Merchants and frustrations

[Shahed]

They have no upkeep.

The stickies are useful.
Check the FAQ sticky, the merchant guide is linked in there.

EDIT 1: BTW Musashi (or anyone else) how do you knwo they have no upkeep ? Would'nt it be part of wages ?

EDIT2: Here's a copy paste for Grotius.

Merchants:

Q: How I make money with merchants?

A: Some discussion here:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=71833

Note - they have no upkeep. Returns increase with distance from lands; with having a monopoly on resources and with having trade rights with the owner of the land on which the resource is sited:

A nice heads-up:


Quote:
Originally Posted by Vlad the Impaler
Around timbouktu in Africa are some very good resources; 2 ivory and 1 gold. i play as the Moors and the region isnt mine yet. the merchant that trade gold make 237 / turn and the two other that trade ivory make aroun 120 /turn almost 500 gold/turn only with merchants until now, almost 40 turns, nobody tried to assasinate or buy them.


And advice on using merchants aggressively:


Quote:
Originally Posted by 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.


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

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpo...2&postcount=38

And a lot of information, building up to a case for using merchants here:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpo...2&postcount=51

Daveybaby and therother have compiled lists of the resources in each province and the value of resources respectively in this thread:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=72609

Timbucktu sounds like a profitable place, at least for the English:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpo...5&postcount=73


Q: How can I raise my merchants' acumen?

A: A master merchants guild usually allows them to start off with 3-4 acumen.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Rothe
So far I have found 3 ways to do it:

- Monopoly in a region: Just make sure that one resource type in one region is manned by your merchants only. For English, wine works ok, but you have to use two merchants to tackle the 2 wine resources per region. This seems to get you some positive virtues over time.

- Travel: By traveling a lot and stopping on some foreign resources for a turn on two, I seem to develop the "Knowledge of customs" chain of virtues.

- Acquisitions: Whenever you defeat another factions merchant, you are almost surely going to get more of the finance rating.


https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=72880