Use this guide to get “top merchant” within 200 years.
Core Gameplay
All credit goes to DieByzantium !
This guide contains certain suggestions and strategies to become top merchant before 200 years have passed. It relies in manual play, as opposed to idle play. If you decide to play without any strategy, you might not achieve top merchant in 200 years.
The in-game tutorial should suffice to understand the very basics.
The final objective is becoming “top merchant”, having to go through different kinds of cities before achieving that.
To “promote” you first need to:
- Get certain amount of assets (money+firm investments)
- Establish a number of new firms (irregardless of size)
- Achieve +50% of size (chief) in a number of firms
- Make your house bigger
- Trade with a number of new products (you get new products by investing in cities)
The hardest of these will generally be getting chief firms, particularly in the later parts of the game, since growing these firms requires a huge money and fame investment.
There are no famebased requirements, but fame is a core currency that you will earn mostly through completing tasks. Monthly “free” workers (family members without an assigned task) and commisions will net you a small amount of monthly fame, which will absolutely not be enough.
In the following section I will explain what the core gameplay loop is so you progress fast enough.
Strategy
All resources in the game are important and necessary, if only because of the promote requirements. But we can set up an order in which to do things, so we grow fast.
0 – Do not run out of money
Make sure you try and keep a balanced set of costs and income, this will only be hard at the very beginning and you should not worry. Do not get employees before you get a positive balance. Unless you want to suffer.
1 – Bigger house, family and education
Your family gives you 100% free income, improves your firm growth and makes your caravan bigger. You should always give priority to improving your house and having children and marrying them. Once you max your house, then you can do other things.
In order to max your house you will need products that require investing in cities. This is worth it.
Children come with a maintenance cost (education). This is beyond worth it. Make sure of giving your children the best possible education, so they are more useful later on.
Do not hesitate to change your family leader (House -> Bedroom -> Abdicate). Choose the youngest member with the best stats, notably management (caravan size).
Once you are far enough in the game, retire old family members in exchange for children with far better stats. People with good stats make insane workers that grow firms very fast, always win firm wars and give you stupidly big caravan sizes. Just do it.
2 – Tasks
As soon as you have a positive passive income (more income than spending) you should mostly do tasks, instead of mindless trading.
Tasks may not give you the best bank for the buck in gold, but they give you gold AND fame. Fame is required to purchase city permits and get new firms and grow them. It is extremely necessary.
A very important thing to notice is that the game tells you if the product a task is requesting is produced in the city you are in. If the product is available its name is coloured in a brownish tone.
This might be obvious, but do not travel with empty space. Carry all of the product a task requires, and then fill your caravan with other products.
3 – Firm growth
Firms require a lot of investment and grow slowly. It will be your main investment objective every rank.
Once you arrive at a new rank and you have upgraded your house to the max available size, you should focus in maxing all firms from previous ranks. So if you are a town merchant, you want to make sure every single “village” has a maxed (level 9) firm and a family member or employee on it. Once you are a city merchant, your objective will be making sure every “town” has a maxed (level 12) firm and a employee on it.
And yes. It makes a difference if the employee has good stats, and if the family member has a good passive skill. You can, thought, click “auto”. I won’t blame you.
Establishing new firms is an instant thing, that does not necessarily benefit from doing it in any particular order. As soon as you establish, it starts growing, but you should focus on your previous rank because the cost and effort to have 50%+ growth in the previous rank is significantly lower
4 – Passive income, caravan size and leader quality
At the beginning (village-town merchant), it is a good idea to keep some of your family members “free”, so they give you more income than in a firm. Firm growth is extremely important, so dont abuse pasive income. Money is cheap, growth is expensive.
Caravan size will be a factor once you have a positive income/cost ratio, which will be easily achieved fairly early.
As soon as you can, change your leader into the character with the best possible stats, being Management and Charisma the most important. Management gives you caravan size, charisma gives you movement speed. Eloquence gives you better prices.
With a good balance income/cost, add new characters into your caravan, giving priority to management and charisma over passive skills, though they can be useful at the beginning.
In the later part of the game (state merchant onwards) do not hesitate to change your leader usually to benefit from the stats improvements and educate them in the “imperial” city Chang’an. Investing in a solid caravan makes it so every travel gives you double digit millions and triple digit fame. It will be worth it even if it slows you down for a bit.
I only educated in the imperial city my caravan members, but you might go nuts with it if you want. It is just worth it.
Everything Else
Only when these things have been dealt with, you might care about other things.
For example, “fruit day” “rich day” and so on give you good excuses to make a quick buck. Those are particularly good at the beginning, but dont stress over it.
Min maxing gains (using Inquiry, for example) is not necessary in any way, shape or form, but you may also go nuts with it if you want.
Achievements (All Firms in 200 Years, All Heirlooms)
Even if I could detail how to get all achievements, there is only one of them that matters:
That is, becoming top merchant in 200 years.
If you follow the above strategy, you should easily achieve it. 200 years is a lot of time. The only relevant advice to make it is making sure that you do not rely on passive income at any point.
More particularly, investing in your caravan characters will yield you a lot of progress without using up your “limited” 200 years.
All other achievements are not time framed and easily got. If you dont have a 50 stat character (you should get at least 3 when you unlock the imperial city) just educate your main character.
Heirlooms are also available in the imperial city, once you are an imperial merchant.
Give priority to caravan speed and growth speed in heirlooms too.
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