newbie question

[popespet]

I just started playing and I like the game, but I'm really getting ticked off that everytime I create a merchant someone comes along in a couple of turns and seizes his assets. Is there any way to protect your merchants from being taken out?

[HANDsolo]

You could build a fort on the resource and then you can garrison more than one merchant on the resource. But you can only build forts on your land.
Station a unit on the resource. Merge merchants into that army. However, if the unit rebels, the merchants will go lassefaire on your **s. But, remember both these are cheats, so using them will destroy a piece of your soul.

Head over to the tips and tricks thread. They have some tips about merchants.

[sharky4u]

You could build a fort on the resource and then you can garrison more than one merchant on the resource. But you can only build forts on your land.
Station a unit on the resource. Merge merchants into that army. However, if the unit rebels, the merchants will go lassefaire on your **s. But, remember both these are cheats, so using them will destroy a piece of your soul.

Head over to the tips and tricks thread. They have some tips about merchants.

I always find it challenging to build a fort on a resource, the build window is always greyed out. I building a fort off to the side for some reason doesn't work for me. Are you playing a particular mod?

[HANDsolo]

I always find it challenging to build a fort on a resource, the build window is always greyed out. I building a fort off to the side for some reason doesn't work for me. Are you playing a particular mod?

The fort trick I read in the tips thread. I've never tried it because firstly, I don't cheat and secondly, I don't use merchants in my own regions.
I always send my merchants to the spices in the middle east. I hardly have problems with other merchants there either. My merchants skill goes up pretty quickly when there, so when other merchants do show up, its hard for them to take the resource.

[pwijnands]

I just started playing and I like the game, but I'm really getting ticked off that everytime I create a merchant someone comes along in a couple of turns and seizes his assets. Is there any way to protect your merchants from being taken out?

Build all your merchant in one city to attract the merchant's guild. Training merchants with their guild present will give them 1 to 2 extra finance (those yellow symbols). It also helps to build at least a town hall to prevent them from becoming shady dealers.
Distance to capital is also important in the acquisition of some traits. If a merchant is between 40 and 60 squares from your capital they get the traveller trait (extra finance). Being more then 60 squares away will make them selfish (penalty to finance).
It also helps to train them in cities which do not have a cathedral or higher. Building them in cities with those high-end religious structures will make them religious merchants (which lowers finance).
When you've just trained a fresh merchant train him up in a quiet area. To get some extra training make them have a monopoly on a resource in a region. You get a monopoly by being the only faction in a region that's trading two or more instances of the same resource with your merchants. Example: there are three symbols of a particular resource in one region. You own two (or three) of them with merchants --> monopoly. If you own two and a merchant from another faction owns the third --> no monopoly.
The last thing I can think of is trading exotic wares, but that may be a mod I'm using. An exotic good is a good that doesn't exist in your regions.

[pwijnands]

I could never build a fort on resources either, there's a line in a text file that controls it. I enabled it, but never use it.
A thing I always do however is select a newly created merchant and then see how many turns it takes for that merchant to get there. I then let the merchant sit inside the settlement until enough turns have passed so he could have reached the resource. I then use move_character to move them. If I don't I keep forgetting about them and giving them a very long path makes ending turns take much longer (and if your merchant's path is blocked he will stop moving and forget about his original target).

[sharky4u]

I could never build a fort on resources either, there's a line in a text file that controls it. I enabled it, but never use it.
A thing I always do however is select a newly created merchant and then see how many turns it takes for that merchant to get there. I then let the merchant sit inside the settlement until enough turns have passed so he could have reached the resource. I then use move_character to move them. If I don't I keep forgetting about them and giving them a very long path makes ending turns take much longer (and if your merchant's path is blocked he will stop moving and forget about his original target).

Your right there. Another trick and this is moving off into the realms of modding, but i moved the resource to my starting territory to save the effort of moving my merchants. once you take note of your starting posistion all you need to do is alter its location the same as the move_character cheat. Pointless if you change too much or put loads of gold on your door step but hey add's some diversity!

