Limit to Merchants ?

[King McStrom]

How do you get more Merchants ... 30 turns in and I am only allowed one
Merchant ??
I have made Market places

[reclaimer]

You can build one merchant for every market you have, if you have 30 cities with markets, you can have 30 merchants. You can only recruit one merchant per turn in a city.

[loquar]

Little trick i found that sometimes helps early in the game. If you havent the money to make a merchant or priest but dont want to miss out on producing one that turn then add one to the que anyway (red not green so not being produced yet)

Next turn it will start being produced and, providing you havent reached your limit, you can add another to the que meaning you will produce 2 the next turn.

This will not mean you can make more than one per turn total just that it saves you missing out if you cant afford one on any particular turn.

I know that you could just produce 2 the next turn from other regions but I like to produce all my priests from 1 place and all my merchants from another to attract the guilds where I want them.

[Razbojnik]

Little trick i found that sometimes helps early in the game. If you havent the money to make a merchant or priest but dont want to miss out on producing one that turn then add one to the que anyway (red not green so not being produced yet)

Next turn it will start being produced and, providing you havent reached your limit, you can add another to the que meaning you will produce 2 the next turn.

This will not mean you can make more than one per turn total just that it saves you missing out if you cant afford one on any particular turn.

I know that you could just produce 2 the next turn from other regions but I like to produce all my priests from 1 place and all my merchants from another to attract the guilds where I want them.

Great tip man,u r the genius.

[Idaeus]

Little trick i found that sometimes helps early in the game. If you havent the money to make a merchant or priest but dont want to miss out on producing one that turn then add one to the que anyway (red not green so not being produced yet)

Next turn it will start being produced and, providing you havent reached your limit, you can add another to the que meaning you will produce 2 the next turn.

This will not mean you can make more than one per turn total just that it saves you missing out if you cant afford one on any particular turn.

I know that you could just produce 2 the next turn from other regions but I like to produce all my priests from 1 place and all my merchants from another to attract the guilds where I want them.

So if I only use e.g London to recruit merchants I'll be offered a merchants guild in London? I had no clue it worked that way! What units can you recruit to attract guilds?

[Zem]

Somewhere else in the forum (perhaps Guild Guide) I read that recruiting agents (in this case merchants) or building marketplaces reward you "guild-points". The bigger the marketplace you build the more points you get. The following table shows the values:

Guild level; City min-size ; Guild-point ; Price (florins)
Basic Guild: City / Fortress ; 100 ; 1000
Master’s Guild: Large City / Citadel ; 250 ; 2000
Guild HQ: Huge City / Citadel ; 500 ; 3000


So if you have a Huge City which gathered 500 points you are able to build Merchant's Guild HQ

[King McStrom]

Thanks for the advise

but just to clarify here

one city , one market place , one merchant.... only
NOT
one city, one Market, two three etc + Merchants

[loquar]

Thanks for the advise

but just to clarify here

one city , one market place , one merchant.... only
NOT
one city, one Market, two three etc + Merchants

That is corect

[Johan217]

I quite like the agent limit. In fact I am using a similar limit for spies and assassins, as the AI seems to build too many of them.

Could be a mod idea to increase the allowed number of merchants for settlements that have the Merchant's Guild.

[loquar]

Ive always been intrigued by the agent limits, I can see the rational for limiting merchants and priests, makes sense that they each need a base of operations and 1 agent kinda represents a group of them from each settlement?

Spies you definately need to be able to get more than 1 per settlement as it is both useful to have them in your own settlements, in your armies, in other peoples settlements etc and spies dont HAVE to be that specialised when you think about it. Anyone can pay someone a few coins to go and see how many troops are in an enemies city..

One thing I would like to see in spies is a loyalty level though, low loyalty could provide slightly false information about things and very low could see them swapping sides. At the moment I think they are a bit too reliable in what is a very uncertain and generally unreliable profession.

Assassins are generally more specialised than spies and a 1 per settlement limit might not be a bad idea, again they have multiple roles and you could do with more than 1 per settlement for sure depending on how you play, but it would just mean prioritising more.

