How Important Are Merchants?

[GarretJax]

I just got back into Medieval Total War 2 and I wanted to up the difficulty and see if I couldn't use agents to better win the game, trying to use all of the features instead of just making massive armies and killing everyone .

Merchants just didn't seem to do much though. I forget exactly what they cost, but it was somewhere between 200-500 gold and the initial return on trades is 10 gold per turn. That means it would take 20-50 turns just to recoup your initial investment! That seems ridiculous, when that same gold could be going towards something else, like swords and horses.

The highest I ever got a merchant up, he was still only making 16 gold a turn and afterwords, he got kicked out by some shady Venetian guy. The only way I can see merchants being useful is if you build A LOT of them, but also build a lot of them requires a lot of spending, which is more useful other places. I don't know, was just curious how good they really were and if I was just missing something obvious about them.

[Aeratus]

Merchants are good if there are good resources around. For example, in Vanilla, there are a few ivory resource sites south of Egypt. With a high level merchant, you can easily get over 400 gold per turn.

Whether merchants are important depends on the exact mod you're playing and your specific gameplay. In general, merchants are not important and probably aren't worth the hassle.

[The Useless Member]

I personally don't waste my time on them except if there's ivory or gold involved.

[poisoned goat]

Merchants are really useful if you have income problems, especially at the early stages of the game and when you suddenly decide to invest in a huge army. They can easily earn 200+ florins a turn, going up to the thousands for the best resources. Merchants earn more when they have higher skill (obviously) and when the resource type is further from your capital.

Type toggle_fow in the console, and hover over resources to find ones that provide the most income (ivory, slaves, gold, glass, salt, silk, marble are usually the better ones) and send your merchants there. Spam your merchants from a single settlement in order to get the merchant's guild HQ (or at least master guild) so your merchants start with higher skill instead of having 1-2 only.

Then there's always the merchant fort.

[Mega Tortas de Bodemloze]

Here's a quality guide to MTWII Merchants: "The glory of Merchants" by Landtuber Merchant Guide



Merchants once you've established a Merchants guild can routinely net you 1500 - 10,000 florins a turn depending on the faction and the amount of ground work you've put into your merchants. {In mods such as Stainless Steel, the Italians factions and Byzantines reach that 10,000 mark without to much trouble. I've noticed that in Vanilla MTW II most factions only yield about half of that.}

Kay... so how do you upgrade your merchants?

1. Lift the Fog of War and see where each factions best money making resources are. Each faction tends to be somewhat different in it's preferred resources. Here for example is a listing from Stainless Steel....

Merchants - Minimal extra effort on your part can net you between say $4,000 to $10,000+ per turn just from your merchants. If that dozen’t sound worthwhile to you go ahead and skip this section……

Kay since your still here let’s get started….

1. Become a reload prince - Leveling up your merchants is going to require winning acquisition battles. If your gonna be a purist and not reload, getting your merchants leveled up is going to be rough.
2. Select your merchant center and only recruit merchants from there. This will ensure you get the Merchant guild and that you get the Merchant guild Headquarters. {gives you more merchants and makes your merchant highly skilled. Plus more trade stuffs for that settlement.}
3. Check the board and see where the money’s at. Each faction has a different set of favorite resources.
4. Build the Market place line of building in your “Merchant center” for better quality merchants.

Here's a quality guide to MTWII Merchants: "The glory of Merchants" by Landtuber Merchant Guide


Resources: Each faction has a decided preference for certain types of trading goods. Below is a basics list of some of the trade goods
and their locations…

Gold: Marrakesh, al Aqaba, Urgench, Yelabuga, & Belgrade
Silk: Constantinople, Nicea, Ankara, Iconium, Adana, Trebizond, Damascus, Alexandria, Bagdad, Luxor, & Aleppo.
Amber: Arhus, Oslo, Skara, Kalmar, Novgorod, Riga, Vinus, Mensk, Plock, & Krakow.
Spices: Medina, Jerusalem, Aleppo, Bagdad, Basra, Al-mu Miniya, Medina, & Damascus.
Glass: Frankfurt, Venice, & Damascus.
Ivory: Konjikala & Belebu el Anab
Marble: Bologna, Genoa, Rome, Corinth, arta, Pamplona, Lisbon, & Nicosia.
Slaves: Kerak, Benghazi, Tripoli, Kermanshah, Sarkel, & Caffa.
Silver: Vienna, Calgiari, Melilla, Hamburg, Bergen, Galway, Visby, Brason.
Salt: Leon, Rennes, York, Burges, Hamburg, Krakow, & Belgrade.
Sugar: Alexandria, Cordoba, Palermo, Adrianople, Ankara, & Antioch.

