merchants: does it seem like a scooby doo episode?

[Axe-Battler]

I couldnt help but notice after playing a few campaigns that whenever i had merchants, they always get their assets siezed.
So I started doing it back to the ai merchants, and half the time i would lose and half the time i would win (the acquisitions).
Every time i would lose i would get mad and cuss, but then I started finding some humour in it, it seemed every turn a merchant would get siezed, and they ran around after each other (the merchants) like something from a scooby doo episode, or circus clowns.
Anyone else find the merchants funny?

[dearmad]

Actually... I find them kind of sad. A badly implemented idea. Abstracting merchants would have been a better choice in my opinion.

[Cadmium77]

All my new merchants are getting ripped off, but I have one very experienced and talented fellow who just wins every encounter...

Basically, it's an idea that I hope to see developed further...

[Nebuchadnezzar]

I find the whole idea of the merchants amusing. Are they really merchants?

Any takeover costs money with the risk of a long term gain. So what are these merchants seizing and what happens to the retired merchant? Seems to me like assassins who go around permanently retiring the competition and then seize the suckers contraband or drugs. A backfire being more like a shoot-out then a business failure.

Just got to laugh at this one and princesses.

[Cadmium77]

I find the whole idea of the merchants amusing. Are they really merchants?

Any takeover costs money with the risk of a long term gain. So what are these merchants seizing and what happens to the retired merchant? Seems to me like assassins who go around permanently retiring the competition and then seize the suckers contraband or drugs. A backfire being more like a shoot-out then a business failure.

Just got to laugh at this one and princesses.

The idea would be better if it were more a case of sending a merchant to a foreign city where he could establish a merchant's colony, like the Steelyard in London, the colony where George Gize pictured above by Holbein was established as part of the Hanseatic League of traders. Come to think of it, why isn't there a Hanseatic League in M2 TW. Didn't it come in MTW? I forget...


Basically here is what TW needs in the realm of economics;

1. It needs to have a realistic economic/political/military model of the feudal system with seasonal armies that are called up within the legal constraints of the feudal system of alleigances between patron and his vassals. Standing armies for teh most part should not exist until late in the game. The central govt. just doesn't have the means to tax and regulate the economy on a scale to maintain such a costly beaurocratic/military organization in that day and age. As it is, the idea of the vassal only comes in as part of the diplomacy engine where a superior state attempts to take you over...Thus even the military forces of large established aristocrats should appear and disappear like rebel armies do. A crisis arises, the lord calls on his vassals and they suddenly just appear for a fight, and then when its done, they return home to work their lands.

2. The central govt goes into debt as we can see; but from whom? Who is lending the money? There have to be networks of merchants/banks that in that primitive economy can do this. We know the Fuggers counting house was driven into bankruptcy by the Hapsburgs of Charles V. We need to have the bankruptcy of Lombard League counting houses in the early 13th century which brought on a massive depression both in the economy and in the culture of Western Europe. Thus going into debt shouldn't just happen automatically. You should have to approach existing merchants that have grown up in the game (and some should be allowed to get very wealthy indeed) and you should have to use the diplomacy engine to negotiate an interest rate on your loan that should be based on your ability to pay, your strength or weakness, your possession of assets and your other political risks as calculated by the AI. It would be similar to buying mercenaries. This would be a lot more realistic and interesting.



In a word, the overwhelming agricultural nature of the society and it's foundation in what was mainly a barter economy with a shortage of money/specie must be displayed in the game. And the rising role of merchants and specie must be emphasized as the game progresses, particularly after the fall of Constantinople and the loss of access to eastern sources of silver and gold which provoked western Europe into an aggressive search for these necessary materials in African coastal and trans Atlantic explorations...

Imagine if the game were set up so that setting up provincial rule on the coast of Africa was impossibly expensive, but merchants, say Portugese merchants could travel by ship down the coast as technology allowed it and establish trading posts or mines for gold or silver...and that these would be of serious economic importance to their states...

[Nebuchadnezzar]

Imagine if the game were set up so that setting up provincial rule on the coast of Africa was impossibly expensive, but merchants, say Portugese merchants could travel by ship down the coast as technology allowed it and establish trading posts or mines for gold or silver...and that these would be of serious economic importance to their states...

Excellent idea! Your merchants establishing warehouses and mines in another factions cities seems way more realistic. It may even give the player incentive not to conquer allies without serious economic consequence.

[jimbob]

It seems kinda seems weird to have them as characters on the map to begin with. I mean, doesn't every single caravan or trade-boat you see on the map contain merchants? What differenciates those guys from what the agents that appear on the map?

Personally, I think they should be used to setup trade routes, like the caravan units from the earlier civ games. You move them from one of your cities, and then merge them with a large rich foreign city far away, and you'll get money for creating the link, which will be shown on the campaign map, and can be blocked by enemy armies. You'd have a limit on how many trade routes each city can have, related to their size.

[Cadmium77]

It seems kinda seems weird to have them as characters on the map to begin with. I mean, doesn't every single caravan or trade-boat you see on the map contain merchants? What differenciates those guys from what the agents that appear on the map?

Personally, I think they should be used to setup trade routes, like the caravan units from the earlier civ games. You move them from one of your cities, and then merge them with a large rich foreign city far away, and you'll get money for creating the link, which will be shown on the campaign map, and can be blocked by enemy armies. You'd have a limit on how many trade routes each city can have, related to their size.

This is true too...

So they should be multi roled characters.

1. Explorers, trade route creators, (and spies too really)
2. Bankers capable of lending both to their own state and to foreign dukes and kings and emperors. Thus a faction could sit back within it's strongly defended borders and then just profit off the bellicosity of its neighbours. But what to do if they defaulted?
3. creators of foreign trade bases both within their own faction's cities and within foreign cities too. These would make money much in the same way as marketplaces in your own cities. I wonder if that is possible in the code of the game?

All could make money or alternatively, lose money too.

[DarkKnight]

All my new merchants are getting ripped off, but I have one very experienced and talented fellow who just wins every encounter...

Me too.

It seems the trick to merchants is just get one uber merchant. Crank a couple out, find one that starts with 3 or 4 finance. Have it target 0 or 1 finance merchants to build it up a level or two. Then you can hit the 2 or 3 level merchants easily. Only hit the ones in your territory because you have a higher percentage there (or so I have noticed). Eventually you have an 9 finance merchant who can seize every single merchants on the map.

[jimbob]

The merchants are pretty stupid. It'd be better to rename them as highwaymen.

[warchief_ryan]

How do you even use them? Just place them next to goods?

[imb39]

Choose your merchant and hover the mouse over the resource you want. An information box will pop up telling you how much the resource is worth, then tell the merchant to go there. You should get a message saying that a trade route is being set up.