Why are the AI merchants so strong?

[henyo10]

I don't get it. At the start of every campaign they seem to be 7 Finance already and they keep killing my merchants. Is there any strategy for this?

[13ig_VV]

i've never seen them so high at the very beginning. they can, however, certainly conquer other merchants and rack up stats for monopolies quickly. you could just be seeing the result of a Darwin theory type thing going on where the weakest died off hahah. my advice: send your merchants to safe trade resources and rack up monopoly-type stats. also, if you get a guild you will have bonuses from the beginning. the more merchants you mass, the better they will get because you will have more guilds (and as you try to seize assets some will win and become very strong)

[Portuguese Rebel]

Or you can just forget merchants altogether because they are not really worth it, unless you exploit the system and make forts on top of resources.

[Stark of Winterfell]

Merchants really aren't worth it until you can get the Merchant Guild HQ, and start producing somewhat capable merchants that won't get eaten up by the AI. Or play Stainless Steel, where a merchant has to have at least 3x as much finance to have a good shot at taking over a competitor. I had a 6 finance merchant once and the guild asked me to take on a 2 finance merchant. Despite a 54% chance of success, he failed. (I even reloaded a couple times, since I thought it was so ridiculous).

[Shadow8]

i have merchants with full finance, the ai has 2 finance, they auto aquire me... ai merchants are ridiculous, its really fricking annoying when your making your money of fyour own resource in france, and a turkish merchant with 1 finance aquires you and then leaves, i fricking hate goddamn merchants those mothering goat sucking bastards

[Portuguese Rebel]

AI merchants cheat... There is no other explanation. You never get to do to them what they can do to you.

[jsktrogdor]

Its annoying when your merchant has just finnished his 20 year epic odessey from northern england to southern egypt and one turn later BAM he gets hit.

Leave your merchents hanging around your own territory, the closer to the training location the better. Let them collect 2-4xp ~then~ ship them off to somewhere where they'll be racking in at least 200 florins. Timbucktoo is great for 4 or 5 merchants, egypt, norway, certain french wine nodes. Thats the only time their worth their 500 florin weight.

Also choose one settlement to train all of your merchants in, you get a quota of one merchant per merchant building. It doesnt matter where the building is you can train the merchant you get from it anywhere. Im pretty sure that you need to accumulate a certain amount of points in the area that the guild covers (by building merchants there, and I think trade levels are also taken into account). Theres also a slow decay of points so try to train them in bursts. Its great to trian five or six merchants about a dozen or so turns before you invade somewhere by ship, then you can import them to the country with the army. Sorry for the long post, you were probley just venting steam.

[lifeonmars]

toke the danish merchant is unbeatable in the netherlands where he goes for me. he dominates the north in the early preriod. i had to assassinate him

[Larsen]

Toke is a madman. Somehow he is not nearly as good when you play as the Danes though...

[phyacis]

Merchants gain very little xp by trading, it all comes from acquisitions. Just like assasins and spys, if you want some really good ones the key is make tons, use them aggresively and see which few survive. I suspect that's why you're seeing high level AI ones - they've each won 5 fights by the time they get to your lands, whereas your homegrown ones are relative rookies if all they've done is sit on a resource.

Note that you can attack an AI merchant at any time (ie they dont have to be on a resource), whereas I dont think they will ever attack you unless you're on a resource. This gives the human a pretty big advantage in terms of picking the battles you can win etc.

[Zodiac]

Uhhhh... Toke. I've assassinated him before just because he would acquire so many merchants. Hooray for the "has a few enemies" trait!!!

[Spartan90]

The only method is Darwin's "survival of the fittest" technique. Spam merchants, send them off to acquire other merchants. The weak will fail, the strong will prevail. Other than that, monopolize your merchants on valuable resources (gold, ivory, slaves, spices) for 20 turns. They should get the monopoly trait by then, and have around 5 finance. Knock off a few merchants to get around 7 finance, and then you can dominate the best of the best of money-making merchants