Merchant-related questions

**Halbard** · July 28, 2009, 02:49 PM

So, i cant figure out how to get merchants to have top rating thingies.
Do they gain education from being in settlements with schools and stuff, or just from switching products and acquiring other merchants' business?

**Tomato_Sandwich** · July 28, 2009, 03:24 PM

as far as im aware merchants guilds are the best way of getting better merchants. my cities with merchant guilds tend just to become merchant factories. better markets also give bonuses but not untill the later ones. also having them in your own territories or at least near ones is better else they get negative traits like 'self serving'. and over time they get better through traits too.

**Ichon** · July 28, 2009, 06:09 PM

Yeah the later merchant guilds/markets start off merchants up to I think 5 levels? But that is way late in the game, only reached that point once. Usually the best trade goods are far away so keeping merchants close to your own territory isn't much of an option. A 3 level merchant or higher in the start of the game is quite good though and you can try training him up 1 level and set out acquiring any rivals you see. A spy/merchant combo doing that can bring you quite a bit of gold and make the AI factions a tiny bit less productive.

**Mega Tortas de Bodemloze** · July 29, 2009, 02:48 AM

If you don't mind bending the rules a bit and being a "Reload Prince", once you get your merchants up a few levels via "acquisition", it tends to open them up a bit to acquiring new traits. The SS6.1 merchants aren't "lethal the way they are in other MTWII mods such as Broken Crescent, nor do they bring in money the way they do in other mods. So I figure if your willing to put in the time your entitled to the extra profits...

**HighLord z0b** · July 31, 2009, 02:22 AM

As already stated, the two best approaches are building up Merchant guilds and successfully seizing the assets of other merchants.

The best way to build up your merchant guild is to only build merchants from your biggest city (usually your capitol), this should encourage the offer of building a merchant guild there very quickly, and then you may as well build all your merchants there from then on as they will be better anyway and that will encourage the offer to upgrade the merchant guild soon. That shouldn't stop you from accepting an offer of a merchant guild in another city however as it will boost trade in the city, however try and restrict the building of merchants to the city that you want to build up to a merchant HQ. Also send your diplomats to make as many trade rights treaties as possible as I think that will help trigger more offers of merchant guilds, especially if they are missions.

Seizing another merchants assets isn't as easy in SS however it still can be done. Early on you will only have a few merchants due to the agent limit so if you have a good one try and build him up by only sending him to aquire the assets of other merchants where they have a very good chance of success, and by sending them to far off resources as that should build up "Knowledge of Customs" and similar traits. If you build a bad merchant or a merchant turns bad by getting bad traits I would send them against targets even though they have limited chances of seizing their assets as they will either succeed and get better traits or die and then you can build a new one which may be better but either way will help trigger the offer of a better merchant guild.

**RazAlgul** · July 31, 2009, 02:55 AM

Playing Aragorn, I sent a Merchant to HRE....near Frankfurt.....seizing a Danish merchants glass business...now I am rolling in 900 gold per turn from him.....WTF....never ever did I see merchants bring in more then 150-300 per trade resource......most probably I was doing something wrong.....thank god I sent the Diplomat to Frankfurt to talk to HRE otherwise I would have missed on that perfect deal

**Mega Tortas de Bodemloze** · July 31, 2009, 03:35 AM

Originally Posted by RazAlgul

Playing Aragorn, I sent a Merchant to HRE....near Frankfurt.....seizing a Danish merchants glass business...now I am rolling in 900 gold per turn from him.....WTF....never ever did I see merchants bring in more then 150-300 per trade resource......most probably I was doing something wrong.....thank god I sent the Diplomat to Frankfurt to talk to HRE otherwise I would have missed on that perfect deal

If you are going to Farm your merchants please remember that the resource returns vary somewhat from faction to Faction. For example when playing Broken Crescent my Egyptian Merchant went from the Levant to India and was bring in $1,000 per turn for "Fish". So please check your resources carefully cuz you can never tell what stuff might be worth, especially if you move your capital...

**Ichon** · July 31, 2009, 11:05 AM

Merchant return depends large part on level of the merchant and the value of resource and distance from your faction of the resource. The amount of money that a level 1 merchant receives vs a level 4 or 5 is in the several hundreds usually. I never got higher than level 6 so far but one of those sitting on silk was bringing in about 1,000. So I imagine making the higher merchant guilds if you are a poor faction might be very worth it- in other words rather than spend money upgrading all cities, spend it all on one larger city to get the highest level of markets and hopefully merchant guild.