Quote Originally Posted by Hermann the Lombard

Instead I chose to build merchants at my Merchants Guild in Genoa and to use military escorts to allow them to survive in the North Italian Free Fire Zone. I built one merchant while waiting for another fairground (or whatever) to complete and plopped him on one resource with a militia company for, er, company. Then I thought about the math. The merchant is returning 54 florins per turn. The upkeep of the militia company is 125 florins per turn. Hey, I'll just make it up in volume...
By the way, your lone milita sitting on the resource outside a fort is quite likely to go rebel (often)...