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Originally Posted by tristanzz

Is there a really bad plot? Mercurato and the search for the kingdom of Prester John. Don't bother. The thing lasts over a year and during that time you will be steadily sending out commodities and troops. Once everything's assembled, I believe there are three possible endings depending on where you choose to investigate. In one your whole expedition gets whiped out, in another, you get a rather dinky number of troops all your troubles, and the happy ending gives you something like 10 of each commodity and multiple military points. But it isn't worth it. You can put all the expenses to better, earlier use at home.

It is really expensive and time consuming (the secret society plot takes the same amount of time but does a lot of good with little expense), but it is not bad at all if you know what you are doing. When you actually get to a rich kingdom in Africa (not Prester John's actually), you get the opportunity to trade with them.

There are several options of trading ("X food for Y gold", etc.), and here is where my inner munchkin kicked in. I figured this out almost 15 years ago, and I do have it written down somewhere, but I don't remember the details.

Following a certain combination of trades (I had found out the optimal one) you can get all commodities to 99. If anyone is interested and can't figure it out (it is a bit difficult to crunch the numbers) I'll try to find my notes or rebuild them.