[0.86] Merchant building gone??

Yes it has been removed from the tech tree and placed in the level-ups.  This is my own personal speculation (disclaimer!) but the merchant building was likely found to encourage extreme city spam and so a (speculation!) balancing pass was made to keep every single city from having one.

- Manii Names

Yep - they pretty much made it useless! (Along with all of the other improvements that are trapped in the horrible city level-up system.)

I am sad that you don't like the citylevelup system mqpiffle. A little history, Merchant was too powerful as a midgame tech unlock for level 2. So they decreased it from +3 Gildar to +2. Then, to further reduce the spam incentive, it was moved to level 3, then 4. But at that point Merchant was irrelevant, only adding a small amount of gildar to the more significant population income. Now it is a citylevelup that is ineffectual at +2 Gildar.

The problem is not the citylevelup system, but that those buildings add nothing in the way of a bonus to your city. You are right to dislike them, at closer look you will see that many of them are less useful than normal buildings. They need to have better direction though. No reason to remove a potentially exceptional city bonus improvements, just needs some flavor. I have made my own increases to each building, making them specialize a city as described in my improvement review. 

Perhaps I could get you to test this out to change your mind?

Not useless.  You just have to decide if:

1.  This will be a militaristic city (Training).

2.  You need more food to get to L4/L5 (Garden).

3.  Food is OK to achieve L4/L5 city but we're poor (Merchant).

4.  We anticipate L5 with this city but it will not be a troop-builder (Mason).

I find all of those choices to be viable at different times.

- Manii Names

My Merchant is +3 Gildar, adds a new weapon to the shop and some special boots. It is a level 3 bonus I believe.

I understand the rationale behind the level up system.  And I didn't mean the system as a whole is useless, just the current implementation of said system.

I think locking all of those buildings in the CLU system - and thus, removing them from the tradition improvement production system - is really causing the devs to scramble right now for additional improvements to add to the traditional system.

What I recommend is transferring some of those CLU buildings to the traditional system, and adding new features to the CLU system. 

For instance:

• building upgrades
• random events
• resource modifiers (think "We Love the King" day from Civ)
• sovereign bonuses
• faction traits

et cetera.

That is a good to hear. I couldn't see why anyone would want to nix leveling.

I think this is an area they will not be fixing until next month. Maybe special faction abilities at levelup could fit into the faction difference that seems to be the current focus by the devs. 

It would be nice to have a few guaranteed CLU options for Gilden. They should get some powerful construction and smith options that make them unique. I think a good rule of thumb to is have the rarity set at 100%, no rarity, and have faction CLU options be better versions of the normal CLU options. So a better Mason for Gilden. A better Merchant for Capitar. That sort of thing.

I agree that the current city level up structure is pretty crappy, the only real differentiation comes at the very end.  Hopefully it gets improved, either by Stardock or through our modding community (/wave Seanw3)

Thankfully since Brad mentioned city building on the docket for improvements, I'm hopeful this will get some more strategy/fun added. Great analysis of what the current issues are contributing to this, guys!

One of my problems is how would you decide this? As you say one needs to decide what the long term goals are for the city but there is no way of looking at the details of your city before choosing which one you want! Stardock really need to allow access to the city screen from the level up dialog.

Very True. We can't even see food levels.

I agree, this is poor design.  I get around it by naming my cities things I can remember so I know what their values are.  I have also, when the Empire grows too large to manage easily, put "42" or some such in the city name to designate a city with 4 food and 2 mats.

Crappy workaround though.

ok, thx for the reply.

The Level 2 improvements are pretty mediocre, except for gallows.

Higher levels get nicer, as they should.

I agree about the gallows, but I think the level three choices are just plain bad.

I made Gallows +20% Unrest, +40% Production. 

Haha this is a good one

Reminds me of my Tribalwars days where I would name offensive villages one way and defensive villages another but both were in code so the other players cannot easily figure out which are which