[pwijnands]

Doesn't that lower the value of the resources? They are supposed to be more valuable if (the closest instance of) the resource is close to your capital?

[sharky4u]

Doesn't that lower the value of the resources? They are supposed to be more valuable if (the closest instance of) the resource is close to your capital?

I hadn't noticed that, but then again i wasn't checking. At least this way the repetitive walk for a few florins is cancelled. Even more fun however is restarting as a different faction such as the moors, when you have moved the gold to Scotland (example). The scottish with money, whatever next!

[pwijnands]

A few florins? In Stainless Steel my top merchants could get around 2.000 florins from the gold mines in Timbuktu. When I first saw that I had to double-check to see if I didn't increase the trade value myself. But as far as I can tell (judging by file dates) I haven't.

[Sacc]

hmmm, that monopoly thing is news to me.

One way to build a fort (grand campaign, not kingdoms) is to combine a general with a merchant who is already training.

imho, it's not really cheating. In reality, why couldn't you build a fort to protect a natural resource? Aren't resources the cause of most non-religous based wars?

[NobleNick]

popespet,

You can:

1.) Keep your merchants close to home, until they have gained a few levels of experience.

2.) Train all your merchants in one city, until you get a merchant's guild / master merchant's guild offer in that city, which allows you to get more experienced merchants.

3.) Train up assasins to take out enemy merchants. This is one of my more joyous M2TW pastimes.

4.) Use your most experienced merchant to take out other less experienced merchants. This not only gets your merchant more experience, it eliminates the enemy merchant, gets you money, and also gets you favor with the merchant's guild.

5.) Build a fort on the resource. Yes, it can be done in unmodded (vanilla) 1.2 M2TW (though not in Kingdoms, I am told). The way to do it is to build the fort where the merchant would stand if he were trading the resource. I often build forts for merchants (although I have not yet stooped to stuffing them with multiple merchants). If you move all of your military out of a fort which the merchant is in, you will get a message saying that the fort will disapear in a turn, but it does not.

6.) Send your merchants by boat to far away lands, like Timbuktu or the far east of the Mediterranean. My experience has been that these lucrative markets are strangely uncontested, and merchants sent there gain experience quickly, and are less prone to being ruined.

7.) Sometimes, if I see an more experienced foreign merchant prowling near my merchant, I will move my merchant into a nearby city or at least out of range of the threat, until the foreign merchant moves on.

8.) If a certain faction is the bulk of your problems, terminate the faction.

9.) If eliminating the faction is not a viable option, send in a spy/assassin team to take out the market and (don't remember if you can do this) the merchant's guild in the offender's merchant-making city.

10. (Unverified by NobleNick) The trick which was posted earlier in this thread, of standing an army on the same square as the merchant, sounds like a good deal. I am going to try that with a single depleted unit of 1 or 2 soldiers. Who cares about a protection cost of 3 florins a turn, when your merchant is pulling down 230 florins per turn?

11.) (Unverified by NobleNick. Also considered a cheat.) Surround the enemy agent with units on the campaign map, so that there is no free space adjacent to the merchant. THen move a military unit directly onto the merchant. The merchant, having no adjacent space to which to move, disappears from the map. (Works with priests, assassins, spies, diplomats, and princesses, too.)

12.) Finally, keep building markets, keep cranking out merchants non-stop from exactly one city, and keep your total number of deployed merchants maxed out and spread out. This will keep you from losing many merchants from one threat.

-- I am pretty sure it is true that if your merchants hold all sites for a commodity within a territory's border, that those merchants get a bonus to their trading income.

[pwijnands]

9.) If eliminating the faction is not a viable option, send in a spy/assassin team to take out the market and (don't remember if you can do this) the merchant's guild in the offender's merchant-making city.

