Stranger than reality

[Agent Smith]

I agree 100% here. Merchants are not worth the trouble right now. You'll get more cash from sacking poorly defended city than from your merchants after decades of trading.

Unless you put them on those rare resources of great value that are far away and require 30 turns to reach. Then your merchant dies of old age after making money for about 5 turns.

Solutions:

- Double or triple the revenue of all resources present on the map. Increase the revenue of a city/fortress if merchants are present on that region's resources.

- If foreign merchants are on the region's resources, the city/fortress still get a bonus, but smaller.

- Monopolies. If you have many merchants on the same kind of resource, you receive a bonus. Of course, this would require a fix to the exploit when players leave more than one merchant on a single resource icon using forts or armies.

I think people miss the point of Merchants.

The real key to using them effectively is to aquire other Merchant's assets. Doing a takeover of another merchant (merchant warfare) gives you a large lump sum of cash depending on how financial the enemy merchant was.

Keeping a merchant on a resource helsp train them. They gain traits by trading a resource. But once they've been there a while, send some out to conquer the financial world!

[Omisan]

I think people miss the point of Merchants.

The real key to using them effectively is to aquire other Merchant's assets. Doing a takeover of another merchant (merchant warfare) gives you a large lump sum of cash depending on how financial the enemy merchant was.

Keeping a merchant on a resource helsp train them. They gain traits by trading a resource. But once they've been there a while, send some out to conquer the financial world!

That's awfully boring and unrealistic.

In fact it doesn't make any sense. You don't leave your business behind to take over someone's business and "win" an amount of money. Only to then leave that business as well. There's no logic in that. Where's that money coming from?

Maybe they should just give a thief skill to assassin that allows them to steal money from merchants after killing them. Then it would make more sense.

If merchants take over other businesses, it should be to get their hands on that resources and maybe to establish a monopoly, not for some instant amount of cash that comes out of nowhere.

[Carl]

Keeping a merchant on a resource helsp train them.

The problem is their are a whjole heap of ecources that you can't use for training that are really low value, mainly because they can't have a manoply in that province and the Knowlage of Customs line can be picked up raher closer to home than these recources. This is partyicuarly bad in western europe. In addittion with many AI merchants being 5+ Finance and well spread out you need a 7-8+ Finance merchant and a lot of spies to find them. And even then you won't get more from aqqussitions that rare recources, you'll STILL need some high finance merchants on the good recources, and even then it's a lot of time and effort put in for a very small percentage of your income.

[Agent Smith]

The problem is their are a whjole heap of ecources that you can't use for training that are really low value, mainly because they can't have a manoply in that province and the Knowlage of Customs line can be picked up raher closer to home than these recources. This is partyicuarly bad in western europe. In addittion with many AI merchants being 5+ Finance and well spread out you need a 7-8+ Finance merchant and a lot of spies to find them. And even then you won't get more from aqqussitions that rare recources, you'll STILL need some high finance merchants on the good recources, and even then it's a lot of time and effort put in for a very small percentage of your income.

To me they are no different than assassins. Assassins take a while to train, but once they get high enough they are nearly unstoppable. Once I get a merchant high enough, just plant them in the middle of enemy territory on a resource and wait for another merchant to wander by. Northern Italy and Constantinople are great places for high value resources to park a merchant on and wait like a praying mantis for an unsuspecting merchant.

They serve the dual purpose of giving you extra money and taking away the other factions ability to gain extra money. I like using them, personally, besides the obvious spy value they have of being able to freely travel the world without political reprecussions.

[TinCow]

Merchants can be very profitable even if you don't use them to take out AI merchants. All you need to do is send them to the actual profitable resources, not some random wine and textiles in Europe. Send them to the two provinces in southwest Africa, to the Middle East, to Scandanavia, and especially to the Americas. You can easily rake in 500-800 per merchant per turn before you get to the Americas and 1000+ per merchant per turn once you get to the Americas. It's just a question of utilizing the right resources. Don't complain about a lack of return on your resource when you're sitting on English tin rather than African gold.

[Omisan]

Merchants can be very profitable even if you don't use them to take out AI merchants. All you need to do is send them to the actual profitable resources, not some random wine and textiles in Europe. Send them to the two provinces in southwest Africa, to the Middle East, to Scandanavia, and especially to the Americas. You can easily rake in 500-800 per merchant per turn before you get to the Americas and 1000+ per merchant per turn once you get to the Americas. It's just a question of utilizing the right resources. Don't complain about a lack of return on your resource when you're sitting on English tin rather than African gold.

