Noob having trouble with a few concepts...

[Whacker]

Hi there, my thoughts:

1. Trade routes are interesting. Your kingdom will automatically trade within itself and between provinces, provided you have the right improvements. Trade will occur with other factions when you have at least a trade agreement and the proper improvements to allow for trade. Lastly your merchants don't do much other than gaining you florins per turn based on the resource they're sitting on, how skilled they are, and how far they are from your capital. The proper buildings to enable commerce are pretty much the same as in MTW; ports, roads, merchant buildings, etc. Build those, get your trade agreements, and manage your merchants and you'll get some pretty hefty incomes.

2. Sorry, I don't recall if they provide a bonus to order when in the city, but there is the chance that they will get some positive ancilliaries when in a city with church improvements. The best thing you can really do with your priests is, in my opinion, 1. send them off to non-catholic lands to convert the population and as a corollary stir up trouble for the province owner, and 2. burn heretics. Personally, I only use mine for 1. and use my assassins on the heretics as fodder. Just make a big group of them, say 10+, and keep them moving!

3. Be careful with princesses. Do NOT accept marriages from low charm princesses into your family because the odds are very high you will get really bad traits or ancils on your generals from them. Only accept high charm princesses. As for your princess, she's basically a diplomat with sex appeal. You can marry her off to get alliances with other factions, but in practice those alliances based on marriage don't always hold up well.

The only other thing I can think of is that right now you should make darn sure you have the v1.1 patch AND Carl's Problemfixer installed. The game has a number of problems, Carl's patch on top of v1.1 does an outstanding job of putting a bandaid on some of them but it can't handle them all.

Enjoy and good luck!

[Odin]

Hi there, my thoughts:

1. Trade routes are interesting. Your kingdom will automatically trade within itself and between provinces, provided you have the right improvements. Trade will occur with other factions when you have at least a trade agreement and the proper improvements to allow for trade. Lastly your merchants don't do much other than gaining you florins per turn based on the resource they're sitting on, how skilled they are, and how far they are from your capital. The proper buildings to enable commerce are pretty much the same as in MTW; ports, roads, merchant buildings, etc. Build those, get your trade agreements, and manage your merchants and you'll get some pretty hefty incomes.

So basically the trade agreement and requsite building. Yet there dosent seem to be any specific commoditiy. With MTW each province had a specialty, now the resources seem random on the map. So if own a province can I assume that the resources in it that province are traded within the trade route? Conceptually what I am not getting is, I have the trade agreement with the english, but what am I trading and can i control the amount? The merchant part I get now.

The only other thing I can think of is that right now you should make darn sure you have the v1.1 patch AND Carl's Problemfixer installed. The game has a number of problems, Carl's patch on top of v1.1 does an outstanding job of putting a bandaid on some of them but it can't handle them all.

I did download Lusted's mod but havent applied it yet, I am playing v 1.1 and mainly just seeing who has what, kind of fooling around until 1.2 comes out then I will see what other tweeks lusted comes up with, it seems his mod incorporates a lot of good features from a broad selection of modders.

[Whacker]

So basically the trade agreement and requsite building. Yet there dosent seem to be any specific commoditiy. With MTW each province had a specialty, now the resources seem random on the map. So if own a province can I assume that the resources in it that province are traded within the trade route? Conceptually what I am not getting is, I have the trade agreement with the english, but what am I trading and can i control the amount? The merchant part I get now.

OK, in M2TW, the resources you can physically see on the campaign map, that's where you want to park your merchants, at least on the more valuable resources. In terms of granular control of trade, that doesn't exist, the game handles that automatically. All you have to do is get the trade agreement, then make sure you are building the proper improvements to allow for trade. The game handles the rest. Hope this helps.

I did download Lusted's mod but havent applied it yet, I am playing v 1.1 and mainly just seeing who has what, kind of fooling around until 1.2 comes out then I will see what other tweeks lusted comes up with, it seems his mod incorporates a lot of good features from a broad selection of modders.

OK, v1.2 seems like it will be a good one if it really does fix what it says it does. You'll just probably notice a lot of bugs if you pay attention, some of them are more annoying than others.

[Odin]

OK, in M2TW, the resources you can physically see on the campaign map, that's where you want to park your merchants, at least on the more valuable resources. In terms of granular control of trade, that doesn't exist, the game handles that automatically. All you have to do is get the trade agreement, then make sure you are building the proper improvements to allow for trade. The game handles the rest. Hope this helps.

Yep that helps, its crystal clear, thanks man.

[vonsch]

Odin,

The value of merchant trading (not the fixed region-based) varies a lot depending on the faction you're playing and the distance of the goods supply from your capital. In general, the farther you go, the better the proft. But distance starts to spawn negative traits in the merchants, so it has a downside (of course!)