10. (Unverified by NobleNick) The trick which was posted earlier in this thread, of standing an army on the same square as the merchant, sounds like a good deal. I am going to try that with a single depleted unit of 1 or 2 soldiers. Who cares about a protection cost of 3 florins a turn, when your merchant is pulling down 230 florins per turn?

11.) (Unverified by NobleNick. Also considered a cheat.) Surround the enemy agent with units on the campaign map, so that there is no free space adjacent to the merchant. THen move a military unit directly onto the merchant. The merchant, having no adjacent space to which to move, disappears from the map. (Works with priests, assassins, spies, diplomats, and princesses, too.)

9. Doesn't work. I sabotaged (100% damage) every building in Milans last settlement once and they still produced troops and agents. I think the AI has no constraints like 1 agent per turn per settlement also, I've seen a settlement with no priests in it go to 4-5 priests within one turn.

10. Verified, but if the army is completely destroyed, the merchant dies as well. At least I've had several enemy agents die after completely destroying the army they were in.

11. A similar trick. If a resource is already occupied and the merchants have equal finance, move back until the resource is shrouded by the fog of war. Select the merchant and click on the resource, the existing one will be pushed off.

[NobleNick]

9. Doesn't work. I sabotaged (100% damage) every building in Milans last settlement once and they still produced troops and agents. I think the AI has no constraints like 1 agent per turn per settlement also, I've seen a settlement with no priests in it go to 4-5 priests within one turn...

Acckk!! It's things like this which make me want to say, "So the AI can do THAT?!?! O.K..., I **AM** going to build that fort on the Timbuktu gold mine and stuff it with 17 merchants..."

10. Verified, but if the army is completely destroyed, the merchant dies as well. At least I've had several enemy agents die after completely destroying the army they were in...

Figured as much; but the army never moves, and so can retreat full distance when threatened. Either way, it is less risk in home territory than letting the merchant solo.

11. A similar trick. If a resource is already occupied and the merchants have equal finance, move back until the resource is shrouded by the fog of war. Select the merchant and click on the resource, the existing one will be pushed off.

Neat cheat! Although only useful if your merchant and the target merchant are roughly the same level. If the target is much more experienced, your merchant will be gobbled up next turn. If your merchant is much more experienced, it would be more advantageous to simply acquire the opposing merchant.

Thank you for your comments.

[pwijnands]

To remove it edit descr_campaign_db.xml (needs to be unpacked first). The line you want has this in it:
<allow_resource_forts bool="true"/>
Change true to false and you can build forts (and watchtowers) on resources.

[Armatus]

I glanced over this thread, but did anyone mention to place your merchant in an army and move your army over the resource? That's the way I do it.

Otherwise I also used to circle my merchant with assassin guard and no body messed with him.

the only down side to the army merchant tactic is if your army gets bribed then there goes your merchant too!

[Sacc]

Acckk!! It's things like this which make me want to say, "So the AI can do THAT?!?! O.K..., I **AM** going to build that fort on the Timbuktu gold mine and stuff it with 17 merchants..."

hehe, who would ever do that? Still not sure what the big deal with this is? It's simply protecting your resource and seems fair to me.

[HANDsolo]

It's not about whether it's cheating or not. Its about making an already easy game unnecessarily easier.

If you are realy short of money that you need to cram merchants onto one resource or even need to use merchants at all, you are not playing the game as effectively as you can, and you should instead try to improve your game so that you don't need to use this. That would be rewarding and challenging.

[Sacc]

To some, it's not necessarily an easy game

[sharky4u]

To remove it edit descr_campaign_db.xml (needs to be unpacked first). The line you want has this in it:
<allow_resource_forts bool=&quot;true&quot;/>
Change true to false and you can build forts (and watchtowers) on resources.

Thanks for this, i will give it a go later on tonight. There is no shame in adding a differnt element to the game. If there were why are there som many mods out there?

To some, it's not necessarily an easy game

A very valid point, if it was so easy we would all be addicted, we would get bored and play something else.