Merchant Leveling

[euriska_28]

I'm playing England and I set up trade rights with France, HRE and Spain. But my merchants get eliminated fairly quickly when setting up routes in these other countries. Any advice on the best way to level the merchants?

Right now I'm keeping them close to home, but the income is terrible. My idea is to hopefully level them before moving them further away.

I do have merchant guilds and am trying to build up my merchant producing buildings to a higher level, so I can maybe get higher level merchants when recruited. I'm still only about 70 turns into my campaign.

Or is it even worth it. I don't think merchant's have an upkeep, so basically its free income. Every little bit helps?

[iFRKY]

You should be aware of the fact, that a merchant doesnt get "taken down" by another merchant, if yours isnt acutally on a ressource. They basically ignore your merchant.
So save your game before you try to get another merchants place and reload if it doesnt work. Thats the fastest way to increase the level of your Agents.

[Artorath]

https://totalwar.fandom.com/wiki/Merchant_(Medieval_II:_Total_War)
Keep them on a domestic monopoly until they have ~5 finance rating. Domestic meaning you can hide them in a settlement for a turn if a better AI merchant shows up to acquisition them, monopoly meaning 2 or more of the same resource in the province (so the trait will level). Make sure the ones you can't train are somewhere safe at least, an island is the most secure place since the AI won't land competition.
At 5 finance, or 4 at the very start of the game, they are unlikely to get attacked, so you can grab a rich foreign resource.
Take 95% acquisitions whenever they are in range for obvious reasons.

Also build "increase in tradeable goods" buildings in your capital to get more money from all your merchants https://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?809366-Merchant-Mechanics

I once saw an EB2 dev say that if you don't have a land border with a faction, trade rights make the AI agents become super hostile to yours. So you may be making life more difficult for yourself. Having a monopoly also makes AI merchants target your agent, but it's the only guaranteed way to train them.

[HazardHawk]

Just like you get missions to take out someone merchant, so does the AI.

[EnemigoDeLaMafia]

You get the highest tier merchant guild you can (either tier 2 or 3) and you train them in that city. While you're at it, Have a permanent governor there too, because training merchants will add points towards "good trader" which can add up to 30% on the city.

Besides the guild, you can try to obtain the monopolist trait, which requires them to sit on a region with 2 of the same resource for a while.

And that's pretty much all you can reasonably do. If you have a profitable location, you can keep an assasin escort.

The AI gets a bonus to Merchant takeovers, so just use assasins.

You can kamikaze ♥♥♥♥♥♥ merchants this way too. (By trying to take down a foreign merchant. Maybe he's only got a finance rating of 1 and you don't want him) Although it will cause the foreign merchant to become a bigger threat (which won't matter if you assesinate)

Merchants are better in the kingdoms expansion. I use them even in base game, but they aren't everybody's cup of tea.

[HazardHawk]

Good description

[stanisko]

Although I nearly always lost merchants duels, I wasn't patient enough to dedicate enough time to upgrade them. However i know a very good mean trick how to f*** off any of the annoying rival merchants at least though.

[fdregal]

Originally posted by Disciple.:

You get the highest tier merchant guild you can (either tier 2 or 3) and you train them in that city. While you're at it, Have a permanent governor there too, because training merchants will add points towards "good trader" which can add up to 30% on the city.

Besides the guild, you can try to obtain the monopolist trait, which requires them to sit on a region with 2 of the same resource for a while.

And that's pretty much all you can reasonably do. If you have a profitable location, you can keep an assasin escort.

The AI gets a bonus to Merchant takeovers, so just use assasins.

You can kamikaze ♥♥♥♥♥♥ merchants this way too. (By trying to take down a foreign merchant. Maybe he's only got a finance rating of 1 and you don't want him) Although it will cause the foreign merchant to become a bigger threat (which won't matter if you assesinate)

Merchants are better in the kingdoms expansion. I use them even in base game, but they aren't everybody's cup of tea.

I think this is the best advice.

Assasins work fairly well, but you will need a lot of them, cuz it is rather a ranom result with them, I've seen 5% chance assasin kills a 7 tier merchant and viceversa, a 6 tier assasin get killed in a rather low assasination.

The merchants upgrade take for ever and when they are ready to use, are so old that you can use them for a very short time if you can use in general.

[taxhelp_pro]

I send assassins out to pick off foreign merchants whenever I see them

[Fargel_Linellar]

Originally posted by euriska_28:

Or is it even worth it. I don't think merchant's have an upkeep, so basically its free income. Every little bit helps?

Merchant have no upkeep, but they have a hiring cost and a limited lifetime (even if they never get acquired by enemy merchant.
They will die of old age at some point.
They cost 550 gold and with the default turn timer of 2 years per turn, they will probably be alive for 15-30 turn.
So you should consider than every turn that your merchant is not providing 20-40 gold he's losing you money.

[EnemigoDeLaMafia]

Originally posted by Fargel_Linellar:

Originally posted by euriska_28:

Or is it even worth it. I don't think merchant's have an upkeep, so basically its free income. Every little bit helps?

Merchant have no upkeep, but they have a hiring cost and a limited lifetime (even if they never get acquired by enemy merchant.
They will die of old age at some point.
They cost 550 gold and with the default turn timer of 2 years per turn, they will probably be alive for 15-30 turn.
So you should consider than every turn that your merchant is not providing 20-40 gold he's losing you money.

Is not the default timer half a year/turn or something? Or maybe the character aging goes differently.


Otherwise generals would die incredibly quickly, and it would be very noticeable. i.e: after a crusade, every general would be dead.

[Fargel_Linellar]

Default setting is 2 years per turn.
You can change it easily in the game file, but that is the default setting.
In general character die very quickly (specially compared to other game that have turn that only represent 3 months or 6 months).

In Attila TW, your starting king/emperor will be dead by the end of your campaign, but his son generally will not.

I'm just playing a Milan campaign and I'm already down to the 4th Duke, all of them died of old age (the starting is quite old, but still) and I only have destroyed 1 factions and conquered 15-20 cities.

Yes character die pretty quickly, but this also mean that sons/daughter grow fast as well.
It's also less noticeable on general, as they start their life at 16 (which is when they "grow" up and become available as general).
While any character your recruits (priest/merchant/spy/etc...) will be between 20-30 years old already. So they "live" 2-7 turn less.

General also will gain traits that tend to make them live longer, which is not the case for merchants.

[NUTCRACKER]

assasinated the enemy merchants....thats it.
before they get a lof of Exp.

and look out for good trade ressources, far away from your capital.
the same ressource can have sometimes other values.

my experiences:
Amber in Baltik and little more southern,
silk around constaninople and 2x baghdad area
also around antiochia and right from it.
dongola has ebony and slaves.
also, timbuktu

2-3 traders should have one assassin in area to kill others.
you should train the assassins on leaderless armies, princess and many more. good ones will help you to "make some arrangements" with the pope
you should train always one merchant on a secondary ressource to compensate any loss of a merchant.
later, you will have enough cities to work on some secondary ressources. you can check it always out, clicking on a merch and check the profit.
merchants guild gives you also a bonus and better trained merchs