Help me wrap my head around Merchant Republic mechanics

[Picasso Sparks]

Hi! New to the game, and am teaching myself how to play in a kind of backwards way because I find it easier to learn when I'm really interested. Right now I want to live out a fantasy life as a merchant prince. So I'm starting with a Merchant Republic.


867 start date. It's now about 930. I'm playing in Venice.

Things have gone well! Within two generations, I'd plotted my way to the Dogedom and now I have far more trade posts (18/16) than my rival Patricians (all of whom are from new families that rose to prominence after, uh, some accidents and so control 5/4 down to 0/4 posts). I control trade in the Adriatic and everyone else is struggling.

If I want it, I can more or less keep them down forever (they have small families, so it doesn't take a lot of murder plus one or two righteous imprisonments (they keep plotting and I keep catching them) to wipe them out). This is what the top Google suggestion for Merchant Republic Guide advises. And it's what's suggested on the Wiki.

But as my head lifts out of the lagoon and I contemplate further expansion, I begin to wonder: That can't be right, can it? With 4 permanently weakened houses running unupgraded palaces, we're going to be capped at a pretty small number of Trade Posts for the Republic. I can only have so many sons.

Reading the wiki for Trade Posts and Trade Zones it's not clear about whether having trade zones for the Republic are of any benefit at all. The Trade Zone article is a stub. Intuitively, they should be: We cooperate against other Republics while competing amongst ourselves. The way the map mode looks, that seems to be how things are laid out. But the guides say that all that matters is family trade zones. Is that right?

Should I really keep Venice as a blood-soaked dictatorship? That seems out of the spirit of a Merchant Republic and if it's true, it's kind of disappointing.

 

[jonjowett]

I agree.

If possible, you want your family to have a single large contiguous trade zone that connects your capital (Venice) with a few other massively-rich provinces (eg. Rome and Constantinople). Once you have all of that sorted out, I suggest you stop your murder-spree and let your vassal patricians pick up the periphery.

Also, as a side-note, 18 trade posts is nowhere near the limit for a single dynasty: every unlanded adult male dynast in your court increases the limit by 1. So, take the seduction focus for a few generations and legitimise all (male) bastards. (Unfortunately, as a patrician, you can't arrange matrilineal marriages - this would normally be the method I'd recommend for increasing dynasty size. The lack of matrilineal marriages also makes it nigh-impossible to acquire and/or merge bloodlines.) There is a downside though - every unlanded adult male dynast will take a share of revenue (not profit!). This can quickly become expensive. If you go this route, it's worth finding (large) sources of income that don't count as revenue - eg. raiding (by converting to a pagan religion or a raiding culture), inheritance and imprisonment/banishment. Or you can cheese it by asking your male relatives to leave your court until you want to build more trade posts, at which point you invite them back.

Also also, when you have a lot of trade posts (and your vassal patricians have very few), you might not gain any trade posts when you wipe out a family. Prioritisation is key - build trade posts in rich counties (size 5+ with lots of cities) and key linking counties asap. Equally, prioritise wiping out families who have trade posts in these useful counties.

Also^3, contiguous trade zones can cross over peninsulas - you don't have to go round the coast unless you want to. Good connections are: Apulia-Salerno (for the Venice->Rome route) and Naupaktos-Thebes (for the Venice->Constantinople route).

EDIT - Once I'm finished with my murder-spree, I usually like to carve out fiefdoms for my vassal patricians. This is not just role-play - it gives them more income and makes it easier for them to build trade posts near their duchy. For example, if I notice that a patrician has a lot of trade posts near Jerusalem, I might "acquire" the duchy of Cyprus for him. Or, if a family has very few trade posts, I might give them a faraway island as a base for expansion.

 

[Picasso Sparks]

Ok, thanks. That makes a lot of sense. I guess Venice is especially weird because there’s only one way out of the Adriatic. So we’re all fighting for that link to the capital bonus.

I’ve started going through my holdings and dropping less valuable posts with an eye to making sure I don’t fall below 51% for the sea tile, that’s freed me up to reach much further. I’m trying to land the other families in places that will encourage them to expand usefully.

Meanwhile, the Alexaandria node was mysteriously abandoned so I’ve snatched that up and am trying to see if I can make my way down there with the trade zone.

 

[HandicapdHippo]

Meanwhile, the Alexaandria node was mysteriously abandoned so I’ve snatched that up and am trying to see if I can make my way down there with the trade zone.

