Best location for Merchants' Guild is ?

**Shahed** · 12-01-2006, 07:34

**Shahed** · 12-04-2006, 15:48

For the Turks it looks like Antioch is the best location for merchants guild, because, this is a rough approximation so far, but it begins to point this direction:

1. Antioch has more basic trading partner provinces, it can trade with more provinces than Constantinople.

2. It is within 2 sea zones of more provinces than Constantinople is.

3. It seems that the total of the base resource value is greater than the total of base resource value for Constantinople, florins/turn terms.

Got some questions:

1. Does anyone know which file has the base resource values and where I should be looking in the file ?

2. How far away can a city trade i.e can Alexandria trade with London ? As an exmaple what is the furthest Alexandria can trade ?

Salute !

**Quillan** · 12-04-2006, 15:52

I had a merchants guild HQ in Constantinople in my Byzantium campaign. Towards the end, the city was making over 7000 per turn. However, strictly from the standpoint of using it to boost merchant agents, the best location for a merchants guild is Timbuktu.

**magnum** · 12-04-2006, 15:55

Everyone is wrong. Best place is Timbuktu! Keep the merchants close to the gold. My gold. All mine.

**danfda** · 12-04-2006, 16:17

I had mine in Novgorod, as the Rus of course. I had a complete monopoly on the world-wide amber trade...After a while, those merchants can make you a lot of money. ;)

**Shahed** · 12-04-2006, 16:22

Quillan, It's from the standpoint of overall income maximisation i.e which location (for the Turks in this case) will benefit the most in terms of revenue maximisation from the formation of a merchants' guild.

maybe I forgot to mention that.

Hehe Í like chocolate so mine's going to be near a HUGE chocolate dump ! Who cares about gold when you got chocolate ?

No seriously though... we need the base resource figures. Any other comments/answers most welcome as well ofc.

**Slaists** · 12-04-2006, 16:26

I would side with the opinion that the Merchant's guild has to be centrally located to minimze new merchant travel time. However, I think, if one gets Merchant's Headquarters, all the cities should give similar bonus to new merchants (If I read the description right).

**Quillan** · 12-04-2006, 16:33

There's a global bonus and a local bonus. The local bonus didn't apply to merchants after I'd upgraded it to a Master and then HQ level building, but the global applies everywhere. It might be a bug, but in my Byzantine game I build my merchants in another city that only had a guild. I'd get Legal Nouse there, plus Financial Training and Merchant's Guild Apprentice that way. If I built them in Constantinople, I wouldn't get the Legal Nouse trait.

**Shahed** · 12-04-2006, 16:40

Point taken.

The more central it is the faster merchants will get to trading, the faster they will pay themselves off, the faster you return on investment will grow.

Travel time is one factor, but there is another.

It increases the base resource value of the region itself. Naturally the increased skill level merchants will increase the overall revenue of the empire. The increase in local resource value will directly affect the local revenue of the city and hence the overall revenue of the empire.

The local effect of increase in trade of the region itself needs to be taken into account for the overall equation to be valid.

And you know what ?

In a moment of SHEER BRILLIANCE ! ... I got the idea of putting some merchants on ships and sailing them around. I think it'll be faster than walking... *ahem*