Tavern Talk - History, Modding or Discussions

[Andytheplatypus]

Tavern Talk Thread

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I made this thread with the purpose of discussion.

• History Discussion
• Questions Regarding Modding of Stainless Steel, Titanium or generic modding.
• Post your mod links or ideas here if you want to discuss them

[Andytheplatypus]

How many of you actually find yourself using merchants? I for one never actually use them. I was thinking about removing and replacing with just resource bonuses for the territory they are in. Thoughts?

[Strengelicher]

How many of you actually find yourself using merchants? I for one never actually use them. I was thinking about removing and replacing with just resource bonuses for the territory they are in. Thoughts?

I use them once I have a city free to develop the Merchant Guild. So, for example, in my CS late campaign the only starting city is Jerusalem, and that is reserved for the Theologians' Guild. So, I will wait with merchants until I conquer another city where I can breed the Merchant Guild. Playing Venice in the late campaign, I will destroy the Explorers' Guild (or whatever it's called) in venice on the first turn and start recruiting merchants there.

Merchants can make a looot of money if used correctly.

[Lord of Shadows]

I use them once I have a city free to develop the Merchant Guild. So, for example, in my CS late campaign the only starting city is Jerusalem, and that is reserved for the Theologians' Guild. So, I will wait with merchants until I conquer another city where I can breed the Merchant Guild. Playing Venice in the late campaign, I will destroy the Explorers' Guild (or whatever it's called) in venice on the first turn and start recruiting merchants there.

Merchants can make a looot of money if used correctly.

How should they be used?

[Shaun]

How should they be used?

Each faction will have a few resources that are highly valuable to them, so putting your merchants on those resources will yield a very large income. I'm not sure how to find out what these resources are, though, although I do remember Byzantium loves gold.

[Duck of Death]

Each faction will have a few resources that are highly valuable to them, so putting your merchants on those resources will yield a very large income. I'm not sure how to find out what these resources are, though, although I do remember Byzantium loves gold.

To be fair... I think most civilizations loved/love/will love gold

[poisoned goat]

Only useful in the early-middle game when you're aggressively expanding but don't have a runaway economy yet. They're pretty broken because players will abuse save/reload anyway.

[tudor93]

Only useful in the early-middle game when you're aggressively expanding but don't have a runaway economy yet. They're pretty broken because players will abuse save/reload anyway.

Actually, I think it's the other way around. Early in the game, when I don't have a Merchant's guild nor a bigger level Market, I produce crap Merchants and they don't stand a chance against the AI's merchants, wich have like 4-7 finance because of the AI's stupid bonuses. Later in the campaign is when things get even, I get a Merchant's HQ and I start producing badass merchants.

[Honors Bastion]

I use merchants quite often, even in the late game. If you are really good with training your merchants and using them with assassins, you can make a lot of money with them, especially if you chose the right resource for your faction.

[Duck of Death]

That or if you are England/Scotland
Once you take over the british isles, you dont even have to worry about foreign merchants bothering your money collectors.

[Andytheplatypus]

That or if you are England/Scotland
Once you take over the british isles, you dont even have to worry about foreign merchants bothering your money collectors.

sure but thats more of a problem of cheating the ai then actually using merchants for income. AI isnt smart enough to put merchants on ships to send them there. probably needs an invisible land bridge connecting to france...

[Lord of Shadows]

sure but thats more of a problem of cheating the ai then actually using merchants for income. AI isnt smart enough to put merchants on ships to send them there. probably needs an invisible land bridge connecting to france...

That would be good because AI rarely goes to British isles.

[MDCCLXXVI]

That or if you are England/Scotland
Once you take over the british isles, you dont even have to worry about foreign merchants bothering your money collectors.

If you have the British Isles as the heart of your Kingdom, then using your Merchants there is pretty poor management. In many cases they earn lots of -1 finance traits, and for me usually end up earning 0 gold. I believe its proximity to Capital that determines this.

I'd set aside a couple cogs (trained at an Explorers guild) to ferry merchants out to Scandinavia and North Africa. Not much competition out there, but still good resources that are reasonably accessible for a sea-faring faction.