Probably the local ruler buring down the trade post, can happen if they have a bad opinion of you and don't accept a bribe.

 

[Castimirr]

Probably the local ruler buring down the trade post, can happen if they have a bad opinion of you and don't accept a bribe.

Also vikings/other raiders could have destroyed it.

(Not that I would have first hand knowledge of this of course and I resent the implication. As Fylkir I was just site-seeing, trying to introduce my companions to various other cultures, you see, when a camel kicked over a lantern. We did our best to haul as many people and their valuables back to our ships to save them from the conflagration, but the trade post itself was a total loss. I later personally called on all the holdings in the county to express my condolences to each ruler and see if there was anything we could do to assist. The outreach was appreciated and several begged me to raise their heirs to tutor them in the ways of my people. Of course, I could not refuse such a heartfelt plea.)

 

[Alratan]

There is a downside though - every unlanded adult male dynast will take a share of revenue (not profit!). This can quickly become expensive. If you go this route, it's worth finding (large) sources of income that don't count as revenue - eg. raiding (by converting to a pagan religion or a raiding culture), inheritance and imprisonment/banishment. Or you can cheese it by asking your male relatives to leave your court until you want to build more trade posts, at which point you invite them back.

If I remember correctly, the liege gains all/a large portion of a courtier's gold if they have no valid heirs, and as they are dynasts, you may often be a valid heir in any case. As a result, as branches of the family die off in your court, you should end up inheriting the gold of your sprawling dynasty after they've had it in their paws for a little while.

 

[sigeena]

Best trade zones, continguous zones linking Antioch to Alexandria and Tana to Trebizond.

I tend to like to sustain my patrician families. After awhile, my income fall outstrips their ability to compete in the doge elections. So I try to sustain them by marrying lustful females into their families.

If you want to maximise your trade posts limit while being profitable, the optimal number of dynastic males in the court is 9. Trade revenue is distributed to all dynastic males equally while the head gets 10 shares. 10 dynastic males is sorta the break even point.

 

[Steel_atlas]

1. Merchant republics are buggy as hell.

2. Trade zones are great but you want to connect them to your home port. So for venice the trade zones out of the Venetian sea are more of a priority because they have so few ports. But once you connect the Sahara and silk road to venice mad ducats will be made.

3. You actually want the other patrician to prosper, letting them win the election is helpful and it allows you to seize their ports that might be blocking your control of trade zones. You should always aim to have high dip and intrigue though, 15+ to stop them from taking your trade ports.

To keep the computer from being to incompetent I basically surround venice land with permanent tributaries so the computer can't expand, because once they start giving patricians land point 1 starts being relevant

Edit: But honestly they aren't worth playing right now, besides random game overs they can't matrillineraly marry so you can't get more then 3 bloodlines.

 

[jonjowett]

they can't matrillineraly marry so you can't get more then 3 bloodlines.

Not entirely true. You can add one bloodline per 20-30 years from warrior lodges. (Convert to target warrior lodge's religion, join, convert back via your capital county's religion, become hero, get bloodline, repeat.)

However, most of the interesting bloodlines are closed off. (There are a lot of features that are unique to historical and/or forged bloodlines.)

 

[sigeena]

With HF, if the 4th Crusade were to kick off, Venice gets Crete as part of the spoils after winning the crusade. I'm not sure if this event is only for Venice or for any MR that wins the Crusade. It has happened to me twice (both times as Venice).

To further extend the "Connected to Capital" bonus, you'll need to take land. You can kinda hop by taking pieces in Croatia, Albania, Southern Greece and finally Crete. This expands the Connected to Capital bonus. How does it work? Look here. https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKi...e_understand_the_connected_to_capital/d49cswi

The AI realms occasionally set up their own MRs. The most consistent ones in the Mediterranean are Genoa, Pisa, Ancona, Ragusa, Almafi, Cyprus. Thrace. These MRs are great for grabbing Trade Posts from.

If the AI already has a Silk Road or Sahara trade posts, you can declare a Trade Post dispute war to claim it. However, it also has a high likelihood of destroying the trade posts. So keep a slot for a trade post available, so that in the event that the trade post is destroyed, and the war nullified, you can immediately pay to build a trade post.

I've been playing so that I can set up a historic Venice by 1444, starting with Dandolo in 1066. Fighting Byzantine used to be the hardest bit, but with the 4th Crusade, it tends to be alot easier. The next hardest part is fighting HRE, which tends to snowball to ridiculous size. So expanding into the terra firma is usually my end game goal.