Merchant’s Bazaar: here’s a list of basic favorites for different factions’ Merchants.

Byzantium: Gold, Glass,
Denmark/Norway: Marble
Egypt: Salt, amber, silver, iron, ivory, fish. {gold, glass, & spices, but not when you move the capital to Jeruselam}.
England: Silver, gold, glass, amber
HRE: sugar, cloth,
Italians: Genoa, Sicily, Venice: Gold, Silk, & Amber,,
K-Shah: Gold, glass, marble, ivory, spice
Moors: Glass, Gold, amber, ivory, textiles.
Turks: gold, ivory, salt, amber, glass, & {fish and slaves. Not so much.}

2. Choose a city to be your merchant center. Once city walls are built you will be offered a Merchant's guild.

3. Go play..."Merchant Total War" and level up your merchants. Mid to high level merchant acquisitions can earn 1,000 + My early games building programs are mostly paid for by playing merchant total war. Learn to save before battles and reload if you don't get it right the 1st time. For purist who choose not to reload failed battles....well building early high level merchants is going to be somewhat difficult.


So... to answer your question, yes merchants are worth the bother if earning an extra 1,500 + per turn peaks your interest....

P.S. And yes....Moving your capital will change your resource prices. Resources found in your capital are worthless to your merchants.

P.S. II: I just checked my Venice campaign and I have a 35 year old merchant who's earining 1002 florins trading silk in Polish Constantanople. {my ally}. He would earn 1200 florins if I put him on any of the ivory resources. I think pipe tabacco in the new world would net him 1100 florins.....Cha ching....$$$$$$....

[GarretJax]

Are you talking about one merchant generating 200+ a turn? Or a stack of them? I also didn't realize that distance from the capital determined income either (though I guess that makes sense). I was just picking up some of the local resources and the payouts seemed to be crap. Maybe I'll experiment with this some more tonight, because my kingdom is always having cash flow issues, lol.

[poisoned goat]

One merchant.

[Sitalkes]

The distance to your capital is important, but it is only calculated to the nearest resource. So if your capital is London and you have some wool nearby then wool in Byzantium won't be any more valuable. Note that you don't have to trade in gold and ivory. commodities like wool, cloth, cotton, and wine can earn a lot of money for the right factions (the ones that did historically that is). Also, although your merchant starts off trading maybe 30 a turn, if you leave him on that place he will eventually upgrade his capabilities and start earning more. Trade values also change according to whether you are at war or at peace, and who you are at war with, and with whom you have trade relations. Get trade relations with as many countries as possible! Yes, merchant aquisitions get you lots of money, and you may need to save and reload to get them to work. Enemy merchants may not bother your merchants if they are not on a resource. Read the Merchant Guide and also the Medievalopedia so you can use all those features you want to try.Introducing the Medievalopedia

[Earl of_Duke]

Also, although your merchant starts off trading maybe 30 a turn, if you leave him on that place he will eventually upgrade his capabilities and start earning more.Introducing the Medievalopedia

In addition, merchants earn more $ and upgrade even better if they monopolize a region's resources; look for regions that have more than one of the same type of preferred resource. As long as no other rivals are on a resource your agents will earn twice as much and gain the monopolist line of traits. It's not necessary to have mercs on all of the same resource types in a region to gain the bonuses, but it doesn't hurt.

[MDCCLXXVI]

In addition, merchants earn more $ and upgrade even better if they monopolize a region's resources; look for regions that have more than one of the same type of preferred resource. As long as no other rivals are on a resource your agents will earn twice as much and gain the monopolist line of traits. It's not necessary to have mercs on all of the same resource types in a region to gain the bonuses, but it doesn't hurt.