[Zem]

Thanks for the advise

but just to clarify here

one city , one market place , one merchant.... only
NOT
one city, one Market, two three etc + Merchants

More precisely: there is a global limit how many merchants you can have. It depends on the number & type of your marketplaces. If you don't have any of these kinda buildings the limit is zero. Every 'Grain exchange' raises the limit by 1, every 'Market' raises the limit by 1 (so if you had a market you would be able to rercuit 2 pieces), every Fairground raises the limit by 1 ... etc
Example: you have 1 Fairground and 1 Great Market. The max merchants you can have is 3+4=7.

see exp_descr_buildings.txt for details

[DrIstvaan]

More precisely: there is a global limit how many merchants you can have. It depends on the number & type of your marketplaces. If you don't have any of these kinda buildings the limit is zero. Every 'Grain exchange' raises the limit by 1, every 'Market' raises the limit by 1 (so if you had a market you would be able to rercuit 2 pieces), every Fairground raises the limit by 1 ... etc
Example: you have 1 Fairground and 1 Great Market. The max merchants you can have is 3+4=7.

see exp_descr_buildings.txt for details

This formula is wrong; please, don't confuse the asker. Any market from Grain exchange up to Fairground increases the global limit for Merchants by 1; the two top-level markets provide +1. Thus, 1 Fairground+1 Great Market=1+2=3 to global merchant level.
Anyway, I've altered the agent limit system in my small mod, exactly because I found it to be that good, making it -IMO- more thought out.

[Zem]

This formula is wrong; please, don't confuse the asker. Any market from Grain exchange up to Fairground increases the global limit for Merchants by 1; the two top-level markets provide +1. Thus, 1 Fairground+1 Great Market=1+2=3 to global merchant level.
Anyway, I've altered the agent limit system in my small mod, exactly because I found it to be that good, making it -IMO- more thought out.

I checked it. I was wrong. But you were slightly wrong as well. The right formula:
All the marketplaces set the agent_limit to 1. It doesn't matter if you have 5 'Great markets' or you have 5 'Grain exchanges' you can have max 5 merchants even if you have the Merchant'Guild HQ. Only the Merchant Vault (HRE, Venice, Milan) increases the agent_limit to 2.

It`s a bit different with the churches & priests. All the churches above Abbey set the agent_limit to 2.
Examples:
1 Small Chapel + 1 Abbey let you recruit 1+2=3 priests.
1 Cathedral + 1 Huge Cathedral let you recruit 2+2=4 priests.

[Spurius]

Check for 'agent_limit merchant' in exp_descr_buildings.txt and up that (mind you, there's several - and keep it logical)

[sharky4u]

Check for 'agent_limit merchant' in exp_descr_buildings.txt and up that (mind you, there's several - and keep it logical)

Have you actually done this before and got it working?

[miccofl]

Check for 'agent_limit merchant' in exp_descr_buildings.txt and up that (mind you, there's several - and keep it logical)

One thing to keep in mind when doing this is that whatever you change the value to affects not only your faction's buildings but affects the AI factions' buildings as well so if one wanted to go about merchant spamming they should expect nothing less than that from the AI.

[Zem]

One thing to keep in mind when doing this is that whatever you change the value to affects not only your faction's buildings but affects the AI factions' buildings as well so if one wanted to go about merchant spamming they should expect nothing less than that from the AI.

You are probably right. But you can never tell with the AI. Raising the limit may not change anything in the AI. Who knows?

[pwijnands]

I like the idea about spies having loyalty. It would make you wonder wether or not to trust the information given. Being able to bribe an enemy spy to give the AI false information would be a lot of fun.

[HANDsolo]

What i want is to be able to disband agents. Yes, I'm looking at you, diplomat created with religious intolerant trait. But then it could be exploited to get the guilds. Or I could use the console and kill the unit.

The limits are necessary, else you would be able to spam agents very early which would make the game even easier because the AI wont take advantage of it too. Imagine, no gate would be locked, more cash then you know what to do with because of infinite merchants, an entire college of cardinals in the first 50 turns. You could even build wall of agents along your borders to prevents access.

What i want is an agent limit on elite units.

[Bob The Fearless]

What i want is to be able to disband agents. Yes, I'm looking at you, diplomat created with religious intolerant trait.

This is possible, but at a price.

Build a ship, cheap one is best, load it with required agent or even general etc and send it against your enemy or rebels.

Hey Presto !!!! one funeral similar to how the viking did it. (If you use your imagination)

Of course best to cram as many onto one ship as possible to save the costs if you see what I mean.