SERIAL KILLING - MERCHANT STYLE

[Mega Tortas de Bodemloze]

TWO POINTS, SOME OF YOU SCREAM CHEATING SO HEAR ME OUT FIRST.....

1. Merchant building - send your neebie spies to Damascus. Have them practice their trade. Eygpt will gain at least 3-4 thousand per turn if its merchants are left uninhibited. Not on me watch.... Send your newborn merchant to Damascus hidden in a hay cart and let the merchant killing commence. Yes in this asspect I AM the Reload Prince, you betcha!
that's cheating....waaaah! What do you call a computer merchant walking all the way from China just to whack your poor no star baby merchant. in Georgia pulling in all of 3 quid off a lumber resource.

Ya good on ya mate.

2. Merchant Stockpiling - A fort is biult next to a resourse and stockpiled with merchants. thats cheating....(see above) Yes you are monopolizing a resourse and your computer opponents have no access. Do you really think the 7 star computer merchant sent to eat your newborn merchant does not
also see your 10 star merchant waiting to eat him when he gets there!

Now look at it this way . If your own a gold mine in your back yard are you going to grant every one access. Or do you think your entitled to royalties cause after all it is on your land. don't ya think?

To the purists, I tip my hat to you. Your a better gammer than I. To me
the above practices help my cause somewhat cuz believe me as a neophyte gammer I can you all the help I can get!

[Vagabond]

Hi, sorry if we've already talk about that.
I found the merchants are way too powerfull for their price. A merchant cost only 100 denari, while they can generate 400-500 denari/turn with finance skill just 3-4. And with the corruption system ( a little like DLV) with 1000 denari of corruption for settlements far away from capital , some settlements make only 50-150 denari per turn (or even under 0).It's a bit unrealistic if a city income is 10 times smaller than a merchant's .
For me, i love this . I can have so , so much money using merchants but it make the game unbalanced .
I think we can raise their price to 500-800, reduce their income 50% but with no agent limited.

[The Sixth Wizard]

Hi, sorry if we've already talk about that.
I found the merchants are way too powerfull for their price. A merchant cost only 100 denari, while they can generate 400-500 denari/turn with finance skill just 3-4. And with the corruption system ( a little like DLV) with 1000 denari of corruption for settlements far away from capital , some settlements make only 50-150 denari per turn (or even under 0).It's a bit unrealistic if a city income is 10 times smaller than a merchant's .
For me, i love this . I can have so , so much money using merchants but it make the game unbalanced .
I think we can raise their price to 500-800, reduce their income 50% but with no agent limited.

You forget that you have to pay the money to get the markets too, you can only get one per market. Not only that, but the resources that get 500+ per turn are few and far apart, and the AI gets them first a lot of the time. Merchants are fine, BC are the only mod to make them interesting and useful as a character.

No sarcasm at all, so far no one has convinced me so far why they are an addition to the game, so far i only read about exploits IAW cheats or that they need them for money. If in need of money that can be balanced by scripting

They are a good addition because they add an extra dimension to the game/ In my opinion it would be very empty without those little resource icons on the campaign map to give you a feel for the region... Not to mention it is a way to capitalise on the fact that some regions are naturally better than others regardless of city size. Without merchants and unique resources income would be all about population and king's purse, that would be real boring.

And my god forts are cheap, if the enemy merchant had enough money to put yours out of business through fraud, he'd have enough to buy a measly border-fort EASY.

(didn't read entire thread, so sue me if I said something that's already been said)

[tup]

It's not really a BC problem, but one of the game in general... I like the idea of merchants and agents very much, but always get the feeling that some factors are broken.
In the begin, I mostly got 1-2 skill merchants from my cities, 3 at best. These got acquired by high skill foreign merchants after 1-2 turns, which is quite annoying and would really suck if the cost would be 500-800 per merchant. Now that some factions are dead and my best city trains 5-6 skill merchants, it's ok. Actually, I got the feeling the skill cap after which the AI won't try to acquire my merchants is around 4-5.
Anyways, even a full skill merchant will have a very low chance to acquire a 4-5 skill foreign merchant, which always bugs me. The same goes for other agents, especially priests, which is not a big problem for BC. It makes using agents a loading feast and more annoying than anything else.
Maybe it's to save the AI from getting owned by player's merchants, but as it is they are hunting mine sometimes and most of all in the beginning of a campaign.

Regarding the resource issue, it seems I'm playing another game. The maximum income my (full skill) merchants can get is 750 by trading ivory and I have no province in which to train ships, so there's only one available I think. The distance issue doesn't apply too, because my merchants a Baghdad generate ~600 per turn and it's right at my doorstep. While resources in India suck.
My Merchant income is ~6500 and my largest city (Ani) is generating 10000 per turn, so I don't see the point about merchants generating more than cities. Just develop your settlements and get high chivalry/piety generals.

All in all, merchants are quite fine. Maybe the price could be raised to 200 or slightly more, but as it is I like it because if the AI eats most of my merchants in the begin I don't feel like it was wasted money. Another option, if possible, would be to raise merchant cost with market developement.
Resources are fine, too.
The only remaining problems are the off numbers of mercantile acquisition chance.

