Noob having trouble with a few concepts...

[Odin]

Cheers,

Long time STW/MTW player here never bothered with RTW not intrested in the time period. Got an upgrade on my PC so took the plunge with MTW2. What a difference from MTW !

I have read through the forums for a while so i have a rudementary understanding of these concepts but if you would help me out I would appreciate it.

1. Trade routes/trading. While I get the concept I dont quite see how its all networked. I am fooling around with denmark now, around the 5th turn my merchant makes it to where lithunia would be and starts trading a resource (amber i believe). How is that a trade route for me? It goes through many rebel provinces, and I have one sole merchant so I dont have adjcent regions linked by merchant. I am just not getting the trading concept here it seems the further away I go the more I make off of one guy?

2. Cardinals/priests: other then converting and dealing with heritics they dont seem to be of any other value (not that that is minimal), save for being in line for the pope. Do they provide any kind of bonus for town order if I place them in a city?

3. Marriages: seem random unless I offer a princess and if she isnt charming it gets rejected. Often i get a window pop up of some local commander who is a suitable prospect for her and he would then join my family as a potential heir. Is this random? I guess what I am really curious about is there a strategy here i am missing to get a solid random guy to pop up? (I know that sounds juvenille, but i dont know how else to word it).

these are 3 that have me slightly baffled right now, perhaps i am still thinking in the prior MTW mode and need to hit the refresh in my brain. Still I cant seem to get a good handle on them.

Any comments are appreciated, thanks.

Odin

[Lusted]

1. Trade routes/trading. While I get the concept I dont quite see how its all networked. I am fooling around with denmark now, around the 5th turn my merchant makes it to where lithunia would be and starts trading a resource (amber i believe). How is that a trade route for me? It goes through many rebel provinces, and I have one sole merchant so I dont have adjcent regions linked by merchant. I am just not getting the trading concept here it seems the further away I go the more I make off of one guy?

Merchants are seperate from trade routes, the money they make is seperate from your trading income.

2. Cardinals/priests: other then converting and dealing with heritics they dont seem to be of any other value (not that that is minimal), save for being in line for the pope. Do they provide any kind of bonus for town order if I place them in a city?

Yes, and if you conquer a region with a high level of another religion they help convert the province more quickly, and reduce religious unrest as a result.

[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!

[Carl]

Merchants have nothing to do with trade routes. You get trade routes between any two ports/cities/castles that are not obstructed by going through somone elses lands/a port blocade and as long as eithier you have trade rights with the faction, or you own both ports/cities/castles.

2. Nope, no happiness bouns. What you see is what you get, but religious unrest can bite hard if you don't whatch out.

3. Nope, it's random, allthough If you click on an enemy general who is unmarried you can try to grab him. Or you can enter Diplomacy.

[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.

[Odin]

2. Nope, no happiness bouns. What you see is what you get, but religious unrest can bite hard if you don't whatch out.

Well thats fine, however one would think that a cardinal visiting a small outpost like Oslo (as an example) would give some kind of boost, even if its temporary...

3. Nope, it's random, allthough If you click on an enemy general who is unmarried you can try to grab him. Or you can enter Diplomacy.

okay well I'll just grab the best bloke that comes accross then.

Thanks again for all the quick replies guys.

[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.

[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!)

[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]

What determines how many land trade routes you can have, or how far away they're allowed to go? Are each province's land trade partners limited to provinces on its borders, or could the route pass through some other province to get to a better one? Also, do roads affect the trade process at all except for the ~10% income bonus overall?

[dismal]

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.

It's been a while since I looked (probably since RTW) but the city trade scroll tells you what you're trading and where.

There does seem to be a linkage between resources on the map and what you trade in your trade routes. IIRC, if you have more valuable resources in your province, your export trade routes are more valuable. You get a smaller fee for imports.

Also, I'm not sure what happens if you have more trade routes from buildings than you have resources available to export. I seem to recall that adding trade routes beyond a certain point does little for you.