Thanks I had no idea




I guess it depends on what type of campaign you are playing. I got tired to playing to win quickly after my first few RTW campaigns, so I prefer slower play with less territories/conquest, and self-imposed missions/roleplay, and thus merchant income is great supplement. Merchants are the 'fish oil' of M2TW.

The micromanagement isn't an issue once you have a standardized routine. ie. As England (ss 6.3) I send all my merchants to North Africa and Norway regions, to the same resources.

What really bothers me is merchants--and agents in general--getting Blocked by allied/neutral faction armies. IMO only enemy factions should be able to block your agents. Nothing worse than sending an agent half way across Europe and having him get Blocked three times each turn. That is just annoying micromanagement.

[MDCCLXXVI]

I just got back into Medieval Total War 2 and I wanted to up the difficulty and see if I couldn't use agents to better win the game, trying to use all of the features instead of just making massive armies and killing everyone .

Merchants just didn't seem to do much though. I forget exactly what they cost, but it was somewhere between 200-500 gold and the initial return on trades is 10 gold per turn. That means it would take 20-50 turns just to recoup your initial investment! That seems ridiculous, when that same gold could be going towards something else, like swords and horses.

The highest I ever got a merchant up, he was still only making 16 gold a turn and afterwords, he got kicked out by some shady Venetian guy. The only way I can see merchants being useful is if you build A LOT of them, but also build a lot of them requires a lot of spending, which is more useful other places. I don't know, was just curious how good they really were and if I was just missing something obvious about them.

It sounds like your copy of the game has been modded to drastically reduce the use of Merchants.

In my copy (purchased legitimately off Steam, and not modded beyond adding SS6.3), a level 10 merchant sitting on a gold mine in the late game will earn between 2,100 and 2,500. I believe that is what it was meant to be.

...

So to answer your question...

In your game, with (it sounds like) modded scripts, Merchants are a waste of time/money.

In mine, spending 1 minutes managing my merchants each turn, can fund a quality standing army, assuming 4,000-10,000 profit per turn from the merchants trained in a Master/HQ Merchants guild.

I usually have 1-2 Cogs stationed at my merchant factory ready to shuttle them around the map to the best resources, sometimes send an assassin with them to 'negotiate' with the competition winkwink.


As for investment, here is how I see it:

Turn 0 = -500 (training cost)
Turns 1-5 = 0 (traveling to destination resource)
Turns 6-36 = 700 per turn (assuming late game avg resource that I go for, with merchants trained at masters guild), and assuming they die/taken over after 30 turns on the resource.

= -500 + (30*700)
= -500 + 21,000
= 20,500 over the course of 35 turns, per merchant. Triple that, for the merchants sitting on distant gold mines.

Some cost also has to be factored in for transport via ship.

[GarretJax]

Thanks for all the replies, I went ahead and took some of the suggestions and spent some time "re-loading" a lot last night to beat other merchants and get mine leveled up. I found some wine that's now producing me close to 200 a turn, which makes it a good return on investment. I also am on a gold source, which is netting me 1k+. I think my main problem was that I was using them too close to him, since I didn't realize that Capital location played a part in it all. I also wasn't effectively leveling up my merchants to get the most out of them. It did help my economy out a lot as the income from those traders alone can almost pay for a full standing army.

@ MDCCLXXVI - I'm just playing vanilla right now to re-familiarize myself with the game. (though once I do this first play through, I'm pretty eager to try out Westros total war ). I think it was just my lack of understanding how to properly use merchants, coupled with building way too many castles that was landing me into financial troubles. Now I have 5 solid merchants and drastically shifted the ratio of towns:castles that I have in my empire. I'm playing as England and just finished conquering France and I'm able to afford 5 full standing armies, any improvements I want, and have the ability to bribe pretty well. After all that, I'm still making a profit.

[poisoned goat]

If you can be bothered to micromanage, convert all distant castles that won't be producing any units into cities. Remember that when the settlement finishes converting, it won't show you a notification in the construction report so you have to manually keep track of it. Additionally converting castles into cities reduces public order, so watch out for that.

[Shaun]

They're not particularly useful unless you want to keep a close eye on them, the available resources, and play a trade/merchant war. They can make a lot of money if you're prepared to find all of the best resources and monopolise them, and travel to far away lands to do so; however they're not something that you can dump on a resource and receive a large chunk of cash from doing nothing with.