Still...the value of the smaller goods should be high enough to actually make a significant difference in revenues.

Those cheap resource are the economic equivalent of having hamsters armed with slingshots in the military aspect of the game.

[Agent Smith]

Still...the value of the smaller goods should be high enough to actually make a significant difference in revenues.

Those cheap resource are the economic equivalent of having hamsters armed with slingshots in the military aspect of the game.

But...just...LOOK AT THE BONES!!!

[TinCow]

Still...the value of the smaller goods should be high enough to actually make a significant difference in revenues.

Those cheap resource are the economic equivalent of having hamsters armed with slingshots in the military aspect of the game.

LOL, nice pic. I don't have any problems with the income from the 'normal' resources, but I will admit I think it's a shame there isn't more of a benefit from trying to create monopolies. It would work well if you had a X% increase in merchant revenue for every resource of the same kind that you controlled.

For instance, if it was a 10% bonus and you're got 5 merchants on wine that has a base value of 20, each merchant would be making 30 per turn. Something like that would solve the 'usefulness' problem without unbalancing the game IMO.

[Poulp']

Still...the value of the smaller goods should be high enough to actually make a significant difference in revenues.

Those cheap resource are the economic equivalent of having hamsters armed with slingshots in the military aspect of the game.

take care, it might be a giant hamster from outer space in disguise

[Whacker]

To me they are no different than assassins. Assassins take a while to train, but once they get high enough they are nearly unstoppable. Once I get a merchant high enough, just plant them in the middle of enemy territory on a resource and wait for another merchant to wander by. Northern Italy and Constantinople are great places for high value resources to park a merchant on and wait like a praying mantis for an unsuspecting merchant.

They serve the dual purpose of giving you extra money and taking away the other factions ability to gain extra money. I like using them, personally, besides the obvious spy value they have of being able to freely travel the world without political reprecussions.

My problem with assassins never went away, even after v1.1 and Carl's patch. No matter what they were still utterly useless, even when I sent them to kill crippled old men hobbling around on canes. And of course Murphy's law pervades all, when I finally did get one above 6 skill which was a miracle, they inadvertantly die on some 90%+ mission. Ended up twinking them slightly in the relevant game files, they were perhaps overpowered in a way after that but they at least felt more useful, I still lost a good number of them but they at least succeeded once in a blue moon.

Merchants are a different story. By the time I ever got mine up to the 6-7 skill level they were all about 50+ years old, so their useful lifetime after that was pretty slim. And that's using both the passive and active tactics.

/shrug

[Agent Smith]

My problem with assassins never went away, even after v1.1 and Carl's patch. No matter what they were still utterly useless, even when I sent them to kill crippled old men hobbling around on canes. And of course Murphy's law pervades all, when I finally did get one above 6 skill which was a miracle, they inadvertantly die on some 90%+ mission. Ended up twinking them slightly in the relevant game files, they were perhaps overpowered in a way after that but they at least felt more useful, I still lost a good number of them but they at least succeeded once in a blue moon.

Merchants are a different story. By the time I ever got mine up to the 6-7 skill level they were all about 50+ years old, so their useful lifetime after that was pretty slim. And that's using both the passive and active tactics.

/shrug

Maybe I'm just not having the same problems...

I've used assassins to great effect. Rebel captains are great trainers, and I have rarely had an assassin die in an attempt at killing a rebel captain. Diplomats work well too.

I had four assassins at their highest agent level at once at one point. They had no less than a 40-50% chance of killing low level enemy kings. Needless to say I made major problems for my enemies.

I think the problem with both merchants and assassins is that they take a lot of time and management to use to their greatest capacity. When you are micromanaging your empire and armies it's hard to remember to train priests every turn and send merchants world wide. Which is another reason I'm trying to make my campaign longer and place more of an emphasis on agent warfare.

[Marshal Murat]

I think you should send merchants into province cities, and have them set up shop in the city.

They then rape the area of natural resources, send some back to their capital, and then a cut for you, taxes most likely.


Come on, they have Battlefield Assassins for Hungary! It's like Battlefield Ninja!