Best location for Merchants' Guild is ?

[Shahed]

Antioch or Constantinople ?

[IRONxMortlock]

Oops - ignore this post please.

[Grifman]

Oops - ignore this post please.

Did you say something?

[Kraxis]

Antioch or Constantinople ?

Depends on where you are expanding towards, and what you can foresee yourself trading with. There is nothing we can say that makes one place better than the other.

But I would say C'Nople. Easy access to most of the world.

[Shahed]

There is one thing.. it's supposed to increase trade as well as merchant skill. Hence the question, because you would want it in the place where it would boost trade the most.

MTW that was Antioch, probably the same in M2TW.

Does anyone have the figures ?

[Aenlic]

Antioch made sense in MTW because of the way trade worked with the overland trade through Mesopotamia, especially the after the Marco Polo world event.

In MTW2, I suspect that Constantinople would make the best candidate simply because of the way the sea trade works. I have no concrete numbers to support that assumption, however.

In addition, as Kraxis noted, the more central location helps. Aside from the trade increase, your better merchants will have easier quicker access to the higher end resources, except for the silk around Baghdad of course. From Constantinople you'll be closer the amber around Vilnius, Riga and Novgorod which is highly lucrative. The faster you can replace deceased or acquired merchants, the better.

[andrewt]

I'm playing as Venice and my capital is there. My Venice is way higher right now, and might be higher even with a capital equidistant to both Venice and Constantinople. Thessalonica and Nicaea might give Constantinople a run for its money as well.

[Shahed]

Thanks guys.

Can anyone tell me where I can find the numbers for the base trade resource values for the two regions in question ?

I'm still thinking Antioch will win, probably wrong though as I'm not 100% sure how trade works in this game.

I think sea trade is more important. So the determining factor is the base trade resource value, then through extrapolation you can arrive at a figure which shows you which region would be best for a merchants' guild, not withstanding the need for merchants, purely on a basis of trade resources.

[IrishArmenian]

In my opinion, Palermo is the best location for a Merchant's Guild.

[Shahed]

[Shahed]

For the Turks it looks like Antioch is the best location for merchants guild, because, this is a rough approximation so far, but it begins to point this direction:

1. Antioch has more basic trading partner provinces, it can trade with more provinces than Constantinople.

2. It is within 2 sea zones of more provinces than Constantinople is.

3. It seems that the total of the base resource value is greater than the total of base resource value for Constantinople, florins/turn terms.

Got some questions:

1. Does anyone know which file has the base resource values and where I should be looking in the file ?

2. How far away can a city trade i.e can Alexandria trade with London ? As an exmaple what is the furthest Alexandria can trade ?

Salute !

[Quillan]

I had a merchants guild HQ in Constantinople in my Byzantium campaign. Towards the end, the city was making over 7000 per turn. However, strictly from the standpoint of using it to boost merchant agents, the best location for a merchants guild is Timbuktu.

[magnum]

Everyone is wrong. Best place is Timbuktu! Keep the merchants close to the gold. My gold. All mine.

[danfda]

I had mine in Novgorod, as the Rus of course. I had a complete monopoly on the world-wide amber trade...After a while, those merchants can make you a lot of money. ;)

[Shahed]

Quillan, It's from the standpoint of overall income maximisation i.e which location (for the Turks in this case) will benefit the most in terms of revenue maximisation from the formation of a merchants' guild.

maybe I forgot to mention that.

Hehe Í like chocolate so mine's going to be near a HUGE chocolate dump ! Who cares about gold when you got chocolate ?

No seriously though... we need the base resource figures. Any other comments/answers most welcome as well ofc.

[Slaists]

I would side with the opinion that the Merchant's guild has to be centrally located to minimze new merchant travel time. However, I think, if one gets Merchant's Headquarters, all the cities should give similar bonus to new merchants (If I read the description right).

[Quillan]

There's a global bonus and a local bonus. The local bonus didn't apply to merchants after I'd upgraded it to a Master and then HQ level building, but the global applies everywhere. It might be a bug, but in my Byzantine game I build my merchants in another city that only had a guild. I'd get Legal Nouse there, plus Financial Training and Merchant's Guild Apprentice that way. If I built them in Constantinople, I wouldn't get the Legal Nouse trait.

[Shahed]

Point taken.

The more central it is the faster merchants will get to trading, the faster they will pay themselves off, the faster you return on investment will grow.

Travel time is one factor, but there is another.

