I'm very close to completely giving up on merchants. They take soooo long to get up to level 4 or 5 and even then, when you go on the offensive, the AI has level 6 or 7 merchants hunting you down. It sucks and I hate it *tantrum*.

Somebody did an excellent thread on merchants BTW - including lots of useful tips on how to make them profitable. Twas an excellent post indeed - I'm just no good at implimenting it cause I don't have the patience to wait for a whole week's gaming before I actually move a merchant.