merchants trade reduced

**Armenia_Byzantium** · 06-01-2008, 21:27

Can someone tell me why merchant's trade would go from like 400 florins per turn to something like 70 fl per turn, given the merchants traits never changed

**FactionHeir** · 06-01-2008, 21:33

The location of your capital changed.

**Must`** · 06-02-2008, 00:11

Or maybe another faction took that province

**Armenia_Byzantium** · 06-02-2008, 02:01

Originally Posted by FactionHeir

The location of your capital changed.

yeah true i changed the capital to another province

is the trade going to increase though later on?

**Slicendice** · 06-02-2008, 05:03

I had something similar happen. I am playing VanillaMod and I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it.

But anyway I've got a pile of merchants in Timbuktu and all the sudden their income drops by half. I don't think my Capitol had anything to do with it though because I don't remember changing it.

BTW VanillaMod is pretty good.

**Zaleukos** · 06-02-2008, 08:58

Besides merchant skill merchant income depends on:

Resource type (ivory and gold are always worth more than timber)
Distance from your capital to the nearest resource of that type (Byz makes less from silk resources than France since it has the stuff near the capital, and Scotland makes more from Wine than France would).
Trade agreement with the owner of the province where the resource is (or owning the province) gives a bonus.
More than one resource of that type in the province gives a monopoly if no foreing merchants are on the reources (double income).

Then there might be a penalty for being at war with the owner of the province, but I'm not quite sure about that.

Halved income could be a sign of an enemy breaking your monopoly. The timbuktu resources come in pairs (except for one slave resource?) and at least one of the gold resources is outside the field of vision of the city.

I dislike the merchant side of the game rather strongly since it includes so much tedious micromanagement (not to mention stupid interruptable pathfinding that makes it take way too long for your guys to reach their destination), so I tend to just build forts on valuable resources and stuff them with one town militia tonnes of merchants. It's an exploit/cheat but also a time-saver, and I dont want to waste my youth moving merchants around.

It would be nice if CA reduced the number of movable agents in Empire, but there is absolutely no sign of such a development...

**Must`** · 06-02-2008, 09:54

What is the highest amount of florins your merchant was making per turn?

Mine was 1762 florins.

**FactionHeir** · 06-02-2008, 11:19

Originally Posted by Slicendice

I had something similar happen. I am playing VanillaMod and I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it.

But anyway I've got a pile of merchants in Timbuktu and all the sudden their income drops by half. I don't think my Capitol had anything to do with it though because I don't remember changing it.

BTW VanillaMod is pretty good.

Thanks

In addition to what Zaleukos posted, you can also lose income from your merchants acquiring bad traits (especially when they are far from your capital), which reduce finance by up to 2.

Also possible is that your merchant died and you didn't notice, or he got bumped off.