[igotballsofsteel]

It's not really a BC problem, but one of the game in general... I like the idea of merchants and agents very much, but always get the feeling that some factors are broken.
In the begin, I mostly got 1-2 skill merchants from my cities, 3 at best. These got acquired by high skill foreign merchants after 1-2 turns, which is quite annoying and would really suck if the cost would be 500-800 per merchant. Now that some factions are dead and my best city trains 5-6 skill merchants, it's ok. Actually, I got the feeling the skill cap after which the AI won't try to acquire my merchants is around 4-5.
Anyways, even a full skill merchant will have a very low chance to acquire a 4-5 skill foreign merchant, which always bugs me. The same goes for other agents, especially priests, which is not a big problem for BC. It makes using agents a loading feast and more annoying than anything else.
Maybe it's to save the AI from getting owned by player's merchants, but as it is they are hunting mine sometimes and most of all in the beginning of a campaign.

Regarding the resource issue, it seems I'm playing another game. The maximum income my (full skill) merchants can get is 750 by trading ivory and I have no province in which to train ships, so there's only one available I think. The distance issue doesn't apply too, because my merchants a Baghdad generate ~600 per turn and it's right at my doorstep. While resources in India suck.
My Merchant income is ~6500 and my largest city (Ani) is generating 10000 per turn, so I don't see the point about merchants generating more than cities. Just develop your settlements and get high chivalry/piety generals.

All in all, merchants are quite fine. Maybe the price could be raised to 200 or slightly more, but as it is I like it because if the AI eats most of my merchants in the begin I don't feel like it was wasted money. Another option, if possible, would be to raise merchant cost with market developement.
Resources are fine, too.
The only remaining problems are the off numbers of mercantile acquisition chance.

Whit a full skill merchant ayyubids on the silk ressource neer darnacus u get 2.2k 2.3k a turn for a single merchant that sick

[tup]

Ok, then my Georgian merchants are just idiots.
Or I am and I overlooked some nice resource.

[Miraj]

Post all observations, whining or ideas about merchants here.

[Artannis Wolfrunner]

-Impossible to buy out enemy merchants. Enemy merchants seem to always have almost full skill, even my best merchants have at best a 40% chance of success, and that's very rare.

-Assassins are exceedingly effective against them. No matter how low the assassin's skill or how high the merchant's, there will always be a 95% of success to assassinate merchants.

[anaztazioch]

-Impossible to buy out enemy merchants. Enemy merchants seem to always have almost full skill, even my best merchants have at best a 40% chance of success, and that's very rare.

-Assassins are exceedingly effective against them. No matter how low the assassin's skill or how high the merchant's, there will always be a 95% of success to assassinate merchants.

Strange, i can get lvl 5 to 7 merchant without bigger problems, than just few aquisitions on AI weaklings and in full finance and 2000 from slaves in Urganch having capitol in Nishapur.

My newelly made assassins rarelly have more than 46% chance to take out good merchants. Another thing is that aquisition gives you money and finance traits.

[AirnetSnake]

-Impossible to buy out enemy merchants. Enemy merchants seem to always have almost full skill, even my best merchants have at best a 40% chance of success, and that's very rare.

Impossible to buy out enemy merchant? What is your merchant middle skill lvl? In Bc my merchant work like assasins with enemy's ones,there is always 80+% chance to buy out enemy if his skill is not higher 1-2 than ur's. Also by buying out enemy merchant u can produce nearly 3k+ additionals florins each turn ( if enemy build much merchants each turn) without pauses. In my KoJ campaign i've destroyed smth like 100 enemy's merchant and lost only 3-5. But i'm not satisfied with merchants' income, too low, think they should produce 50% more money from trade , but get thier buying out skill ~30% lower.

[The Mongol]

Am I the only one who has no idea what OP is saying?

[scivian]

...Will I cause bad blood for assassinating a faction's merchants?

[AdmiringtheEnemyeh?]

Am I the only one who has no idea what OP is saying?

Overpowered. It's a common term in many RTS games.

[shoshenq]

Am I the only one who has no idea what OP is saying?

No you're not the only one

[nodey]

Am I the only one who has no idea what OP is saying?

No. I'll get back to you once ive decrypted the message.
I think it has something to do with penguins though.

[anaztazioch]

@ Mega Tortas

anquisiting other merchants gives you instant boost of money to tresury, depending on finanse of that merchant. Also aquisiting gives mercghant traits that increase his finance to a max of +3 i think.



I dont like the merchants idea much and the fact that how much your merchants can get from resources depends mostly on distance betwean your capitol and the resource, than resource "weight", merchant finance, trading buildings in capitol, roads and paved roads (each gives +1 to resource base income in vanilla)

So if you have gold in your capitol, you cannot use your merhcant to trade and get good profit.

[craziii]

I like the guard option much better than forts.

send a lone unit to stand on top of a resource then send 1 merchant into him, the merchant will join like any other agent. the merchant will be guard for as long as he lives.

the abuse factor: alot of players, once they know of this, they will send 20 merchants into that 1 single military unit. that is cheating but I will admit pretty realistically accurate if the resource is on your own land.

[Mega Tortas de Bodemloze]

CRAZIII


What happens to the merchant(s) if your lone unit goes "johnny Reb" or gets Whacked?

[Rex Inanimatus]

my humble oppinion is to get rid of them, MTW1 and RTW was fine without them and it only delays turns. this wil take some rebalancing and some scripting , though when they are gone, everyone can focus on Total war items instead of girlie trader thingies

[craziii]

no idea, strangely enough, I have never had that happen, oh I only use 1 single merchant for that.