I'm a fan of merchants but I don't use them aggressively. I consider hostile takeovers to be too risky an investment and think they generate better returns the old fashioned way. Assassins--especially your top-tier/best ones--are excellent for sanitizing a region of other merchants before yours move in.

The micromanagement is a bit annoying, especially with the broken "blocked path" feature. IMO, only enemy factions should be able to Block a character. Instead, its every single army/character on the board will block it, so they need to be managed each turn.

Aside from that, 30-60 seconds a turn spent managing merchants isn't too bad, as long as you have set/consistent destinations so you aren't mentally losing track of where they are.

[Duck of Death]

If you have the British Isles as the heart of your Kingdom, then using your Merchants there is pretty poor management. In many cases they earn lots of -1 finance traits, and for me usually end up earning 0 gold. I believe its proximity to Capital that determines this.

I'd set aside a couple cogs (trained at an Explorers guild) to ferry merchants out to Scandinavia and North Africa. Not much competition out there, but still good resources that are reasonably accessible for a sea-faring faction.

True, early in the game merchants to N.Africa could be very profitable, but I like to load up all possible merchants in the British Isles first because its peace-of-mind. I can make the merchant, send him off to his station somewhere in country and forget about him for the next 80 or so turns. If my merchant is anywhere else, I have to watch for foreign merchants. Thats attention I could be devoting to conquests, court intrigue, and contemplating the reason for the existence of the Belgians... of course, they share a border with the Dutch

[Shaun]

Rarely use merchants myself. They require a lot of micromanagement in order to make a decent income and for many it's just not worth it.

[Kataphractos]

Rarely use merchants myself. They require a lot of micromanagement in order to make a decent income and for many it's just not worth it.

If you're a faction like France or Poland, go capture Alexandria and Cairo and park some merchants on the resources around those cities, and if you can, get a merchant to the gold deposit directly east of Cairo. Enjoy pulling in 2k+ a turn just from them.

Hypothetical question. What do you guys think of an invisible land bridge between England and France? AI has notoriously terrible ability to mount naval invasions on a regular basis, which makes the campaigns as England way too easy. Adding an invisible land bridge would solve the problem of the AI not knowing how to use ships correctly.

I dunno, AI seems to be able to do naval invasions fine in my campaigns. But I will admit that I have never seen AI France invade England, even though Norway doesn't seem to have a problem doing it.

also, does anyone know how to improve longbowman? cause, all of the english archers suck compared to the original game.

AI longbowmen, as far as I can tell, are the only stake-laying archers in the game that can throw down a wall of stakes in the middle of a battle. They don't need anymore help.

[Point Blank]

What surprises me, is that after being out for over 6 years, the game still looks 'current' and with large numbers of combatants can challenge my latest rig. I like very much how you can do with it pretty much as you want in modding terms.

[Andytheplatypus]

What surprises me, is that after being out for over 6 years, the game still looks 'current' and with large numbers of combatants can challenge my latest rig. I like very much how you can do with it pretty much as you want in modding terms.

I am honestly surprised that I am still playing this game after so long. Never enjoyed a game for this long before. Probably because if you dont like something you can go in and change it.

[napoleonic]

What surprises me, is that after being out for over 6 years, the game still looks 'current' and with large numbers of combatants can challenge my latest rig. I like very much how you can do with it pretty much as you want in modding terms.

you must be not having played many recent games, M2TW looked like sh it today... and large number of combatant challenged your latest rig? I've seen the same bad performance going from AMD dual core era to Intel Ivy Bridge era (I've changed 3-4 CPUs) so it's not the game challenged my rig but the game code is so sh itty that it cannot scale with modern hardware.

[Shaun]

What surprises me, is that after being out for over 6 years, the game still looks 'current' and with large numbers of combatants can challenge my latest rig. I like very much how you can do with it pretty much as you want in modding terms.

Yes. I think that's in part though because no other game has tried to get anywhere close to what the TW series wants to achieve and the newer TW games haven't really advanced the series much.

In terms of modablity it's also really good. I haven't played any TW games after Empire (primarily because I'm not interested in gunpowder or Japan and also because I don't have a suitable PC to play them on, although I did lose interest too) but was quite surprised to see how little mods exist for other the other titles.

And M2 runs surprisingly fine on my low priced non-gaming laptop too.