It increases the base resource value of the region itself. Naturally the increased skill level merchants will increase the overall revenue of the empire. The increase in local resource value will directly affect the local revenue of the city and hence the overall revenue of the empire.

The local effect of increase in trade of the region itself needs to be taken into account for the overall equation to be valid.

And you know what ?

In a moment of SHEER BRILLIANCE ! ... I got the idea of putting some merchants on ships and sailing them around. I think it'll be faster than walking... *ahem*

[LegioScythia]

In my campaign i built it in Constantinople i closed several trade agreements with the factions controlling the near islands that really boosted up my income

[Slaists]

Point taken.

In a moment of SHEER BRILLIANCE ! ... I got the idea of putting some merchants on ships and sailing them around. I think it'll be faster than walking... *ahem*

This would be faster, agreed. However, I'm not sure this is faster in terms of merchants gaining additional stars. When walking them, I tend to leave them on some resource at the end of the turn (before walking further): this seems to accelerate them gaining new skills. Not sure what would happen on the boats.

[Furious Mental]

Not exactly on point but if you are going to get a high level merchant's guild I'd suggest you avoid putting it in a city with a high level religious building, or avoid building any high level religious buildings once you've put the guild there. I built a huge cathedral in Vienna, which was where I got the merchant's guild headquarters, and all the merchants I've trained there now have this "quite religious" trait which detracts from their finance skill.

[Aenlic]

Ouch, that's a good find, Furious Metal. I'll have to keep closer track of things like that. It may actually be necessary to highly specialize non-military building as much as military building. To avoid the problem you experienced.

Sinan, don't forget to factor in the costs of merchant deaths. At best, you'll probably get 50-60 years of service from each merchant and during much of that time the merchant isn't fully skilled. The time it takes to get a new merchant skilled up and moved to a resource will affect your bottom line; and so should be added into figuring values of various locations for resources and merchant guilds.

[Shahed]

The winner is Antioch, hands down, no contest.

Antioch makes like 2-4k/turn more, on average than Constantinople on max development.
This is from my game experience anyway.

[katank]

It's harder to max out sea trade for Constantinople. You need not only the Balkans but the Black Sea area in your hands as well which is a pain.

However, the central location for Constantinople is still awesome though for merchant warfare. Wolfpacks of 3 or 4 merchants freshly generated from Constantinople can quickly acquire a fortune for you.

[darth_napo]

Merchants Guilds are supposed to increase the trade in which city it was built, right?

if you look at these "facts" I would say Antioch hands down, followed closely by Constantinople and then Venice the 4th is Sofia and followed closely by Thessalonica

keep in your mind that I'm ignoring the merchants factor. Btw keep in your mind also that Antioch, while has the highest trade income, it is likely to be the most dangerous investment if you are playing with western factions since it would probably has much corruption, if you're playing Muslim/Russ/Byzantium it would be a constant target for Crusades; it also would be the main target for Mongols and Timurids. And at least keep in your mind that I had trade agreements with almost everyone.










hope this help?

[Shahed]

That was a great post Napo only just saw that.

I have a question: does anyone know if the Merchants Guild ACTUALLY increases trade income ?.

I think it does'nt, it says it does in the game files, and in the descriptive text but I've not noticed any difference. I'm not sure but I think the +20%, +30%, +40% trade bonus it's supposed to give is not working because that exact same bonus is being used by another building. Just a hunch.

What are everyone's observations ?

Salute !

[Agent Smith]

That was a great post Napo only just saw that.

I have a question: does anyone know if the Merchants Guild ACTUALLY increases trade income. I think it does'nt, it says it does in the game files, and in the descriptive text but I've not noticed any difference. I'm not sure but I think the +20%, +30%, +40% trade bonus it's supposed to give is not working because that exact same bonus is being used by another building. Just a hunch.

What are everyone's observations ?

Salute !

I'm not sure if this is right, but do the guilds and such also increase the value of the resources located in the province?

[Caliburn]

Don't forget Stockholm, at least I'm raking it in from Stockholm in my current campaign - 6000 or 7000 florins a year? I'm not sure how much of it is trade, but I believe quite a lot anyway.

[Shahed]

Stockholm is excellent too.

I guess a list of ideal trading cities is in order.
Volunteer Hazardous Duty ! Who's up soldiers ????!!!

[Frederick_I_Barbarossa]

I, as a matter of house rules, always give building preference to my capital...