Killing Rebel Merchants and old merchants is very easy in 6.3

**Paladin94610** · August 27, 2010, 04:14 AM

Old merchants get aged merchant trait over time which extremely reduce move points. 60 years old merchant have only 1 movement tile per turn for a plain terrain, and can't go anywhere if he have to climb a higher terrain so actually he can't move at all. The rebel merchants are also unable to move as they are scripted not to move.
Using the same concept of Killing a Character Without Assassination , I assume the agents killed by blocking his way and squashing him to death with another unit is because they have no movable tiles.
So the old merchants and rebel merchants which have no movement points will follow the same fate as those agents who had no movable tiles. So I tested it. I grasp a miles unit and order it to go over the rebel merchant. The rebel merchant died and my knight take the tile that the merchant previously occupied. I had wasted 6 merchants on the rebel merchant sitting on the Marble near Corinth. I could have finished him with a mounted acritae.

**Slyspy** · August 27, 2010, 07:51 AM

I don't think that the aged merchant traits add anything to the game except more tedious micromanagement.

**Alpha Zeke** · August 27, 2010, 08:01 AM

Are you sure the aged merchants do die? They should be able to move a little bit I thought? As for the Rebel Merchants, this is a known bug that all can be advised is, don't move on them with an army

The reason they have 0 movement points is so they don't wander around and destroy all merchants

**newt** · August 27, 2010, 09:42 AM

Originally Posted by Ømega

Are you sure the aged merchants do die? They should be able to move a little bit I thought? As for the Rebel Merchants, this is a known bug that all can be advised is, don't move on them with an army

The reason they have 0 movement points is so they don't wander around and destroy all merchants

He knows it's a known bug. That's why he linked to that other thread.

It's also the only way Elven factions can defend against assassins in TATW.

**Alpha Zeke** · August 27, 2010, 09:48 AM

They don't have their own spies? And I don't see how that would mean he knows about the one for SS6.3, since he didn't link to our bug thread. He linked to a bug from Vanilla, which isn't the same one as this.

**newt** · August 27, 2010, 09:57 AM

Originally Posted by Ømega

They don't have their own spies? And I don't see how that would mean he knows about the one for SS6.3, since he didn't link to our bug thread. He linked to a bug from Vanilla, which isn't the same one as this.

I'm talking about killing any agents by surrounding them with your units and then moving a unit on to them. They will die. This is a hard-coded bug that can't be removed. If they have zero movement points, they will die with just one unit , no need to surround them.

And no, elves have no assassins in TATW. The best you can do is keep a spy with your armies and hope for the best.

**Alpha Zeke** · August 27, 2010, 10:01 AM

Yes, that bug annoys me, but if the AI don't do it, no problem the player can't annoy me.

The Elves should have assassins. I only played 20 turns as them so I never found out that they didn't, but why wouldn't they? Bows are great for precision >: )

**newt** · August 27, 2010, 10:39 AM

They are above that and would never resort to using them. At least that's my impression. No one has said. I think it sucks.

**Gorrrrrn** · August 27, 2010, 01:38 PM

If you want to re-enable slave merchant movement just put a semi-colon at the start of these lines in the export_descr_character_traits file:

;Trigger MerchantSlaveNoMovement_add
; WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd
;
; Condition AgentType = merchant
; and OnResource
; and FactionType slave
; and Trait SlaveMerchantNoMovement = 0
;
; Affects SlaveMerchantNoMovement 1 Chance 100

;------------------------------------------
;Trigger MerchantSlaveNoMovement_remove
; WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd
;
; Condition AgentType = merchant
; and not OnResource
; and FactionType slave
; and Trait SlaveMerchantNoMovement = 1
;
; Affects SlaveMerchantNoMovement -1 Chance 100

;

and

;Trait SlaveMerchantNoMovement
; Characters merchant
; Hidden
;
; Level No_Movement
; Description No_Movement_desc
; EffectsDescription No_Movement_effects_desc
; Threshold 1
;
; Effect MovementPoints -250

----------------------------------------------

if you do this you must start a new campaign as messing with the character traits file inevitably causes all manner of oddness in traits characters get after the change.