Best location for Merchants' Guild is ?

[Shahed]

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]

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]

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]

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*

[LegioScythia]

In my campaign i built it in Constantinople i closed several trade agreements with the factions controlling the near islands that really boosted up my income

[Furious Mental]

Not exactly on point but if you are going to get a high level merchant's guild I'd suggest you avoid putting it in a city with a high level religious building, or avoid building any high level religious buildings once you've put the guild there. I built a huge cathedral in Vienna, which was where I got the merchant's guild headquarters, and all the merchants I've trained there now have this "quite religious" trait which detracts from their finance skill.

[Aenlic]

Ouch, that's a good find, Furious Metal. I'll have to keep closer track of things like that. It may actually be necessary to highly specialize non-military building as much as military building. To avoid the problem you experienced.

Sinan, don't forget to factor in the costs of merchant deaths. At best, you'll probably get 50-60 years of service from each merchant and during much of that time the merchant isn't fully skilled. The time it takes to get a new merchant skilled up and moved to a resource will affect your bottom line; and so should be added into figuring values of various locations for resources and merchant guilds.

[Shahed]

The winner is Antioch, hands down, no contest.

Antioch makes like 2-4k/turn more, on average than Constantinople on max development.
This is from my game experience anyway.

[Slaists]

Point taken.

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*

This would be faster, agreed. However, I'm not sure this is faster in terms of merchants gaining additional stars. When walking them, I tend to leave them on some resource at the end of the turn (before walking further): this seems to accelerate them gaining new skills. Not sure what would happen on the boats.