Is it an exploit cheat if....

[Daaraa]

I read that if you take a general, build a fort on a trade-able resource, put a spear unit (or whatever) in the fort, move the general out, and then fill the fort with merchants that you get multiple merchants trading the same resource.

Would this be considered against the normal rules of gameplay? Is this acceptable in Single player but not multi player?

Please note that I do not play multi player and really just prefer sticking to single player.

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

Hi Daaraa,
Although it is considered to be an exploit between most players, really, what you do in SP is your own business - as long as you don't find it ruins your game, then you can do it at free will! In MP, however, there is no campaign game, only a battle mode, so it really cannot be done. However, cheating/exploiting any aspect of the Multiplayer game isn't considered very good conduct among players, often utterly ruining the game for some of them, so it's not usually done without the consent of all players within the game being played. Hope this helps, cheers!

[Daaraa]

Hi,

Thanks and yes that clarifies things. I wasn't aware that the multi player side of things was battle options only.

I asked on the single player end of it because it does make a difference. I am currently England and have Timbuktu with 15 merchants in Timbuktu most sitting on the two Gold resources. (Sent my boats to Algiers the 3rd turn and went south from there) My income from trading is over 12,000 per turn.

If I am to quote what "I did in my game" I just didn't want to look like a toad.

I applied this first to the resources in traffic-jam-prone-northern Italy to keep my merchants from being bumped around. I then noticed someone writing about this and added a few merchants to the fort. Bad news is that if your fort gets attacked and you lose, all those merchants die.