Merchant fort exploit? revisited

[Razor1952]

Ok so everyone reckons using a fort to house merchants on the same resource is an exploit. Putting a stack into a military unit over a resource is not. Ill explain.

I noticed that using a small leftover unit placed (Like upkeep 5 fl)on a resource I could get the same effect(as a fort). But the important thing I noticed is that the merchant says something like " thank you for your protection lord" when joined to that unit, that means that it is an intentional programming thingo not an oversight or bug, therefore it seems to me a legitimate strategy to use.

It would be certainly cool if the ai did likewise with its low power merchants, then the human player nearby could spy the unit and attack it leaving a stack of unprotected merchants to acquire!. ( Or vice-versa ai attacks my merchant stack)

The other advantage is that you can move this stack of merchants as one to another resource.

[pike master]

not bad not bad. me dinks me mites tries dat.

[Microwavegerbil]

It's an exploit, get over it.

[sapi]

I think the sound files are intended to be played when a merchant is attached to an army, not when the player uses the fort exploit

[Philbert]

I think there are two issues here that are debatable:
1. placing a merchant inside an army or inside a fort protects it from hostile takeovers (does it really?)
2. placing a fort on a resource allows you to put more than one merchant on that resource, each making the full amount of money. (does this also work with an unfortified army?)

I think that number 1 is debatable, but less of an exploit, since you have to make a sacrifice (i.e. permanently station an army) to achieve it. It may be an exploit because the AI isn't smart enough to do it.

Number 2 is clearly an oversight on the part of the developers, and is unbalanced and unrealistic. If you put 2 merchants on the same resource, they should each earn half the income from that resource. This will probably be fixed in one of the patches, though it doesn't have that high a priority.

[Nebuchadnezzar]

Good god, whats debatable? The the severity of the exploit? The game is already ridiculously easy even on the hardest setting.

Besides having an army in another factions territory without military access will lower your reputation.

[Quillan]

Multiple merchants attached to an army that is standing on a resource will all trade, just like if they were in a fort on the resource. There are three differences, and all are minor: 1) an army can be displaced by another friendly army moving through, while the fort cannot; the army would just enter the fort, 2) forts cost nothing to maintain, while the army costs its normal maintenance cost, and 3) a fort cannot rebel; an army can if not let by a general.

[Razor1952]

One other difference between fort and a military unit housing merchants, If the unit is obliterated by an enemy all your merchants die! So watch out if you this method.

[TevashSzat]

IMO, in future patches, the merchant exploits should be removed but merchants in general should be made better

[Budwise]

I don't really see the Merchant Fort an exploit. IF you think about it, a minor US city was built just for coal mining to keep up production for what I believe it was World War 2 and thats was its sole purpose. Think of it as an expansion city. I just kinda wish the computer would try that. It does make since though, I mean its kinda hard to be forced out of business if you have a team of specialized merchants/laborers doing the job at once instead of just one man doing it.

[TevashSzat]

It is an exploit because only the human player uses it. If the ai actually does this on purpose then it would not be. Any way of reasoning out what it corresponds to in real life does not matter if the ai does not use it.

[Philbert]

Doesn't a fort disappear when there are no troops inside? Or will the merchant also prevent it from disappearing?

[vonsch]

It is an exploit because only the human player uses it. If the ai actually does this on purpose then it would not be. Any way of reasoning out what it corresponds to in real life does not matter if the ai does not use it.

"Only the human player does it?" That defines "exploit?" Do I have to stop using sensible strategy? Should I stop building up my economy fast? Should I stop creating special built-to-purpose stacks?

Sorry, that argument is silly. It's not what the computer DOES that matters in defining exploit, but whether the action is contrary to the designer's intent. And even then it's mighty nebulous.

Let people play single-player games however they like. If it's multi-play, it's fair to establish outside rules, like no merchant forts on resources.

In war, smart exploits are the key to winning! Is it the player's fault that the "AI" isn't a good enough commander to adapt to the circumstances in the field?

Doesn't a fort disappear when there are no troops inside? Or will the merchant also prevent it from disappearing?

Agents are designed to "keep alive" forts too. At least the manual says that they will keep them alive, which leads me to that conclusion. Whether merchants should actually do their job while in a fort is what's in dispute. Frankly, I don't see why they shouldn't when other agents do.

