Best location for Merchants' Guild is ?

[fenir]

As above, always build prefer in Capital.


Sinan, you wanted the base resource file.........sm_resources in your data dir.

As someone pointed out, Constantinople, has not been given any extra bonus to show it's status as the greatest trading city.
And there is no marco Polo event for Tripoli. Hence no 2 trade item increase.


And way, in my game Constantinople trades land wise with the following...

Thrace
Macedonia
Bthynia
Mysia


And I was pulling 10480 Florins a turn while at war with the usual suspects....venice, milan, turks and Egypt.
With a Master merchants guild.

fenir

[Shahed]

Thanks fen.

Also I think the Merchants Guild trade bonus is not working. Unfortunately I'd have to start a new campaign to find out, so if anyone else notices if it ACTUALLY increases income or not, shout !

I know the file says it does, but it does'nt as far as I can see.

Last game I played as Turks Antioch was doing 14K/turn IIRC.
I've seen a Byzantine player post a pic of his Constantinople doing 17K per turn, on twcenter.

[uanime5]

Is the amount of money a city can make affected by the merchant bonus and how developed it's trading cities are?

For example would Vienna make more money if Prague, Nuremburg, Budapest, Innsbruck, Venice, and Zagreb were all huge cities with all the trade improving buildings (except for Merchant's Guild Headquaters).

[HoreTore]

IMO, merchants guild HQ should be at your capital, wherever that is. Better trade buildings there = higher income from merchants.

And yes, merchants guild adds to trade. If you want proof, easiest way of doing it, is to simply demolish it somewhere. The income for that city goes down... I haven't researched this, but my feeling is that the 1. level gives about 15-20% trade bonus.

[Shahed]

Well, that's exacty the problem.

As you say, it SHOULD go down but it does'nt, it does'nt go up either. I'm gonna test this today, start a new campaign.

The problem with the capital decision is; do you want London to be your capital throughout the game ? Normally the capital shifts, hence that dos'nt work either IMO, at least it can;t work for the whole game.

However, it's totally a valid point that you capital should always be highly developed to maximise income from trade.

[Philbert]

If you are playing a European faction, then the resources around Antioch are worth a _lot_ of money. Placing a merchants' guild in Antioch will give your merchants a head start which will cause them to make more money from the beginning, and give better protection against hostile takeovers. Therefore, I would say Antioch.

[hisn00bness]

I would just like to reaffirm, that playing the turks; and placing antioch with a merchants guild as my capital; and keeping a good governor there (post-jihad crown prince); antioch makes no less than [B]9810[/B] per turn by turn 100 !

[Shahed]

Yeap, yesterday I played Egypt, day before actually, and Jerusalem as capitol. Antioch was making 7K by turn 65 or so. It can make a lot more. The Egyptains have it good, them and the Moors.

Meanwhile I tested the Guild, and it DOES increase income although I only noticed about 100/turn for base Merchants Guild.

[andrewt]

I only got Antioch to 7k at the end of my Turkish game. When I played the Rus, I had Stockholm at over 10k.

[hisn00bness]

Odd I can't seem to get Stockholm over 6k so far as Russia. Granted it's relatively early in the game; but still.

[Xehh II]

Cabbage question here but why is Stockholm so good at tarding.

[hisn00bness]

I have no idea...

but I think its good at trading because of the central position relative to the other main ports to the sea there (arhus; helsinki; novgorod; riga) and has plenty of silver to draw from. Also I hear the salmon's not bad.

[b_black68]

Trade income is determined by many factors.

first off, each trade_base_income_bonus point is a 5% increase in income, so a merchants guild, trader, dirt road only gives a 5% increase, mmg gives 10%, etc.

Port location is very important, the farther the port that is being traded with is from your cities port, the less money the trade is worth. Two ports that are nearly adjacent to each other make an insane amount of money, even without many trading upgrades. Constantinople and Nicea would be the ideal situation, but the game seems to refuse to let them trade with each other.....

Likewise with land trade, the closer the city, the more money you will make(all other variables constant)

The trick is to get the game to have your trade fleets go to the right ports(ie, the closest ports) which it doesnt seem to do.


One more thing, import value is equal to 20% of the trade between the cities, so if a route exported from antioch makes 1000 and ends up in jerusalem, jerusalem will get 200 income from the import. Thus, increasing the trade value of neighboring cities increases the income of all the cities nearby.

From this standpoint, venice and antioch have very strong land trade opportunities, and many ports that are decently close. Constantinople and stockholm are weaker on land trade, but have the potential for massive sea trade from long distances, and very close ports(if you're lucky and the fleets go there). Also, venice is nearby many strong trading cities which can help to increase its income even more.


Hope this helps, and maybe someone knows how to make the trade fleets find the optimum port?

[Kobal2fr]

Cabbage question here but why is Stockholm so good at trading.

