Is theAI mean? Earth quakes in Timbuktu

[RJJ101]

I was building up a nice collection of merchants in a fort next to a gold mine in Timbuktu. The better ones were earning 606 Florins a turn. Then there was an Earth quake that killed them all. Is the AI mean, or am I just unlucky.

As an aside, do forts protect merchants from hostile take over ?

[Darkarbiter]

yes

[AlphaDelta1]

but personally I find in M2TW that unrest is easily managed.

By other merchants, yes, from other military forces, no.

Cheers

[AlphaDelta1]

Apologies, I pasted the wrong text. I meant to quote you as follows:

As an aside, do forts protect merchants from hostile take over ?

Cheers

[Slaists]

well, eathquakes are not that bad IMHO (unless you keep all your merchants in a fort in the hit province). what I dislike more are flash-floods: takes away move points from that province for the durantion of the whole game.

[Atalus]

I just had a full stack crusade going to bagdad , 5 family members in it for fun , and we got hit by a earthquake the turn after i started the siege. Lost everything except for 1 family member and two units of Infantry.

[LordKhaine]

Had an earth quake do the same to my merchants at Timbuktu. I can only advise capturing the city in that province. It's located close to the gold so you can easily and quickly replace merchants. And it's in such a remote place it's fairly safe from military attack. Place some watch towers around and you'll get years and years of advance warning as well.

Natural disasters have always scared me since my first family member heading to the new world got killed in a storm halfway through the journey

[Taiwan Legion]

how do you use forts with merchants?

[LordKhaine]

how do you use forts with merchants?

Send family member on resource. Built fort. Fill with merchants. Simple. Done on the gold in Timbuktu you can have a dozen merchants all gaining 500+ florins each.

Don't even need to keep any military units inside.

[dismal]

Send family member on resource. Built fort. Fill with merchants. Simple. Done on the gold in Timbuktu you can have a dozen merchants all gaining 500+ florins each.

Don't even need to keep any military units inside.

Wouldn't it be easier to open the console and give yourself a bazillion florins?

[x-dANGEr]

Wouldn't it be easier to open the console and give yourself a bazillion florins?

May be.. But doesn't have the same feeling.

[LordKhaine]

Wouldn't it be easier to open the console and give yourself a bazillion florins?

But that would be a cheat, while sticking merchants in a fort is only an exploit.

[SMZ]

just call it a trading post - what happens when they discover gold anywhere? a "Rush" as it's called - not one guy goes and stakes a claim

[Microwavegerbil]

But that would be a cheat, while sticking merchants in a fort is only an exploit.

You guys are kidding yourselves, abusing exploits = cheating. If you're doing something the game does not intend to give yourself an unfair advantage, it's cheating. This is a single player game so it's only affecting you, but let's call it what it is.

[dumas]

"And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to cheat..."
-AI God's Bible

[shibbie1990]

my very best merchants in timbukto (10 finance + extra traits) can only earn a max of 131 florins per turn. how can your guys get 500+? Im playing as france and normal/normal difficulty, is that making a difference? (also all - if not most - of them have been trained in marsaille where there is a merchants guild headquarters. any input?
thanks

[Carl]

Whats their actual skill level ATM, they should be about 8-10 by now (+1 for guild, +1/2 for LeagalDealer, +1/2 for NaturalMerchant, +3 for monopolist, and +2 for Knowlage of Customs).

You guys are kidding yourselves, abusing exploits = cheating. If you're doing something the game does not intend to give yourself an unfair advantage, it's cheating. This is a single player game so it's only affecting you, but let's call it what it is.

We don't even know it's an exploit till CA tells us it is. And please don't mention the AI not doing it, the AI dosen't have a clue how to use a lot of things. the most glaring examples being the New World and Arguin/Timbuktu. The AI never takes them or sends anything into those areas. That nearly a fifth of your territory total needed and 10-15K a turn from single merchants. In fact I suspect that if you put up a trading fort and then let the AI take it it would actually use this feature itself. it's the fact that it isn't programmed to make and keep forts on trade recources that does it (it baerly uses them at all, only when the defend_fortified condition kicks in actually, allthough I did see Milian put a fort over one of it's Textiles once, but thats was an exceptional case I think.

[shibbie1990]

well theres about 12 of them and the majority are about level 7 finance but some are level 10 finance but effectively more as they have additional traits and retinue which does allow them to produce more money, but as i said, a max of 131 florins. how did you get 500+ lordkaine?

[Carl]

Where's your capital, if it's near Constantinople, Poland, or Granada it's in the wrong place. Move it to Londan if you can.

[UltraWar]

You guys are kidding yourselves, abusing exploits = cheating. If you're doing something the game does not intend to give yourself an unfair advantage, it's cheating. This is a single player game so it's only affecting you, but let's call it what it is.

Does that mean it is wrong in a Multiplayer Campaign or would it mean that it is fine?

[dismal]

We don't even know it's an exploit till CA tells us it is.

You must be kidding. Forts full of merchants? It's obviously a bug. The game was intended to allow 1 merchant per resource.

[dismal]

well theres about 12 of them and the majority are about level 7 finance but some are level 10 finance but effectively more as they have additional traits and retinue which does allow them to produce more money, but as i said, a max of 131 florins. how did you get 500+ lordkaine?