 

[Seclouds]

You can try to landed on sinai, there is very seldom NPC MR & trade post in red sea and Persian gulf.
Too many NPC MR in Mediterranean,
And on the silk road trade post, you can have a crazy 10 fort level with 1100 ppl in it.
My jerusalem gameplay, the NPC MR in Duke Arabia, landed the trade post in red sea.
It got much more earning than the poor ppl in Mediterranean, no competitive, with silk road affair.
The silk road trade post can give 200-300 earning per year. The trade post in Mediterranean is a little joke.

 

[GuardianGI]

Getting a contiguous trade zone is pointless because of the way it is calculated. It caps at 100% tax and the closer to 100% you are the trade value needed approaches infinity, so 80% is super easy, 90% is very hard, 99% is nigh impossible? You are better off getting as much "Connected to capital bonuses" as possible since those give 40% extra tax.

BTW the MR AI is broken and has been for a while. Doubt paradox is gonna fix them.

 

[Steel_atlas]

Getting a contiguous trade zone is pointless because of the way it is calculated. It caps at 100% tax and the closer to 100% you are the trade value needed approaches infinity, so 80% is super easy, 90% is very hard, 99% is nigh impossible? You are better off getting as much "Connected to capital bonuses" as possible since those give 40% extra tax.

BTW the MR AI is broken and has been for a while. Doubt paradox is gonna fix them.

Having contiguous trade zones that aren't connected to your capital is pointless having a big contiguous zone connected to your capital is not.

 

[KhaineFH]

Don't kill the other MRs, let them build TPs and you can use the seize TP cassus belli, by doing that you can go way over your trade post limit.
Try to have a foodhold in india (you can fabricate a claim on an abyssinian county, then persia, then the Silk Road is open to you.

 

[Picasso Sparks]

It’s a struggle to do that in the earlier start as Venice since you’re independent and the other two nearby MR are vassals of big powers. I could swear fealty to Byzantium and on my next run I might do that to see how it plays out but I feel that I owe it to the history of Venice to maintain my independence this time through and plot and bide my time.

At some point Amalfi broke free or something and - because I didn’t understand the rules - I force vassalized them to learn they become a regular republic when you do that. Oops!

Byzantium has since created two other MRs including one that has a lot of Crete. So (in keeping with history) I’m biding my time and waiting for an opening to grab the island. Once I do, the long term investment of owning the Alexandria node should pay off. Right now, it keeps getting 100% reduction because of peasant unrest and whatnot.

I’ve stopped mudering my fellow Patricians quite so much, preferring instead to give them baronies at the far ends of what used to be Amalfi. This gives them range to build new trade posts in places I can’t get to as I’m past maxed out while I grow my family and Trade Practices. They have focused on declaring wars on one another and surprisingly often they get wiped out by some passing epidemic which gives all the rest of us some new posts. Having a family die at 8 posts is far more satisfying that just gaining one post when they die at 4. Maybe I can keep patient enough to wait until they have 12 or 16.

I do wonder how the newly ascendant families feel as they emerge into the world. “Good news! The Doge has given us a landed title. It’s a nice Barony that’s just out on the tip of Italy…where the last family was based…before they all died…we’re going to die aren’t we?”

 

[babuchas1]

How do you guys manage the king titles? I am playing as MR Venice now, and the kingdom of Venice does not allow you to change several laws common for any other kingdom, such as the one preventing titles passing out the kingdom. That makes difficult to avoid losing baronies or even counties because of external inheritance. And if you create another kingdom title (such as Sicily) you cant change the inheritance laws and get stuck with "seniority" for the kingdom of Sicily while in Venice is still "patrician elective", so unless you always nominate the eldest member of the dynasty as doge you lose that new kingdom when your ruler dies.
Have you guys found a way around this?

 

[Seclouds]

How do you guys manage the king titles? I am playing as MR Venice now, and the kingdom of Venice does not allow you to change several laws common for any other kingdom, such as the one preventing titles passing out the kingdom. That makes difficult to avoid losing baronies or even counties because of external inheritance. And if you create another kingdom title (such as Sicily) you cant change the inheritance laws and get stuck with "seniority" for the kingdom of Sicily while in Venice is still "patrician elective", so unless you always nominate the eldest member of the dynasty as doge you lose that new kingdom when your ruler dies.
Have you guys found a way around this?

Just keeping your kingdom small and to grant the vassal independent.
You can keep your realm under 20 province and have 100 trade posts to have enough retinue & money by roleplaying a Grand Mayor.