Merchants are extremely defenseless when deployed in the foreign cities

[alex.posidelov]

Pretend we have 5 merchants in the cities of some nation. When war is started with that nation all merchants release their foreign cities to adjacent tiles and have no chances to survive. They either will be destroyed same turn (if nation declares war) or next turn (when we declare war to that nation).

In mid-late-game 1 merchant can cost 180-250 Diplomacy XP.

Suggestion to avoid those scenario is to teleport all merchants to the Homeland from all foreign cities in case of war declaration.

 

[Egodeus]

Or you could do it like it should be done, and remove and retreat your merchants _before_ you declare war on the enemy, or if relations start to worsen that war seems inevitable. Like things happen in real life. If you go in one step from mutual trade to open war, there is going to be a lot of adverse effects for both sides, and why trading with unfriendly states is usually only left for desperate situations and smaller players that are basically gambling with whether the trades will go through before open war is declared and all foreign commercial assets are seized or not.

 

[Eternal2121]

I think the issue here is not the fact that they die but the fact that they increase exponentially in cost even if they die. For example, if I screw up and my first 10 merchants die then I'm paying as if I have 10 merchants on the board but I do not. This makes losing things like merchants or outposts super punishing.

Instead, they should increase in price based on how many you have in the world. So losing a bunch will still be bad but not exponentially bad.

 

[Fried-B-man]

I think the issue here is not the fact that they die but the fact that they increase exponentially in cost even if they die. For example, if I screw up and my first 10 merchants die then I'm paying as if I have 10 merchants on the board but I do not. This makes losing things like merchants or outposts super punishing.

Merchants (and other power-spawned units) have triggers attached to them when they die, so that the power that spawns that unit reverses the cost scaling factor.

• Merchants
• Envoys
• Settlers
• Pioneers
• Utility Ships
• Ocean Settlers (Age of Utopia)

This doesn't include when you use an Envoy to establish Diplomatic Relationships with Foreign Nations, or when an Outpost is destroyed, but all other cases where the Unit dies, the Power should reduce in cost as if you had used it once less.

If you're seeing that this is not the case, please report it as a bug

 

[Eternal2121]

Oh so this is already the case? Thanks for the heads up