to station plenty of assassins around these resources to keep the enemy merchants away, presuming it's not just other merchants who can damage each other.