Merchants: You CAN use many on one resource.

[Musashi]

Then just don't use it. I like it personally.

[Skott]

I tried the fort thing today in my France campaign. Just doing the wine resources. One thing I noticed is the enemy merchants flat out avoid forts. Since I started doing it not a single enemy merchant has come anywhere near my forts. I'm guessing they dont see my merchant in the forts and so dont come after them. I need to test it more though to make sure its not a fluke.

[Musashi]

They actually can't attack your merchant inside the fort. In fact they can't enter it at all as long as it belongs to you.

[TheSeated]

They actually can't attack your merchant inside the fort. In fact they can't enter it at all as long as it belongs to you.

Then its an exploit.

[Shahed]

Hmmm.......

1) Presumably you build the fort off to the side of the resource a little bit, rather than actually on it?

2) The fort might allow you to put three or four merchants on the resource (up to twenty, I presume?) but does it protect the merchants from getting aquired?

3) If it doesn't, can more than one get aquired at once? Will an 8 ranked AI merchant take out all five of your 4 ranked guys in one hit?

1. You can build the fort wherever the game allows you to. You can build it to the side also, but why notsmack on top ?

2. Yes it does protect them. There's already a thread on that cant remember what it's called.

3. No. AI won't attack merchants with escort or inside forts or settlements.

But, wouldn't that destory your relationship with the nation that you place the fort on.

Probably, why not ask for military access ? Or better still get them to declare on you and then go and wrap up their resources.

HAhaha, now that's thinking outside the box, or I don't know what is . Of course, it's borderline cheating, and you can only do it in your own lands, but funny still.

I don;t know if it is cheating... I mean a single enemy combat unit could capture you fort full of merchants and kick them all out with no chance of them stopping it or getting back in again. And using military units to secure and hold economic location for your personal use sounds a reasonable tactic.

The only thing that would make it an exploit is that the AI does not do the same thing...

It's hardly an exploit... I mean it may not have been intended by the devs but it mirrors real world practices of the nobles in the medieval period.

Well, I leaning towards to say that it is an exploit.

Then just don't use it. I like it personally.

Ok. About exploit usage and such, using cheat commands etc. My view is pretty simple.

If you think something is an exploit I would discourage you from using it and report it in the bug/enhancement thread.

If you enjoy using it then go ahead, it's your game and you paid for it. Nobody can dictate how you play. So use cheats whatever, enjoy yourself, that's what your 50 bucks are for.

Personally I classify it as a bug, or an oversight by the devs. It's probably an unintended loophole. I'm not going to report it myself because this thing is actually fun and there's a lot of FAR more pressing issues. If anyone wants to report it, feel free.

What you could do also is to report it and ask the devs to make the AI do the same in future updates. Now that would give resources even more value on the map. Anyway trade posts are old as man himself, whenever something valuable was found, someone would go and hog it. Then someone else (like the army) would come along and (for a cut of the cake) protect the resource hog, so it would be nice to have this kind of addition in the game. You don't have to wait for the devs you can already do this.

I enjoy it and I am going to use it to train up some merchants, possibly even to counter the absurdly broken VnV issues which lead me to have cities without good governors (hence less income).

I'm nearing the end of my own personal empire goals (not the ridiculous 45 provinces, conquer the universe) and all the micromanagement is tedious, all the agent micromanagement specially so.

I think it's really fun. Give it a shot once and it removes some micromanagement from the game. I love the trading part and for me this is just another option when I feel like doing it.

[Musashi]

My feeling is that it's realistic, even if the devs didn't intend it it should stay. If I'm a noble and I have a minion who's making me a bunch of money trading my resource, it makes tons of sense (And was done in real life all the time) for me to provide him with a military guard and even fortifications. No other merchant would be able to horn in on his business under those circumstances.

[Shahed]

Agreed. Just look at the experiences in Indonesia, in America, India, Africa.

As I said as well it did happen and the devs should expand on this.
Adds another line to the game.