Markets and farms

[Basileos Leandros I]

How useful are markets and farms to boost your income in a city after the 3rd level of each?

After a Fairground, I find the Great Market and Merchants Quarter in some factions to be useless and it only adds around 200-300 florins per turn compared to the huge amount they cost, and the time necessary to build them.

For farms, apart from the provinces with plentiful grain as a tradable resource, more than crop rotation is useless. Might be my opinion though.

Any thoughts? Is it true what I'm observing?

[Gorrrrrn]

Long time since I looked at the SS files now, but you could try altering the values of the trade_base_income for them in the EDB

[Goofy]

Farms are only useful when you
a) want to increase the growth level of a settlement,
b) want a GoodFarmer trait or
c) want to get more money; this works only in regions with good harvest, in poor harvest regions they're nearly useless at making money.
The best reason to build high level markets is that every time you upgrade a Great Market to a Merchants' Quarter, you can recruit one extra merchant. It will greatly boost your income if you do it in this way:

[Loose Cannon]

@FinnKing Nineteen merchants on the gold in Marrakesh and only 1003 in the treasury Hate to see your army upkeep cost. You shouldn't need that exploit with the amount of land you control.

Back to the OP. The higher level farms/markets are not cost effective but useful. The higher level markets make better merchants, higher level farms let you run very high tax rates and still grow cities. Of course, if you control the map like FinnKing does you don't need them.

[Goofy]

1. & 2.

Nineteen merchants on the gold in Marrakesh and only 1003 in the treasury

My income per turn is some 30,000 florins.
I had just started to build many kind of buildings and had many new cities with poor buildings; most of my money were spent in northern France and southern England.
3.

Hate to see your army upkeep cost

The upkeep cost of my army is about 20,000 florins per turn I think.
4.

You shouldn't need that exploit with the amount of land you control.

I wouldn't control so large area without that trick (it's my main source of income), and I think that it's not "cheating"; merchants could do that in real life too. There is gold enough for everyone.
5.

The higher level markets make better merchants

Right, that was the point I didn't notice.
6.

higher level farms let you run very high tax rates and still grow cities

Yes, but very high tax rates lead to dread-increasing traits and trait lines; the growth speed of a city on very high tax rate depends on harvest in this region.

[Wadey]

Does incresing your trade income increase your tax income as well? More goods to tax and that? This is how I justify building the higher tier markets and roads anyway lol

Also, come plague time every penny counts!

[Loose Cannon]

It's cheating. Exploits are things the AI is incapable of doing. That merchant fort on a resource is the worst one. The AI cannot stack merchants like that and it cannot try to take over your merchant when they are protected by soldiers. You're better then that, find another way to increase your income!

And don't worry about bad traits from taxes. There are worse things in some of the other traits.

[Sab99]

Ofcourse the merchant trick is an obvious exploit! It's goes to far to say it's cheating, but it's not 'how you should play the game' in my opinion.
You can, also with that much land, play the game and make money without this 'glitch'. Try to send your merchant to the middle-east and Byzantine lands. There you can make as much as 1000 florins with one merchant if you get to the right resources..

Does incresing your trade income increase your tax income as well? More goods to tax and that? This is how I justify building the higher tier markets and roads anyway lol

Also, come plague time every penny counts!

I don't think it increases your tax income, but it does increase indeed your trade income, isn't that enough
Remeber that when you built greater markets and roads, trade in surrounding city's also increase, just as building greater ports increases your sea trade in the surrounding city's.

[Goofy]

You can, also with that much land, play the game and make money without this 'glitch'. Try to send your merchant to the middle-east and Byzantine lands. There you can make as much as 1000 florins with one merchant if you get to the right resources..

I don't feel up to. I just want to fight.
Tell this to me: are merchants able to trade the same resource in the same region in real life? Yes they can, although it would be more fair to send them to Middle-East... as I said, I just don't feel up to do that, as I have poor relations with muslim factions and I don't want to transport my merchants by a ship (or many ships), and walking there takes at least 15 turns.