Also, it's possible you may not have the patch installed. In which case, you need to reset your capital each time you open the file to get the merchant profits to calulate correctly.

[shibbie1990]

so the capital's important? well mine is paris bacause i started as the french, so i should move it to london? and dismal, do i need to reassign the capital every time or just every time i load the save file?
also i own the entire west side of the full map and the whole of the bottom right of the map. should that affect where my capital should be placed?

[dismal]

so the capital's important? well mine is paris bacause i started as the french, so i should move it to london? and dismal, do i need to reassign the capital every time or just every time i load the save file?
also i own the entire west side of the full map and the whole of the bottom right of the map. should that affect where my capital should be placed?

If you have installed the patch, you don't have to do anything.

The pre-patch version had a bug that caused the merchant profits to be calculated wrong when the game was loaded. Moving your capital and then immediately moving it back would cause it to re-calculate the correct amount.

You don't have to do it every turn, just when you load the game. Though I would recommend just installing the patch if you haven't.

Where your capital should be placed is a whole separate issue. As a rule of thumb, near the center of your empire to cut down on corruption and minimize distance to capital penalties from unrest.

[shibbie1990]

if i install the patch (V 1.1?) will i have to restart my game or will it still work?

[dismal]

Should still work, IIRC.

[Microwavegerbil]

We don't even know it's an exploit till CA tells us it is. And please don't mention the AI not doing it, the AI dosen't have a clue how to use a lot of things. the most glaring examples being the New World and Arguin/Timbuktu. The AI never takes them or sends anything into those areas. That nearly a fifth of your territory total needed and 10-15K a turn from single merchants. In fact I suspect that if you put up a trading fort and then let the AI take it it would actually use this feature itself. it's the fact that it isn't programmed to make and keep forts on trade recources that does it (it baerly uses them at all, only when the defend_fortified condition kicks in actually, allthough I did see Milian put a fort over one of it's Textiles once, but thats was an exceptional case I think.

Well, because it takes away the ability to challenge merchants for that resource, thus removing all interaction between your merchants and the AIs. Also, it makes merchants able to stack with eachother on a single resource, and this is the big point and I think it marks this as an obvious bug/exploit.

Does that mean it is wrong in a Multiplayer Campaign or would it mean that it is fine?

Well, the game is only single player, so I assume you're setting up for a hypothetical argument on exploits in multiplayer games, which is a whole new can of worms. However, I love a good debate so I'll bite and give you my answer. My opinion is that an exploit gives you an unfair adavantage over an opponent, so unless you have both agreed that it is okay to use this exploit, then you're cheating him. The game is no longer an even match, because you have a handicap, in this case extra money.

[Skott]

In my current Spanish campaign I got a merchant down on the gold resource closest (just south of it) to Timbuktu and he's pulling in 1,505 florins. Running Patch 1.1 and LtC mod. Just thinking if I had 19 more merchants there making that. ChaChing!

[dumas]

It's a singleplayer game so I couldn't care less if other people use cheats or exploits against their own computers. But one bit of warning: If you do cheat/exploit, It'll be very hard to go back to not cheating and you'll get board with the game much faster. I learned that the hard way with RTW, a fine game that I ruined by spoiling myself with cheats.

I find that the best games are played without cheats, save/loads, and (gasp!) losing a few provinces. Okay, I still use toggle_fow sometimes but only when I'm curious what the Mongols are doing.

[Carl]

Well, because it takes away the ability to challenge merchants for that resource, thus removing all interaction between your merchants and the AIs. Also, it makes merchants able to stack with each other on a single resource, and this is the big point and I think it marks this as an obvious bug/exploit.

1. My point was that until CA tells us otherwise it could be that they specifically made this possible on purpose.

2. I don't personally believe it WAS intended, however I like to play devils advocate for everyone, and regardless of what i think personally, it's not an actual exploit till CA says it is.

3. Regardless of what they do, theirs no way they can actually fix this, so the only sensible thing to do is re-balance merchants around it and let the AI do it. Why can't they fix it? Because you can do it with an army instead of a fort sat on the resourse, and if they took away the ability of armies to move onto resource squares, you'd have MASSIVE issues with moving troops around in some areas of the world, (Constantinople, Northern Italy, Stockholm and Kiev, also parts of France and the far middle east could cause issues in places).

4. even if this is an exploit, it's the only real way of training large numbers of merchants up quickly, and also the only way to make a decent amount of money without going to the new world/Timbuktu/arguin. Nowhere else, (for most factions anyway), generates enough income to really make the time and effort you put into merchants worth it. It isn't really an exploit, (if we make the assumption for a moment that it really isn't what the designers intended), IMHO when people use it to but a load of high finance merchants on a 70-150 florins resource. It only becomes a really bad thing when people do it in the New World/Timbuktu/Africa. In fact thats all I really use it for, a handy way to train merchants up and a way to get plenty of money out of the low grade recourses. I haven't got the time or inclination to go conquering i the New World or anywhere else thats worth a lot of money, and it takes too damm long to shift a lot of merchants to those areas rather than training them there.