You can plot against rival Patricians to take over their trade post

You can declare wars to simply seize a trade post, both from a rival Patrician and from another Republic

As a feudal lord, you can declare an Embargo War on a Republic. If successful, all their trade posts in your territory are destroyed, and you get a lot of money out of it (if they are infidels, you also get Piety.)

As a Doge, you can ask a feudal lord to declare an embargo war on a rival republic for a suitable sum of money. If he or she agrees, you will join the war as an ally, and if you lose, YOU must pay war reparations.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I hope you've all had a merry Christmas! As promised, in this week's dev diary I'll talk about the differences in gameplay between normal feudal lords and Merchant Republic Patricians. Now, they are calledRepublics, so you would expect them to trade, and that is precisely what they do.Patricians can build a special type of holding called a Trade Post incoastal county. Trade Posts have a fort level and a small garrison, but they do not provide a levy. They can be upgraded with buildings like normal Holdings. Most importantly though, they have a significant income, based on the total tax value of the county in which they are built. They also provide a modest income boost to all cities in the county. Trade posts can link together to form Trade Zones, which is simply an area (on land and sea) of connected Trade Posts. The bigger the Trade Zone, the bigger the income bonus (with diminishing returns.)So, what is the catch? Well, there can only be one Trade Post per county, setting the stage for an eventually bitter struggle for control over them, both between rival Republics and rival Patricians. There are several ways of taking over or destroying a Trade Post:Embargoed republics cannot build new trade posts during the lifetime of the embargoer. Also, republics cannot have trade posts in each other's territory.There is another catch: the more distant a county is from your territory (regular Holdings), the more expensive it is to build a Trade Post there. Therefore, republics need to establish political as well as mercantile control over strategically located coastal counties. Fortunately, Merchant Republics have access to special Casus Bellis to allow this, in addition to the usual Holy Wars, etc. They can declare wars to seize a coastal city, and then they can declare a second war to seize the entire county (since they hold a city there), although that is not necessary to extend their trade range.The net effect of all this is that Trade Posts, while very lucrative, are easily lost and will be fiercely contested. However, Merchant Republics will be far richer than feudal lords with a comparable amount of territory and they will not hesitate to use lots of mercenaries (incidentally, the AI in general is now more inclined to use mercs, and we've added more of them too.)That's it for now. I will not be around to answer questions on this one since I'm still on holiday... so I'll just wish you all a really[video=youtube;Ohjqt0q7m3s]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ohjqt0q7m3s[/video]