Merchants and Assassins

**vonsch** · 03-26-2007, 22:46

I use a fort or escort unit to pre-train my merchants a little on a resource near home. Then I send them off into the world. I usually pick up monopolist a level or three this way. The guild REALLY helps, as does the town hall. Not having the latter significantly increases the chance of the negative "crooked trader" line. That really hurts. When a new trader has that, I tend to just feed it to the competition and recruit a new one.

I don't bother with assassins, though I keep promising myself to try them in a campaign I really role-play. Hungary maybe.

**TevashSzat** · 03-27-2007, 02:06

just remember you have a better odds of attacking another merchant than being attacked so it is always better to be the aggressor if you are weaker than them since they will attack you anyways

**_Tristan_** · 03-27-2007, 08:37

As to merchant, everything has already been said...

As to assassins, I'm big employer of those (my faction leader almost always get named the Killer, the Malevolent or the Tyrant....).
The main thing beside training them with sabotage missions is finding a princess...often they have no charm whatsoever or only one level and even a low level assassin get favorable odds against her. Moreover, you'll get the skilled courtesan ancillary which gives a +2 lvl.
I generally train my assassin on each and every captain within reach as even with a one eye assassin you'll get a + 1 lvl for each kill until third or four thus raising it to level 3 or 4. Add sabotage mission and retinue and you can get to a +7 or +8...
It needs of bit of micromanagement but it may be worth it...

I generally make use of high level assassin (My best reached lvl 13) to get rid of a faction in one turn
Use a stack or assassin to kill leader or heir and same on any other family member and bye bye faction, hello rebels...

**Matty** · 03-27-2007, 09:33

The only other thing to add to merchants is I think you get a bonus when engaging another merchant if you own the territory.
I find merchants particularly good in the early game - as the Moors I have them down on three of the Timbuktu resources and they bring in about 30% of my income. This reduces over time as the trade and tax income grows, but when you're constantly at war its useful.
Assassins are frustrating but can be good if you micro manage them and for those that say they don't bother with either I'd just add that as they are part of the game, shouldn't we be playing them?! After all, the objective here can't be simply to win can it?

**Afro Thunder** · 03-27-2007, 13:06

I find that with assassins, the Save and Load buttons are your best friends. That, and get your traits file fixed, so your assassin doesn't lose all traits for one failed mission.

**_Tristan_** · 03-27-2007, 13:11

Originally Posted by Afro Thunder

I find that with assassins, the Save and Load buttons are your best friends. That, and get your traits file fixed, so your assassin doesn't lose all traits for one failed mission.

That seemed fairly obvious to me...

It works with every kind of agents...

**whodat** · 03-28-2007, 13:37

One thing you can do to help out with merchants (assuming you have not toggled fog of war off) is marry them to a decent level spy. This allows you to spot incoming enemy merchants. Then just back your merchant off the resource if the enemy has you out-skilled. I have never had an enemy merchant nail one of mine that was not on a resource.

The further away the resource is from your home territory, the more money you make per turn. Timbuktu is a good spot to rake in florins, as is Scandinavia. Just watch out for Danish merchants in Sweden.

**MorganFreeman** · 03-28-2007, 13:42

I tend to only train them at the start to get the guilds. Once they are upgraded it seems to help get over the early hurdles. Merchants in particular without any starting bonuses just seem to get hoovered up by some 6-7 finance bloke camping around your cities.

I've had some success with assassins in my current Venetian campaign, getting the guild HQ up in Florence and killing off quie a few generals, including the Holy Roman Emperor twice. I'm not sure it makes that much difference to my campaign though, other factions seem to have no trouble replacing their generals. Has anyone ever managed to remove a faction through assasination? You'd think it's be possible when someone is down to their last province (although pointless by then of course). I slightly suspect the AI would just cheat and sprout new family members as needed.

It is very satisfying being able to deal instantly with foreign diplomats and princess who try for those persistent ( and often completely nonsensical) bribe attempts though.