The only reason I'm whining is because being a merchant is a game breaker. The way things are with merchanting is that you get 11d to begin with if your a member of the trade guild of the storm coast.Which everyone is.
You get a 5d DEBT and thats it.
I started with a ship because i risked DEATH in my opening moves to steal it.
Ardas started with nothing
Hanja has a 1 hold ship, twice the loan power but half of it is already used up
A lord has to fight and risk life and limb just to get three ducats a year and the ability to raise a small army. The lord's life is most likely short and violent but filled with action and adventure.
You dont HAVE to risk anything. No one is twisting limbs around here (yet) for any nobles to do anything. The entire incident in preston and miring was Terenos' fault.
-On that note: you actually CAN raise an army. We have no land to draw manpower. Without Sea Raider on a ship, we cant steal manpower either. So what i have now is the best i can deal with till next year when i can raise a personal guard unit
The worse merchants face is losing a bit of profit and a shitty ship. Where's the excitement? Where's the intrigue? You make money and then you can do whatever you want. You don't have to fight for it, kill for it. Your character doesn't have a chance of dieing that most lords or adventurers do.
No, we face death. Pirate encounters, weather, etc. We face annoyed nobles, kings, other guilds. You seem to not understand that the merchantile aspect of life in the middle ages was NOT a safe one. Merchants were stabbed in their sleep by competitors neigh daily.
imo itiuem spent a lot of time on the economy. He's one guy, not a team of developers from a perfect world that can amazingly create a perfect battle system, trade system, and economy. You'll also note that developing the economy and a couple other things stressed him out so don't whine when it isn't perfect.
Which is why i've been working to break it down to a less explosive rate of growth. Because to be honest, the businesses we can start cost a lot, the return sucks, and we can actually assist a king with most of them - But we have no real use of a small fortune. We cant use it for anything but MORE trade or MORE businesses. The rate of return on a business is 3 YEARS to break even on what you spent to get it running.
Thing is, if a few merchants would unite in this game they would be even stronger than Elberth which has super heroes for agents and lords. Say we have 2 merchants, they could establish a larger army than any nation.
Being a merchant is broken in this game because the economical system isn't detailed enough.
If you people would actually READ the trade rules you'd know that the economic system is actually rather well made and protects us from the king as much as it protects the king from us. For the reasons stated above: We cant raise armies