[dumas]

I don't really see the Merchant Fort an exploit. IF you think about it, a minor US city was built just for coal mining to keep up production for what I believe it was World War 2 and thats was its sole purpose.

The major difference is that these are merchant units we're talking about, not miners. Presumably, there is a same amount of resource produced by miners whether there is one merchant or 20.

We could stretch this idea a bit and make an assumption that more miners would be attracted to the resource that is being traded by more merchants, hence, increased production. However, a few things should be considered:

1. If this was an intended behavior, why didn't the devs allow stacking of merchants themselves? What property of an unguarded fort allows this stacking ability and keep them safe from takeovers?

2. If we carry the idea of miners being associated with merchants (thus, more merchants mean more resource mined), there should be a diminishing return proportional to the number of minors working the same resource, since the prime mining areas around the resource should already be taken by the first groups of miners.

3. If there are more merchants trading more of the same resource, that resource should itself be worth less by the basic laws of supply and demand.

[pike master]

gee thats funny. please include the fix on that making the ai play fair. when it has a merchant with two coins and has a good chance to take my 5 or 6 coin merchant out of business. and if i try to do the same thing with a 6 coin against a two coin i dont have as high a success rate.

that is an exploit on the ai side.

fort costs 500, merchants cost 550, upkeep on a peasant is 90. thats pretty expensive to do it in the first place. and since you recruit the merchants i think you should have some way to prevent them losing their business.

[vonsch]

1. If this was an intended behavior, why didn't the devs allow stacking of merchants themselves? What property of an unguarded fort allows this stacking ability and keep them safe from takeovers?

But we CAN stack all agents in cities, armies and FORTS. Yet we can only stack them in those circumstances. Stacking of merchants in those situations is clearly designer intent. But stacking them alone in the field is not. No difference here from merchant behavior. Why do forts remain active at all with agents in them, except that CA intended this? (as the manual makes clear)

The only question is whether they should be able to do their jobs as merchant while so stacked. But spies can spy (actively on anything adjacent, and passively with their normal range), assassins can also do their thing from a stack (again, on an adjacent target), priests seems to (though this needs more testing, not sure they do their thing while in a city), diplomats and princesses can, etc.

But, again, it's really a player choice to do or not do something. I can exterminate cities too (and that's clearly intent), but I mostly choose not to. I can "pull" a garrison out of a city to defeat it in the field using the strategic combat mechanics, thus avoiding a far more expensive seige. And I do this regularly. Some might consider that an "exploit" too.

By the way, there's an easy way for CA to prevent the fort with merchants. They just need to make the resource an object like a city or port. Can't build a fort adjacent to those.

fort costs 500, merchants cost 550, upkeep on a peasant is 90. thats pretty expensive to do it in the first place. and since you recruit the merchants i think you should have some way to prevent them losing their business.

There's also the issue of potentially violating some other faction's territory to build a fort. Takes a general to do that and a general is a military unit. In your own territory, that's no issue, but the profits (at least in the early to mid game) are a lot lower. I do it to train my merchants more than as an actual profit-making thing. One or two forts near my starting cities are used to improve the merchants to where they have a chance against the AI merchants. Call it tariff imposition, extreme tariff imposition, on other faction merchants at those locations.

[Budwise]

gee thats funny. please include the fix on that making the ai play fair. when it has a merchant with two coins and has a good chance to take my 5 or 6 coin merchant out of business. and if i try to do the same thing with a 6 coin against a two coin i dont have as high a success rate.

that is an exploit on the ai side.

fort costs 500, merchants cost 550, upkeep on a peasant is 90. thats pretty expensive to do it in the first place. and since you recruit the merchants i think you should have some way to prevent them losing their business.

I agree, I don't own Timbuktu nor do I own anything besides Amber thats expensive and after 10 merchants being lost to the AI when they attack my pitiful resource, I got fed up and now do the fort thing. If CA doesn't want me to do this, they should patch the game or make the AI merchants less evil. I am trying to enjoy all aspects of this game and losing a merchant a turn is really making me think less of using them. On another note, just keep the Merchant in the fort, you don't need the peasant upkeep to keep it open.

[Odin]

Since the thread asks for opinions i'll give my two cents. Its a potential exploit dependant on how the human player uses the feature, with the knowledge that the AI dosent.

If you set up a fort around timbuktu, or the russian amber cache's and continue to do so for other resources then your exploiting the AI's inability to use the feature.