1) it has umpteen ressources. From the top of my head : 2 iron, 3 furs, 2 amber, 1 silver, and maybe some fish as well
2) Most provinces it trades with also have amber, which is an expensive ressource
3) it's central and borders two seas, meaning it gets to trade with russia, poland, hre, flanders and even england sometimes.
4) the mines are awesome, which makes it a doubly good town
E) it's usually far away from your capital, so merchants trading amber make fortunes.

[andrewt]

1) it has umpteen ressources. From the top of my head : 2 iron, 3 furs, 2 amber, 1 silver, and maybe some fish as well
2) Most provinces it trades with also have amber, which is an expensive ressource
3) it's central and borders two seas, meaning it gets to trade with russia, poland, hre, flanders and even england sometimes.
4) the mines are awesome, which makes it a doubly good town
E) it's usually far away from your capital, so merchants trading amber make fortunes.

I don't include merchant income, just the city itself. A far away capital would have corruption destroy that income from Stockholm.

A few assorted thoughts regarding b-black68's post:
1. Constantinople and Nicaea has a land bridge in the game so it's considered land trade.
2. While I was plaing the Moors, Timbuktu's trade to Marrekesh went up from 200 to 500 when I upgraded from dirt to paved roads. I didn't see the other provinces get anything from upgraded roads. I'm wondering if there's some distance thing that got hit by it.
3. If both provinces have the same resource, it doesn't get traded. A province that doesn't have resources or if the exported province has all its resources only trades common goods. Still, some provinces like Rome that only exports common goods still get a ton of money.
4. What penalties do castles get versus cities on trade?
5. How much does population count?

[Kobal2fr]

2) stone roads give a HUGE boost to land trade. Seriously, in Venice or Vienna you can easily witness a 600/turn jump merely by upgrading the roads, and that's early in the game without banks/guilds/markets etc...

Shame M2 doesn't have the 3rd level of roads

4) Castles get the shaft big time. They can't build any +trade building, and AFAIK only get a percentage of the region's real trade values. The most I've ever seen in a castle is maybe 120 measly florins. Try turning a castle with a port into a city (or vice versa) to see what I mean. You'll notice the trade income is very different, all other things being equal.
The Moorish caravan building makes them a lot more profitable though.

5) Nothing. Population is used in taxation only, not trade nor farming nor mining.

[Shahed]

Kobavelli roads do nothing for trade in vanilla.

[andrewt]

Kobavelli roads do nothing for trade in vanilla.

I'm playing 1.2 without any mods and it looks like it does boost land trade.

[Shahed]

Hi Andy can you please post a before and after image. It never does in my vanilla games. Although I did'nt check again in 1.20. Wonder if that's changed. In 1.10 it did not, that's 100% certain.

[andrewt]

Valenica before -



Valencia after -



Tripoli before -



Tripoli after -



It's kinda a mixed bag. Valencia didn't get any improvement at all. Some rebel bandits spawned but they're blocking the road to the port so it shouldn't figure at all. Tripoli is the interesting case. Trade to Alexandria barely moved but trade to Cairo and Tunis both doubled. Alexandria and Cairo are both Egyptian and Tunis is mine so it isn't trade rights or anything like that that triggered it.

Note that some increased by 1 or 2. I'm thinking there might be something that's population or time based that's increasing trade income slowly like this.

[Shahed]

Thanks a lot mate. Indeed the pop level does increase trade value.
Anyway this is something I should not need to fix as it's fixed in 1.20. Defintely was'nt before because I went and "fixed" it myself.

That's a nice empire. Any Camel Gunners ?

[andrewt]

Turn 100, no gunpowder yet.

[Tusk]

Wouldn't the best strategy here be to build up a merchant's guild HQ in the city where it would give the biggest trade income boost, and then to build a merchant master guild in the centrally-located city where you want to build/spawn your merchants from (eg. constantinople)? The reason for this argument is that the Master guild gives all the same bonuses to locally trained merchants that the HQ does, while the HQ gives a global bonus (so the Merchants trained at the master guild city would get that too).

Basically, when upgrading from Master to HQ, the added trade bonus is the only consideration that should affect its location (all other benefits are global).

So I guess the answer for "where is the best place for a merchant's guild?" depends on what level of merchant's guild you want to have:

1. Master level - good trading city and well located for merchant travel
2. HQ level - best trading city (eg. Antioch for Muslims, Venice for Western factions), provided you ALSO get a master's guild at a city which is well located for merchant access to resources.

[Tusk]

Just realised that I forgot about not being able to build more than one Master's guild of a given guild type for one faction. Doh!

BTW, I suppose having a guild HQ still counts against having another master's guild of the same guild type somewhere else. What about upgrading a guild to HQ, then capturing an enemy city with a master's guild of the same type? Is that possible?