[GarretJax]

Yeah, that's what I've been going through . . . trying to slow the game down and not going for quick military conquests. I used to just conquer, conquer, conquer, conquer and not really use any of the other, more strategic, functions of the game. I never used assassins, merchants, diplomats, and really didn't even give religion a second thought IG. So now when I'm going back and playing, I'm trying to figure out how to use/maximize all these things. Like you said, I think it really gives the game more depth and makes it more challenging and fulfilling.

I've had that issue with allies blocking agents, I was trying to get to a gold source in northern Africa and it took me 10 turns to actually get from Spain-Morocco :roll:

[MDCCLXXVI]

Yeah, that's what I've been going through . . . trying to slow the game down and not going for quick military conquests. I used to just conquer, conquer, conquer, conquer and not really use any of the other, more strategic, functions of the game. I never used assassins, merchants, diplomats, and really didn't even give religion a second thought IG. So now when I'm going back and playing, I'm trying to figure out how to use/maximize all these things. Like you said, I think it really gives the game more depth and makes it more challenging and fulfilling.

I've had that issue with allies blocking agents, I was trying to get to a gold source in northern Africa and it took me 10 turns to actually get from Spain-Morocco :roll:

I wonder if one of the modders could chime in re preventing agents from getting blocked by neutral/allied armies and agents.

Its one of the more frustrating things in the game, esp if you're moving a character near gibraltar, north italy and constantinople, where i find mine get blocked 3-4 times per turn, have to spam click on the destination to keep them moving, and sometimes forget about them entirely.

[Kahath]

Yeah, that's what I've been going through . . . trying to slow the game down and not going for quick military conquests. I used to just conquer, conquer, conquer, conquer and not really use any of the other, more strategic, functions of the game. I never used assassins, merchants, diplomats, and really didn't even give religion a second thought IG. So now when I'm going back and playing, I'm trying to figure out how to use/maximize all these things. Like you said, I think it really gives the game more depth and makes it more challenging and fulfilling.

I've had that issue with allies blocking agents, I was trying to get to a gold source in northern Africa and it took me 10 turns to actually get from Spain-Morocco :roll:

I use to play like this as well, but then I realized spies have a chance to open gates during a siege making all siege weapons unnecessary. Assassins are also great for destroying and sabotaging important structures that can cause a city to revolt, or greatly reduce it's production and income. Now I never go anywhere without them.

[Sitalkes]

I forgot to mention, another advantage is that merchants are one of the few units in the game that have NO UPKEEP. You pay 500 for them, it is a high initial cost, but that's all, so they can repay themselves very quickly. Yes you may have to manage them but it is just part of the game, you have to manage all your agents - spies, priests, etc - if you want to get the most of out it.

[Vlad Dracul]

Relatively recent I discovered the (somehow pervert) pleasure of merchants-war.
The sound of the florins pouring into my treasury after a successful aquisition and the sight of my Merchants' growing skill is like drinking beer in Valhalla.

I’m very satisfied with that and I think the merchants have enough importance in this game, they’re definitely worth having and taking care of them.

I noticed that in Kingdoms the merchants tend to gain much more florins, my best performance so far is this:



Ofc, not always the story has a happy-end (playing as England I got effectively slaughtered by the moors, in Timbuktu one of their merchants took out 3 of mine and those weren’t bad ones, in Toledo I lost another and just when to get my revenge, my senior merchant - who put out of business like 7 or 8 enemies in a row - died of old age, forcing me to abandon that region...), sometimes you can be unlucky, but even if they bring you only 2-3 k each turn, it’s still an advantage.
It’s the upkeep of a serious army and with a serious army a determined man with military skills can achieve great things, methinks.

[Kahath]

Merchants with the right resources in a province with paved roads, marketplaces, and ports can generate an income equivalent to a large city. Because of their cost merchants can be a pretty big investment, but several merchants can make a relatively small nation an economic powerhouse especially if you have a monopoly on the resources you are trading. The best stuff is usually in the middle-east, things like sugar are especially good trade commodities.

Skilled merchants are also a good way to piss people off, when you make a successful acquisition.