You can also play the conquer game with merchants. I usually don't bother, but when I was playing Milan, parked right there in the center of things, it was a viable manner of handling merchants. I just snapped up every new merchant that wandered by, whether on a trade good or not, for the skill boost on my main "venture capitalists." The first few takeovers yield a point each, so skill climbs fast and you can start eyeing those better ones parked on resources that will provide a tidy lump sum just for taking them over.

Usually I just park them on a couple close commodities of the same type in one region to fix a monopoly and work on getting the monopolist line up to +3. By then they are at 5 or 6 skill total, and worth shipping off to the good spots. Generally those are off at the map edges. Sub-Saharan Africa is popular. Long trip though. And risky. Timbuktu has nasty random events like flashfloods and storms. The Holy Land has some good trading too, if you don't live too close, but the traffic can be high and the competition fierce.

Trading really is a sub-game in itself now, like the spy/assassin game. Or the Pope-on-a-rope game.


I tried Lusted's Lands to Conquer and didn't like the AI mod part. I found the AI very passive and the money supply way too high. I suspect it's aimed at those who like the operational game, not the strategic one. More and bigger battles!

I went back to Carl's problem-fixer collection along with a few small tweaks of my own. I'm waiting on 1.2 also.

[Odin]

Odin,

The value of merchant trading (not the fixed region-based) varies a lot depending on the faction you're playing and the distance of the goods supply from your capital. In general, the farther you go, the better the proft. But distance starts to spawn negative traits in the merchants, so it has a downside (of course!)

You can also play the conquer game with merchants. I usually don't bother, but when I was playing Milan, parked right there in the center of things, it was a viable manner of handling merchants. I just snapped up every new merchant that wandered by, whether on a trade good or not, for the skill boost on my main "venture capitalists." The first few takeovers yield a point each, so skill climbs fast and you can start eyeing those better ones parked on resources that will provide a tidy lump sum just for taking them over.

Usually I just park them on a couple close commodities of the same type in one region to fix a monopoly and work on getting the monopolist line up to +3. By then they are at 5 or 6 skill total, and worth shipping off to the good spots. Generally those are off at the map edges. Sub-Saharan Africa is popular. Long trip though. And risky. Timbuktu has nasty random events like flashfloods and storms. The Holy Land has some good trading too, if you don't live too close, but the traffic can be high and the competition fierce.

Trading really is a sub-game in itself now, like the spy/assassin game. Or the Pope-on-a-rope game.


I tried Lusted's Lands to Conquer and didn't like the AI mod part. I found the AI very passive and the money supply way too high. I suspect it's aimed at those who like the operational game, not the strategic one. More and bigger battles!

I went back to Carl's problem-fixer collection along with a few small tweaks of my own. I'm waiting on 1.2 also.

The first part of my confusion was seperating the physical merchant from the actual dynastic trade. As Lusted pointed out trade routes and merchants are different. I am still not convinced I have a full graps on trade routes, I mean I understand I need the buildings, and trade agreements but once those are established, what gets trade to whom and for what money?

The merchant sub game I get now, it really is just a little added game within the game and its a nice touch. I havent applied any mods yet I will hold out until 1.2 but my overall goal with any new PC game I get is to find a user mod that improves the AI performance.

[Lusted]

I am still not convinced I have a full graps on trade routes, I mean I understand I need the buildings, and trade agreements but once those are established, what gets trade to whom and for what money?

The game automatically sets up the best trade routes for you, trading the resources in a province with the provinces that will give the best price for it.

[Foz]

Do NOT accept marriages from low charm princesses into your family because the odds are very high you will get really bad traits or ancils on your generals from them. Only accept high charm princesses.

How do you tell??? The marriage proposal scroll doesn't have a magnifying glass to go to the princess' location IIRC, so how do you get the stats on the princess to know what her charm is?

[Whacker]

How do you tell??? The marriage proposal scroll doesn't have a magnifying glass to go to the princess' location IIRC, so how do you get the stats on the princess to know what her charm is?

Dangit people stop asking me perfectly valid questions!!!

Really sorry Foz, yet again I am utterly useless, game isn't installed right now so I can't check. I thought there was some way you could peek at her traits when the marriage proposal window pops up. Failing that, I guess you can .... save and reload after checking her out, using toggle_fow if needed. If I'm wrong and my memory is failing, then I'd call that another needed game feature. How can we make a good decision on what marriage proposals to accept if we don't know what we're getting in the deal? This is something like the missing "City view" feature that was dropped from RTW (if it truly is missing).

All I know for certain is that there are definitely much higher changes of getting really bad traits off of low charm princesses.

[vonsch]

The trick is to not accept blind proposals to marry off your prince to some floosy from another kingdom! At least the local girls are safely plain! Gotta watch those Spanish girls especially. They get around and burn off that charm. Now, the French princess can be sweet. If you get her young, at least!

When I'm marrying off my prince, I make sure I do the proposing. That way I can check out the, erm, pedigree first. (Not that feet are charming or anything!)