Does AI have bonus in merchant compete chance

[Xam Enyap]

So far I played (or tried to play) 3 games, Sweden England and Russia. The longest of my games continued till 1543 and in these periods I NEVER had any success in trade. And I tried, believe me -I stayed out of war, concentrated on only 1 cot at time, I chose "merchant adventures", free trade and so on. But no matter what I never had more than 1 merch in cot. meantime some crappy Saxony or other minor get 5 merchants WTF?

[Kanaric]

You do auto trade?

In an MP game recently with some people from TWC we have a guy that gets over 2k in trade alone and he says all you need is all the trade perks and low BB.

[hellheaven1987]

Merchant Adventure is useless for compete chance.

Choose National Trade Policy and Shrewd Commerce Practice; the first one give +10% trade efficiency and may be a +5% compete chance, the second idea give +10% compete chance.

Normally with these two ideas and a not low trading research you can dominate any CoT; at least you try to monopoly then it is different story.

[Saxon Huscarl]

Conquering COT's also helps quite a bit too, since you get an extra merchant for every COT you own. So in the end you can just flood the markets with merchants and soon have at least 5 merchants in a few COT's provided your trade research is fairly decent.

[hellheaven1987]

No, that is crazy if the CoT has different culture than yours. It would reduce 5% of compete chance each CoT I remember.

Since nearly every original CoT has different culture than yours, I rather do not do this thing.

For a trading nation, the two National Ideas I mentioned before are most important; the rest are just useless from my point of view (even you have additional merchant, it is useless if you cannot send them out or they die too quickly. Since most rich CoTs are in Asia, an European power would cost quite a lot to even send one merchant in those CoTs).

[Xam Enyap]

Well than I will try to go for National Trade Policy and Shrewd Commerce Practice.
But that doesn't really explains how comes that ****** Saxony can rule in Novgorod at 15 century when they sure don't have these perks and I am Novgorod I have auto trade in Novgorod to green, and its NA 2.1.

Jesus Christ there is auto censor ****** was converted to ****** :o

Again!!!! God save us jkp9y-bfkqn

[hellheaven1987]

They probably choose some nice National Idea + they are in Latin tech group. It is quite common situation in early game anyway. For example, Burgury always dominates CoT in West Europe at first 100 years of my each game (and then I beat them with two National Idea + high trading technology).

Generally, trading is for mid and late game; early game is usually for conquer/colonization (or, in short, trading is for rich nations).