merchants and unit placement

[suspect_2]

Hi there,

I am pretty new to SS, but so far it's the best mod for MTW2 i've seen.

I am playing as HRE and cannot find a good use for my merchants. Maybe I am using them wrong, so any advice on how to gain "experience" or general use would be appreciated. Most of the time they get thrown out of business after a few turns, no matter where they are.

Also I have experienced difficulties with the placement of my units on walls. If the wall is not long enough no units can be placed at the spot which is pretty irritating when there is no unit present on the gates at the beginning of the attack. I noticed when i click and hold right to place them manually the pattern displayed where the unit should stand is placed on the ground level in the far right or left reach, not on the wall anymore. Is unit size the problem here?

Maybe one more thing for germans: Everyone is called "Anführer" (german version for "faction leader") but the faction leader himself. He is actually called "Faction leader" .Is there something wrong with the translation, or did I mess something up?

Thanks for your help

[Medieval PossuM]

For the placement problem, download the Settlement Tweaks here:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=253132

Should make it better. However placement is just ridiculously broken inside cities, it´s the original games fault. Should never haven been released that way, period
It´s as as it was in RTW and probably it still is in Shogun 2

[Ifernat]

Concerning the HRE and merchants.

1) You really need to pick 1 city and produce the majority of your merchants there. I tend to prefer one of the coastal cities in N. Italy for the reason that its pretty easy to put merchants on boats and ship them around the central Med saving them travel time. Bologna, Venice, Pisa etc. All work fairly well for this. The idea is you want to get to the Merchant Guild 2nd and 3rd tier as soon as possible. The difference between a 2 finance and 4 finance merchant is pretty big in terms of survivability as the AI will only attack merchants that it has a good % chance of killing.

2) Fresh merchants need to be on the look out for fresh AI merchants. Adding a finance pip via an acquisition before sending merchants toward their targets can again dramatically increase survivability. Even once you have a merchant on station if you see a 1 or 2 star AI merchant wandering by there's no reason why you can't go for a high % take down unless your merchant is sitting on a high value good a long way from home and you don't have a potential replacement nearby.

3) If possible try to train up merchants in low traffic areas before sending them to contest high value targets. I mentioned that I like to base my merchant production in N. Italy as the HRE. Part of the reason is because merchants trained in N. Italy can easily be shipped down to Sicily which has 4 high value trade goods. 2 Sugar, 1 Sulfur, 1 Cotton. There's also a Silver Node on Sardinia. Trading exotic, high value goods adds finance pips fast. Once a merchant has 5-6 finance then I send a boat and send the trained merchants over to contest the silk and sugar around Constantinople as well as the gold in Serbia and the Silver around Vienna and Hamburg. I also tend to do some training on the Marble in Italy since its so close, but that's not quite as safe. Since Sicily is so far out of the way and because the AI generally will not use boats to move merchants, its very rare that I have to worry about high finance AI merchants coming to kill the trainees.

4) Keep track of enemy super merchants. The AI will only attack merchants that are actively trading a good. If you see an 8-10 finance merchant making a beeline for one of your merchants then just pull your merchant off the good. In most cases the AI will retask that merchant next turn and move off letting you go back to trading. Even if the AI merchant takes over your spot you still at least have your merchant which you can send elsewhere.

5) This is kind of gamey but can be rationalized somewhat under the justification that in this time period there was no requirement that foreign merchants be allowed access to a country's internal markets. If you provide a single bodyguard unit, which can be anykind of unit, then as long as the merchant stays stacked with that unit that merchant cannot be killed by acquisition attacks. NOTE that the merchant can still be attacked he just can't be removed from play. This is important because AI merchants WILL make the attempt and after being hit several times (attacks which likely would have killed said merchant) that merchant likely will have developed a raft of negative traits.

As to why you want to do all this...a decent finance merchant sitting on the Silks around Constantinople can easily pull in over 1k florins per turn. A high fiance merchant can crack over 2k florins per turn which means that one merchant is pulling in as much money as a pretty well developed mid tier city. Even lesser goods can still be lucrative. A merchant trading Marble with a good finance rating can get up to 400-500 florins per turn which assuming a 30 year lifespan is not inconsequential.

[GiddeeUpp]

Just know that if that army goes rebel you lose ALL the merchants under him.

[Ferdiad]

Its worth it.

[GiddeeUpp]

Its worth it.

yep

[Ifernat]

Yeah it typically is. I generally won't abuse that mechanic but I will tend to use it in regards to gold and silver trade goods under the justification that for any kingdom during this period any domestic sources of precious metals would have been locked up tighter than a drum for the purposes of minting currency.

I don't care how good a merchant is certain goods are going to be heavily protected. A lord would not just sit by while a foreign merchant took over the local production of gold/silver. More likely would be that the lord's men would kindly show the merchant out the door and into the mud.