I've played as the Merchant Empire of Socotra (Yahballaha).It was quite similar to playing a kingdom, except for the fact that I could reinforce my retinue of 30,000 at the highest speed and still have a surplus of 50 ducats.There are strategic advantages to making feudal vassals as well as city vassals. Feudal vassals hate you (-20 opinion) but it's easier to influence their culture, and more importantly they can be used to spread your dynasty so you always have a pool of men to recruit.City (Republican) vassals don't spread your dynasty because they're elected, but they have no opinion malus of you like they do when you're a feudal king. Couple that with business focus (+20 opinion) and they'll be paying lots of taxes;).A word of warning: Never let your vassals become independent. Merchant republics have no claimants, so if you implode into 12 little MR's then it becomes impossible to clean up. (though this would make a fun eu4 conversion). While I haven't finished an empire-level MR game, I'm currently playing one as the Prussian Principality.

1. Ck2 Isle Of Man Merchant Republic

(Custom empire, of course, but has a nasty pink color) This game is my first dip into Republics after 450 hours of gameplay and I'd like to think I've been fairly successful.I started as the High chiefdom of Pruthenia at the Charlemagne start. Once I reformed Romuva, I created the merchant republic kingdom of Prussia and slowly ate my way across Eastern Europe until I could form the empire.I picked Pruthenia because it was the only ruler with the Prussian culture and because (while being the easiest to reform) I consider Romuva the most vulnerable pagan faith in europe to extinction. I also considered the fact that I wanted to form a 'unique' republic and Pruthenia looks like one of the most believable looking places to form a republic in pagan europe outside of scandanavia, as it sits on a lagoon like Venice.The year is currently 1051, the merchant empire spans from Pfalz in Germany to Kirghiz in Cumania and from Finnmark to Crimea. While I don't have the biggest army on the block due to simply being a republic, (or maybe its just Eastern Europe being shit) I've managed to convert both culture & religion of the Aztecs, Bohemia, and Bavaria; (upon the next succession) Put a Hungarian Pagan of the Dulo dynasty on the throne of Byzantium; (which went better than I thought it would- all but 1 landed vassal of ERE is Romuva) and I've pacified the Mongols- for now, until I can culture & religion convert them somehow. I have run into an issue, however.

I don't know if its because of how big I have gotten or if indeed because Eastern Europe is shit, but I can only muster about a 15 ducat profit with my retinue reinforcement set at half. I've built cities everywhere and changed many laws towards tax leaning, but the situation just seems to get worse the more I expand. I guess one possibility is that I have too many feudal vassals and not enough republic ones feeding me money. I've done it twice: Once as the reformed germanic merchant republic of Scandinavia, and again starting as Venice but eventually becoming emperor of Jerusalem.Scandinavia was a really interested place to play as a merchant republic.

I had a seriously hard time keeping all of my vassals under my control, so for over 200 years I was constantly struggling to keep them in the empire, at my worst point getting down to only 15 or so counties. But there's no competition in the north sea and baltic when you become a merchant republic at 900 CE, and eventually I got to the point where I was making 100s of ducats a month and raising 100K mercenary armies to win Great Holy War after Great Holy War.Venice was fun as building my way up was a real struggle. You can deal with the competition from Genoa and Amalfi fairly easily, but it's getting new land that's a serious bitch. Once I had enough money to steamroll any enemy with mercenaries though, it got insanely easy.

I won the crusade for Jerusalem and then set about vassalizing the pope. I ended up winning 7 Crusades, becoming King of Jerusalem, Pannonia, Andalusia, Castille, and Venice. For a short time I swore fealty to the Holy Roman Emperor (still a lombard amazingly), but got my independence when I had a character with enough prestige to form the custom empire of Jerusalem. Ultramax ammo.

Ck2 Isle Of Man Merchant Republic

I was trying to do the 'Who Needs Vasco de Gama achievement' so I set about conquering tons of india, eventually becoming king of Bengal. The achievement broke somehow and I never got it, but by the end of the game I held land from Portugal to Bengal, Sunni moral authority hovered around 5% to 10%, and Hinduism was the only other real powerful religion on the planet after Catholicism and Orthodoxy. In essence, MRs are like feudal realms, except that they earn tons and tons of money in exchange for following a few rules, such as no girls, expensive marriage, having to pay for your primary title, not being allowed to take most tyrannical actions and not being able to usurp kingdoms or empires.The only rule that bothers me at the empire phase of the game is the 'no girls' one, because of course my only Strong Genius will be a girl. Other than that, though, Italian merchant empires will be able to support the largest and most powerful retinues in the game (currently sitting at 130K, mostly pikemen).Also, the other day I was scanning my empir.