I'm starting to work with M2TW mod which makes that "fair merchant trade" easier and emphasizes the importance of taxes if possible.

Anyways, upgrading your markets is worthwile as it increases the limit of merchants.

[Sab99]

I don't feel up to. I just want to fight.
Tell this to me: are merchants able to trade the same resource in the same region in real life? Yes they can, although it would be more fair to send them to Middle-East... as I said, I just don't feel up to do that, as I have poor relations with muslim factions and I don't want to transport my merchants by a ship (or many ships), and walking there takes at least 15 turns.

I'm starting to work with M2TW mod which makes that "fair merchant trade" easier and emphasizes the importance of taxes if possible.

Anyways, upgrading your markets is worthwile as it increases the limit of merchants.

Oke no problem. I was giving you an oposing argument, so that our topic starter would know that this is not the way the game should be played.
Ofcourse in real life merchant are able to to that, but this is a game and I always play my game with a little story telling and character dev.
Besides that, you bring the game out of balance by using glitches (that's why they call them glitches, check loose canon's comment). You at once make a LOT more money than calculated via the glitch and here we come again... That's considered cheating!
Cramming a dozen of merchant on top of a single resource is just a glitch and nothing more.

Around turn +/- 100 you are able to train merchants that are good enough so that they are not constantly being murdered by AI merchants.
From southern europe you are able to go to the middle east in about 4/5 turns (with ship that is) and especially if you play an southern europe faction, like you, it is quite easy.

Nothing more rewarding than training a great merchant, loving his traits and retinues, sail him off to the middle-east and placing him on a valuable resource! And then watchin the florins come in

[Devildogxs]

Oke no problem. I was giving you an oposing argument, so that our topic starter would know that this is not the way the game should be played.
Ofcourse in real life merchant are able to to that, but this is a game and I always play my game with a little story telling and character dev.
Besides that, you bring the game out of balance by using glitches (that's why they call them glitches, check loose canon's comment). You at once make a LOT more money than calculated via the glitch and here we come again... That's considered cheating!
Cramming a dozen of merchant on top of a single resource is just a glitch and nothing more.

Around turn +/- 100 you are able to train merchants that are good enough so that they are not constantly being murdered by AI merchants.
From southern europe you are able to go to the middle east in about 4/5 turns (with ship that is) and especially if you play an southern europe faction, like you, it is quite easy.

Nothing more rewarding than training a great merchant, loving his traits and retinues, sail him off to the middle-east and placing him on a valuable resource! And then watchin the florins come in

Not sure this could have been said any better. In my campaign using Sicily in about turn 65 I have a pretty good Merchant who I trained up on the slave resource near caffa which is worth about 215 Florins right off the hop and goes up very quickly .

Finding that balance between income and military upkeep is always fragile at best and to me adds a great amount of realism to the game.

[Tacitursa]

How useful are markets and farms to boost your income in a city after the 3rd level of each?

Very useful.

Farms dont just give income from farming they increase population which = more tax.

Upgrading markets to higher levels is pointless if you dont use the merchants though. If you do use your merchants and use them effectively they are extremely usefull.

Just send them as far away from your capital as possible. The further away the resource the more florins your merchant will earn. As England sending a merchant to jerusalem and taking the nearby gold resource can earn over 1000 florins per turn.

Its always a good idea to call a crusade or jihad on the furthest away city possible and then recruit as many merchants as possible from that city once you take it. Do this as soon as possible even if u dont want the region or plan to take it over the merchants will instantly boost campaign income from as little as turn 10. Also build several priests once you can no longer build merchants and they will very soon become cardinals you can then send them to covert any regions you plan on over taking.

Merchant guilds are also great they give you a new Heavy cavalry unit which is really usefull in early campaign. They boost your trade income aswell. But best of all they make your merchants stronger and in turn they earn more florins sooner and have much better survival against AI merchants.