Wish we had more definitive answers on this.

[vonsch]

What determines how many land trade routes you can have, or how far away they're allowed to go? Are each province's land trade partners limited to provinces on its borders, or could the route pass through some other province to get to a better one? Also, do roads affect the trade process at all except for the ~10% income bonus overall?

Good questions all.

But I don't have any answers. I wonder if land trade works something like sea trade, though, in that upgrades "enable" more trading partners. Maybe the market line is doing this too? It's hard to test.

Hmm, might be able to by saving, then destroying an advanced market and seeing what drops on the trade chart. The problem is getting a static test bed then altering the state of the one region while everything else remains constant.

[dismal]

Good questions all.

But I don't have any answers. I wonder if land trade works something like sea trade, though, in that upgrades "enable" more trading partners. Maybe the market line is doing this too? It's hard to test.

Hmm, might be able to by saving, then destroying an advanced market and seeing what drops on the trade chart. The problem is getting a static test bed then altering the state of the one region while everything else remains constant.

Oh,it definitely works somewhat the same on land in that more advanced markets get you more land trade routes. I don't think you get land trade beyond your neighbors (someone with the game open could pop open some trade scrolls to verify). Building markets on islands gets you no additional trade.

Part of the reason why it's tough to gauge how much a trade building is getting you is that there are network effects. Some of the benefit may be showing up in another province. Some of the benefit may not be realized until you are not at war with a trading partner.

It would be interesting to start with a game where you own the whole map and see what various buildings cause to happen.

[vonsch]

dismal,

I wondered about markets on islands (single region islands, that is, like Cyprus, Sardinia, etc.) I suppose you do still get the multiplier effects, though, so they would boost sea trade to that degree. But this trade dampening effect of lacking possibilities of overland trade argues for using islands as castles, not towns. Castles do still get reasonable sea trade, just no market line to give the multiplier.

That's sort of cool in that a lot of the Med's single-region islands did support castle-based communities of crusader types in the period. Been planning of trying to turtle England in this new campaign and aim to crusade seriously. One plan was to grab an island as a permanent base. I'm waiting for Vencie to get excommed again. Won't be long. Rhodes may still be rebel too. Need to get a spy down there.

Yeah, some studying of my current British Isles trade network argues strongly for putting the castles in the dead ends like Dublin and Inverness. Nottingham is a much better place for a city. Inverness has no trade goods to export, and Dublin only has silver. And each has one single road connection.

But developing their markets does contribute to the exports from Edinburg.

Then there's the issue of point-of-no-return for castles. Lots of interesting strategic twists.

We need glorious achievement goals! I hate just blitzing. More interesting to optimize economies, scale up production to earliest-possible end tech, etc.

Hmm, maybe London should be converted to a castle immediately and Nottingham reverted to a town. London only has 2 land trade routes, Nottingham has 3.

Hmm, interesting: Caen-Rennes trade is dye, grain, wine and timber. Where is the timber coming from? Neither has any that I can see.

[Whacker]

Foz, IIRC what you can trade with whom and how much is a direct function of your road improvements and port/trading improvements, at least it was in RTW. I imagine it's the same in M2TW but the land trade is controlled by the merchant building, but I'm not certain of this.

[SultanSaladin]

well .. question ..
if i place my merchant on an other factions ressource does that mean that the other faction wouldn't get any money from that ressource???

example.
my merchant is on hre-s land and trading with theires iron .. does it mean that i get the money for the iron and hre dont??

[Erik Bloodaxe]

well .. question ..
if i place my merchant on an other factions ressource does that mean that the other faction wouldn't get any money from that ressource???

example.
my merchant is on hre-s land and trading with theires iron .. does it mean that i get the money for the iron and hre dont??

Yepp, I think they wont get any florins from your merchants.. unless you got a trade rights with em.. Not sure though, anyone know?