Merchant

Unit Information

Game Strategies

History

Merchant
Civilian
Base cost	30 Timber 10 Wealth
Ramping cost	10 Timber 10 Wealth
Build time	10 seconds (156 frames)
Hit points	90
Line of sight	3 tiles
Movement speed	23 (1.8 tiles/second)
Population points
Built at	Market
Hotkey (Market)	B
Special abilities	Deploy on a rare resource to provide its bonuses

The Merchant is a civilian unit used to collect rare resources to provide their benefits to the nation.

To gain the benefits of a rare resource, a Merchant needs to deploy next to it, thereby turning itself into a hut (it remains a unit, though). Also, deployed Merchants take less damage from enemies.

A Merchant deploying on a source of Sugar already being gathered by the deployed Merchant of another nation.

Only one Merchant unit per nation is allowed to harvest a particular resource location. However, each nation may deploy its own Merchant next to a resource. Sending Merchants to rare resources located in friendly/allied territory is a common strategy.

The Merchant unit may also pack itself again and move on to another resource. This might be useful, if the current resource lands in enemy territory and the Merchant unit starts to take attrition damage from it. Note that Supply technologies prevents attrition damage in enemy territory while deployed for Merchants, since they are not moving.

The gather rate of Merchants in friendly territory can be increased globally by researching the Taxation technologies at the Temple: with Taxation +20%, with Vassalage +50%, with Social Contract +100% and with Income Tax +200%.

Nation powers

• The Chinese Power of Culture: Merchants are created instantly.
• The Nubians Power of Trade: Merchants are 10% cheaper and have 50% more hit points. They also get a 50% bonus on the basic gather rate, if they harvest a resource in friendly territory.

Wonders

• The Porcelain Tower increases the gather rate of merchants by 200%.

Unique units

• The Dutch train Armed Merchant instead of Merchant, which is equipped with a light weapon to provide basic defense against raiding attacks. However, the Armed Merchant will cease to provide its bonus while attacking.

Trivia

• Before reaching the Industrial Age, Merchants of the East Indian style, unlike all others, travel with oxen instead of donkeys, but their sound effects remain the same.
• 
  The game files show an unused Merchant icon possibly intended for the Gunpowder Age and the Enlightenment Age, as is the case with most civilian and support units.
  • Amusingly, the icon bears a striking resemblance to Juan Valdez.
  • It's possible to enable this icon in the game.
• Undeployed Industrial Age Merchants look like vehicles, but for the purpose of damage calculations they are not, as they lack the "V" mask in the game file unitrules.xml.

Gallery

Ancient Age

Gunpowder Age

Industrial Age

All Ancient deployed Merchant styles, in clockwise order from the top: North European/Mediterranean, Asian, Iroquois, American/Turk.

All Gunpowder Age deployed Merchant styles, in clockwise order from the top: Colonial, Mediterranean, Korean, Asian, Iroquois, North European, Turk, American.

Industrial Age Merchants deployed at a source of Aluminum.

Gunpowder Age Turk Merchant deployed at a source of Tobacco.

Merchant concept art

Merchant concept art

Technical Information

Unused Icon Fix Show / Hide

It is unknown why that icon ended up being unused in-game, but it's most likely an unintended error, considering the fact that in the game file unit_graphics.xml the correct values are present in the attributes of the assisting human models meant for the merchants from those Ages. But because the correct values are missing in the attributes of the means of transport models, the icon can never be seen in the game.

It's possible to fix this issue.

In the file unit_graphics.xml it's necessary to edit all the UNIT entries with their "name" attributes being:

MERCHANT-DEFAULT-AGE3
MERCHANT-ASIAN-AGE3
MERCHANT-AMERICAN-AGE3
MERCHANT-ARAB-AGE3
MERCHANT-NEUROPE-AGE3
MERCHANT-KOREAN-AGE3
MERCHANT-KOREAN-AGE3
MERCHANT-COLONIAL-AGE3
MERCHANT-EINDIAN-AGE3
MERCHANT-IROQUOIS-AGE3

For all those UNIT entries it's needed to change the values of their two specific attributes, so they would look like this:
tex_col="5" tex_row="0"

It would make the intended icon to appear in the game for the merchants during the Gunpowder and Enlightenment Ages. (Originally "tex_col" attribute is incorrectly set to 4.)