Quote Originally Posted by 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.
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.