Trade forts?

[Pirates Yarrr]

Im playing a campaign as the HRE (first time playing) and doing well, have all but one of france's lands, milan and venice and gone, hugnary has two areas left, and despite all the other factions gradually forming a big alliance against me the pope is offering hugz. Caen region (english) just randomly attacked me so I exterminated them, and scottish antwerp. You get the picture. However, my empire is growing and so is the bill; I need more money per turn to keep each new city constructing good buildings to make them useful, and heard of a 'trade fort'.

How do you make one? I know its a normal fort with merchants in, but do you put it on an actual resource site?

[Wheelchair]

Find a valuable trade resource, Idealy Slaves, Ivory, or Silk (Those work best)

Get a general(and Soldiers if you wish), with 20 merchants with him(You dont <NEED> 20, Its just faster)

Take the general to the valuable resource, Construct a fort ON the Resouce (Has to be really close)

Take the general out and leave the Merchants within the fort

Each merchant benefits from the Trade Resource, so you should be getting 2000-3000 Florins a turn

Each couple turns you'll notice the number Increaing

In my Venice campaign I have merchants on Ivory, and Generating 22000 florins a turn o_O!

[High Chunker Greens]

What he said ^

I have made about 15k out of each one in france campaign

[fritsje5]

do these merchants HAVE to be with the general u are building the fort with or can u send the merchants after u have constructed it to the fort?

another thing... Just wondering, was this meant to be, or is this an actual bug

[Prince of Denmark]

It's an exploit of sorts, but no more the the AI.

[Viking Prince]

Great numbers! What version of MTWII are you guys using. Also, give the income for all merchants, the number of merchants, and do not forget the merchants do age out and need to be replaced.

I think that if this strategy is really successful, it will only work after maybe 20 cities are controlled. Before then, acquiring monopoly status and being happy with 100 to 150 per merchant per turn is more realistic.

What do you guys think?

[Wheelchair]

This strategy If right before that point where you know your going to win, just need to mop up the world.

Realisticly, you won't have 20 merchants the first few turns, Usually around turn 40 you could have this strategy. Overtime it becomes more efficient.

[Surgeon]

Note that if you're playing with all the latest patches then this exploit has been removed and you can no longer build forts on trade resources. If you want to group a bunch of merchants on a resource you'll have to leave some soldiers standing around on top of it and join all the merchants into this army.