Merchants... are they worth it?

[FactionHeir]

Merchant skill doesn't actually improve with market structure.
The town hall on the other hand prevents them from being crooked to start with and gives them legal nouse and better.

[Philbert]

Hmmm, well that may be true, but at least building the market buildings increases the chance of getting merchant guild buildings, those do have an effect on merchant quality.

But I certainly should have mentioned the town hall line of buildings.

[Grog]

I don't tend to make many merchants early game (sub turn 20) until I have all the nearest rebel provinces taken.

Then I will pick a good strong city and always train my merchants there, I usually get a level 3+ market before building too many. Once I have a merchants guild I will keep plugging away for the merchant HQ. Also, from tips I learned on here, never build over a level 2 church in your merchant training city, as merchants can get negative traits from this.

By doing all this, you should be getting regular 5*+ merchants on creation before turn100, while the AI is still only making 1-2*

I mainly use merchants to monopolise my favorite areas, and a bit of robber-baronning on the side never hurt the old treasury

Africa is good, but on florin/turn average, N Italy-Vienna-Zagreb triangle, constantinople/nicea, antioch area and baghdad silks are often quicker to get at, enabling better income for the life of the merchant, while offering far higher aquisition potential. I usually go for these first then do egypt/N africa once I'm training good merchants. I'll also always leave a strong merchant near to my training city until I'm making 4-5*.

So for me, merchants are worth it

[Alpedar]

What is better, build merchants in "merchant production city" which is usualy close to capital and walk/sail them to distant resource, or in some distant city near that resource? I had merchant guild in venice, but pumpred merchants in antioch and soon they were so awsome, that i never bothered with creating them in venice.

[phonicsmonkey]

If you control Northern Italy (this is easiest in the early game as Milan or Venice), build forts in the Alpine passes to wall off the provinces of Milan and Venice, and train up some merchants by monopolizing the local textile industry (or is it marble? light blue anyway)

then you'll find the forts act as fishing nets catching enemy agents, including the many merchants that for some reason always seem to flood through the area

sometimes you can acquire the assets of three or four merchants in a single turn using this method

[WhiskeyGhost]

I personally don't like using merchants to gather tons of income, just makes me feel bad about how the AI doesn't know how to counter it. What i do is make them into acquisition machines, which roam the lands taking over any and all enemy merchants. Of course, its damned near impossible on Very Hard with that giant bonus enemy agents get (wtf? my 9 skill merchant has 5% success against a 2 skill?)

[TheLastPrivate]

AI WILL send tons of high lvl merchants that are trained elsewhere to grab ur merchants near contantinople. In retrospect, constantinople area makes for excellent aquisition hunting grounds for u too.