Merchants: Suggested tactic's and deployment area's

[WhiskeyGhost]

5,000 florins is a full stack of Hashashim(sp?) being paid off =)

[hisn00bness]

yeah I dont get people saying it is ojnly the payoff of one good city.

You can NEVER make a conquest giving you 5000 of the bat; my merchant trade tends to be around 15k a turn regardless of the faction i play (unless im playing pure mayhem like moors right now)
Granted there are some regions that will net 5k a turn after a bit of development after you conquer them but they are a minority : Genoa and Venice; Antioch if you can get it stable; stockholm.....

no i'll keep my merchants thank you very much.

[Drago]

have u guys tried the cashcow 'fort exploit?'
building a fort on top of, for example, the Timbuktu gold mines, max it with the 20 merchants each earning between 500 to 900/turn depending on your merchants experience. Thats an avg of 15k/turn.

After capturing Timbuktu, I manipulate the guilds to offer me a 'merchants guild' in the city, thereby allowing faster replacement cycles of already experienced/trained merchants. build forts on top of the 2 gold mines and just max it with as many merchants you can create (the merchant cap is equivalent to the number of markets you build in your cities, ie 40 cities with markets=40 merchants you can create)

This makes your merchant army a viable revenue stream, comparable to mining or even farming

Of course, you could argue this strategy would work just as well at other rich and more fashionable locale, ie baghdad, constantinople etc....but I like timbuktus location (or Dongola) its very remote and safe, thus you can just focus the city to just build/replace merchants, whereas baghdad for instance you will have to contend with the mongols and the timurids eventually...

yes i know, i know its an 'exploit', but i like a good cashflow!

(note: the fort also provides protection from 'hostile takeovers')

There, now all you have to worry abt is just conquering your opponents, less the micromanagement of silly merchants or whether you'll have production queue stalls next year coz of an empty bank account

[Shahed]

This is all too complicated and time consuming for me. I played entire games making tons of cash without ever using merchants.

Unless I have a quick access to Timbuktu, I don't use merchants at all. And even when you control the entire Timbuktu/Arguin region with skilled(but not maxed) merchants on every resources, it only generates the same amount of money as one good large city.

Using ONE merchant on all of the most profitable resources can net you well in excess of 15K/turn, and more.

Arguin/Timbuktu have net me about 10k/turn. If you dominate the most profitable resources it pays.
Not just arg/tim resources but all, amber, silk, spices etc.



Anyone get that joke ? It's your merchant IN TIMBUKTU !!!!

[Didz]

building a fort on top of, for example, the Timbuktu gold mines, max it with the 20 merchants each earning between 500 to 900/turn depending on your merchants experience. Thats an avg of 15k/turn.

I've used the fort expliot in areas like Northern Italy to protect my merchants from hostile takeovers, but I always thought that putting multiple merchants into one merely spread the revenue between them rather than multiplying it.

[Kobal2fr]

Meh. Forts are OK I guess, but resisting a takeover gives your merchants even MORE Finance through the "Secure Assets" line of traits. I usually follow the "trial by fire" strat when I play as any Western faction : dedicate one city close to Italy to the Merchant guild, train all my captains of industry there, sit them on local ressources till they earn the "Capitalist" trait, and send them around Venice, Milan, the Zagreb gold mine and the Vienna silver mines for a while.

Those who survive the heavy commercial warfare going on there and/or earn the "bean counter" or "secure assets" line of traits get sent to "real" trade regions (Antioch, Constantinople, Timbuktu, Arguin, the New World...), the rest just rot in Tuscany making a nuisance of themselves to the rest of the world's trade class till they eventually die somehow.

[diotavelli]

stop abusing the comma!

really, it's not that hard to figure out. use a comma with a conjuction of two independent clauses but never use it with the conjuction of an independent and a subordinate clause. this is incorrect:

this is totally incorrect, and, if there was any justice, would result in instant death via firing squad.

(note: i am already aware of the irony inherent in writing a hoity-toity grammatical post using all lower-case.)

[Didz]

i am already aware of the irony inherent in writing a hoity-toity grammatical post using all lower-case.

Why do you never use capital letters in your posts?

Admittedly its not as annoying as using nothing but capital letters, even if the subject matter is.

[alpaca]

stop abusing the comma!

really, it's not that hard to figure out. use a comma with a conjuction of two independent clauses but never use it with the conjuction of an independent and a subordinate clause. this is incorrect:

this is totally incorrect, and, if there was any justice, would result in instant death via firing squad.

(note: i am already aware of the irony inherent in writing a hoity-toity grammatical post using all lower-case.)

Actually in my opinion that post used correct grammar (except for the lower-case "t" at the beginning of the sentence). Let's have a look:

Principal clause: "This is totally incorrect"
Sub-clause: "and would result in instant death via firing squad" (note that you can use a comma before "and" if you want to stress something afaik)
Sub-clause of the sub-clause: "if there was any justice" (correctly enclosed in commas)