Whats the worth of merchants?

[Snoil The Mighty]

Well oddly I was considering doing a full cost-benefit analysis of this. Total sunk cost vs total income from all sources. I got so bored of the process of testing to see if there really is a random generator bug I am not sure I'll do this though LOL (By the way, I have yet to find anything that would point to the random generator as bugged so far in over 1200 reps under so many circumstances that I am having a hard time dividing them up into categories that make sense anymore) However I digress. If one was to test this, there would have to be more than one faction tested. For instance, Venice rocks merchant-wise, starting with a good one and seemingly out of reputation spawning good one after good one too. But take say Russia, mentioned earlier. Their corner-map capital and relative isolation makes merchanting for them an absolute cakewalk, I do better with them than I do with Venice so far. Train em up on Amber as they walk to the slaves, then a short boat trip to silks. I was making sick money just at Constantinople. The Vienna silver mines and Venetian/Milanese textiles were just icing on the cake. Rich, creamy icing! And that was long before I got to Aleppo spice *insert Dune sub-reference of your choosing*. And since they can train as they go so easily, by the time I see other merchants, I'm the predator far more often than prey. And other than amber, valuable goods are all so distant-yet oddly reachable! Now all this can be true of other franchises depending on capital location and where you put your merchie guild(s). And I never use forts-to each their own but I just don't (for trade anyway - I use em for military purposes quite a bit especially as Russia). Nor assassins anymore, i just send a spy with every batch. Makes it easy to find prey for my commercial warriors. Offhand I'd say that I lose perhaps 1 in 4 merchants to predation overall (including the odd badly handled attempt to acquire), but more like 1 in 6 in my Russian campaigns (have now done 2 of those). I seemed to lose the most as Milan oddly enough, but I was spawning rookies into a hornet's nest a lot as Milan. Not my best idea. Anyway, if one has the will to micro them -I'll pull their journey all the way out and note goods to "rest" on for the walk for instance- I would hazard a very vague guess that a 30-1 payback is on the low side, properly managed of course. Ive had guys stand on those ERE silks for 50 turns making 600+ even over 700 depending on faction. Times 4 guys. That's a minor city worth of income. Sure, it cost me 5 merhcants in price to get em all there, but such a small price to pay for 2000-2800 per turn for a long long time. And a good whacking of my opponents' merchants is always such a nice way to buy that totally unnecessary extra 2 units of (insert a very fun unit here).

So after boring everyone to tears (except the sensible folk who stopped reading 3 minutes ago and didn't get to this part) the payback overall is huge in percentage terms in my experience-and if anyone wants a serious cost-benefit analysis, I wouldn't mind co-ordinating with one or more like minded folks to do a few factions each. Obviously we'd have to setup certain rules like "no taking your 1-star noob with a horsefeed store and trying to acquire a 7 star stud who owns a goldmine in Africa @ 8% chance of success" that kinda thing. Drop a message to me anyone who'd be interested