I see it more as a human balance issue, its dependent on the human to judge the use of the feature in the wake of poor AI. Now if we had cases where enemy factions were wiping them out (assuming you kept a mere peasant unit in there) then wonderful !

A human player really dosent need this feature do they? I understand the tactical rational of using it (if the AI did the same) its a valid strategy to fortify a income generating resource.

But I agree 75% with Xdeathfire, because the AI dosent do it its an exploit, the other 25% of me feels its a valid feature of the game and should be used if the AI was able to counter it somehow.

[HoreTore]

To me, merchants are as good as they should be.

I'm currently in a russian campaign, and I'm making roughly 4000 per turn on merchants. That's the same as my best city! I have merchants on the 4 silks in Constantinople and Nicaea, the silver in vienna and the textiles in venice.

Can't ask for much more, really....

[Quillan]

In my spanish campaign, once I read here this was possible, I did this in Timbuktu. I'd taken it from the Moors, then built a fort on the westernmost gold in the province. I built a merchant guild in the city and a grain warehouse so I could crank out merchants there, then stocked the fort with between 12-15 merchants. I made roughly 30K florins a turn from merchants alone! This is with the patch applied, by the way, and most of those merchants were 5-8 finance.

I tend to think it's an exploit, but until someone from CA chimes in I'm not certain. I like the ability of forts to protect merchants from hostile takeover, and I'm not adverse to letting them stack in the fort and trade, but there should be a limit. Either in number (perhaps only the 3-4 highest ranking merchants should be able to trade) or in value (reduced trade value for every merchant other than the highest ranking), because 30K is certainly excessive.

[TevashSzat]

vonsch- you can have the same argument with the console, one might say that using the console to do whatever like adding money or moving your generals around is not cheating because it is the ai's fault for not being able to use the console.

What is really tiresome is that so many people complain that the game is too easy yet they use all of these exploits that were never intended to be part of the game like the merchant stacking or rejoining crusade for gaining stats and things like that

[vonsch]

vonsch- you can have the same argument with the console, one might say that using the console to do whatever like adding money or moving your generals around is not cheating because it is the ai's fault for not being able to use the console.

What is really tiresome is that so many people complain that the game is too easy yet they use all of these exploits that were never intended to be part of the game like the merchant stacking or rejoining crusade for gaining stats and things like that

Nonsense, Xdeath. It's very clear the console is "outside" the game world. If you can't see that's not a comparable situation, well... ignore the rest of this, it's wasted on you.

And I've said I only use the fort for training merchants, so your argument rolls off me. I'm just pointing out that it's not so clear the merchants aren't working as intended. You MAY be right. But there is evidence to suggest you could also be wrong.

Why are you so vested in being right? If you don't like it and think it's an exploit, don't use it. Don't tell others they can't. It does shortcircuit an annoying and apparent advantage the AI gets. They seem to be successful a lot more often than we are with the same odds. Some of us get annoyed at obvious AI cheats too. We prefer to see smart AI play, not brute force advantages. And I know that smart AI play isn't something easy to develop. Brute force advantages ARE easy.

And I am doing my part to make the game better by testing mods that tweak it. That's more productive than telling others what they can't do.

[reclaimer]

It is an exploit because only the human player uses it. If the ai actually does this on purpose then it would not be. Any way of reasoning out what it corresponds to in real life does not matter if the ai does not use it.

Sorry, but that's like saying using naval invasions in the first patch was an exploit. It wasn't.

[reclaimer]

Sorry, but that's like saying using naval invasions in the first patch was an exploit. It wasn't.

*before the first patch.

[Nebuchadnezzar]

This thread has deteriorated to nonsense. Its a good thing CA decided not to include a AI in the game because I'm sure some would think this was an exploit against the player.

[Budwise]

Doesn't a fort disappear when there are no troops inside? Or will the merchant also prevent it from disappearing?

I have had only merchants in a fort before.

[KHPike]

As long as SOMETHING is in the fort, be it agent or army, it will never disappear. Put an army in the fort with a diplomat and move out the army. It doesn't disappear cause the diplomat is single-handedly maintaining it...

[econ21]

Its a good thing CA decided not to include a AI in the game because I'm sure some would think this was an exploit against the player.

No CA bashing please.

This thread has deteriorated to nonsense.

In view of your statement above, this post is starting to look like a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Let's put this thread to bed - it's descended into bickering.