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Question #2:
How do I unlock all the factions?

Answer: you can unlock almost every faction by winning a Grand Campaign. The unplayable faction are the Pope, the Aztecs, the Mongols and the Timurids. These factions don't fit game mechanincs at the beginning of the campaign.
If you want to unlock immediately the playable factions (say the Sicilians or the Moors) there's a quick way. Enter your M2TW installation folder (path depends on the way you installed it). Double click on the file medieval2.preferences.cfg, select Note pad from the list of available programs and confirm. You'll see the file as a normal .txt file. Add these lines:

[misc]
unlock_campaign = true

Save the file and close it. Enjoy!

Edit - You can do it the really easy way that Sirius21 describes above, or you can do it the traditional way by modding the C:Program Files\SEGA\Medieval II Total War\data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign\descr_strat
or wherever youre game is installed. Then cut and paste the factions that you want to be playable or all of them into the playable list. It's worth noting that editing the descr_strat.txt will only work in new campaigns, not saved ones. Sirius21's way is really a lot less prone to error. As always, remember to make a back-up copy before modding any files.

Question # 12 - Is it somehow possible to play the campaign multiplayer with, say, two players?

Answer # 12 - [Edit - Yes, you can. See FAQ #32 for how to enable hotseat mode, which works well on one computer or as PBE. The rest of Sirius21's post is still relevant.]

You can only play "e-mailed" campaigns. Decide with your friend(s) how many turns per player do you want to play, which faction, what difficulty level. All of you will play as a single faction, obviously. You can also decide some other rules as you like (example: "We won't attack small garrisoned cities"). Now, the first player starts the campaign and play his round (say, 5 turns). When you click on "end turn" for the fifth time, wait for the AI cycle to end, then save and exit the game. E-mail your last savegame to your friend and so on...
I've played a nice RTW Carthage campaign with a friend of mine using this kind of rules.

Question #14 - How do merchants work?

Answer #14 - Merchants work two ways, basically, as almost every agent in M2TW. You can put your merchant on a resource. This way he will establish a trade route with your kingdom. The more distance, the more income. This is a "passive" way to gain money, you can leave him on the resource for ever and he will gain experience very slowly. The more experience, the more income.
There's another way to use merchants. Let's call it the "active way". It can make them gain experience very fast and it will give you a lot of money. Select your merchant and right click on foreign merchants. They will engage a "financial challenge". If you win, the foreign merchant will vanish and you will gain his money (usually 1000-2000 florins). The winner will gain experience immediately. The more a merchant win, the more powerful he'll become. It works exactly like spies and assassins. The most important result is money gaining and, of course, foreign merchants "extermination". Try attacking merchants with low experience and you will have more chances.

Edit - there is a bug in the game which resets all the extra profits from distance and so on resulting in much lowered income from merchants. This happens when you reload the game and the easy way around it is to switch your capital to another city, and then switch back to the original city. This solves the problem and gives you full bonus for everything. Hopefully, this will be fixed in the patch.

Edit - More about merchants from OG Gleep's excellent post:

"I've noticed a lot of people saying they either ignore merchants b/c they can't figure out how to use them, or have been saying that they are worthless due to not brining in enough money. I've been posting in each thread trying to help, and thought I should put a thread up so I can just link to it when this issue comes up.

Anyhow, on to the guide. This is by no means complete, its just my experience with merchants thus far. Until I figured out they were bugged, I thought they were quite a waste of money. Once that issue was solved, and I saw the potential, I started trying to figure out how to train them up. That opened up another aspect of merchants, and now my economy relies on eating other merchants.

Merchant eating brings in an influx of cash that is critical.

1st. The merchant bug. If your not aware of it, merchants are useless, or seem to be. You must do to capitol switching trick to force the game to re-calculate resource bonuses every time you load the game. If you don't, you'll get a fraction of what you should be pulling in per turn.

It should be noted that you should designate one city to train merchants from and always have the highest Market built in that city. This should be a city that you don't have guild plans for, as you should have the Merchants guild at this city.

This will get you a huge head start in your training, and allow you to tackle and eat much higher level merchants out the gate.

2nd. Train them first. Don't leave them on a resource untrained. This is asking the AI to eat you. Have a spy with the merchant so you can see if there is any other merchant in the area. If there isn't, go ahead and put him on the resource. If there is, don't. The AI won't attack you if your not on a resource.

3rd. Training. Sometimes, if your previous Agent action failed, sometimes, subsequent agent actions have a tendancy to fail. If the agent action succeeded, then you can have a string of good luck. Don't ask me why.

Anyhow, Ctrl-S before trying to eat any merchant. I have a house rule. If the merchant is several levels higher then me, then thats the breaks if I fail. However, if the merchant is several levels lower then me, I'll reload. I've had a high level merchant, with a success raitng of 81% fail 8 times in a row. The calculations are wacky, so I don't consider this cheating myself.

The Venice/Milan/Papal States/Southern HRE area has the highest concentration of Merchants. I send my Merchants there to train. Start small, and work your way up. Don't try to eat high level merchants unless you don't mind re-loading.

Each high level merchant has the ability to pull in well over 300 a turn from resources that aren't too far away. Have no idea how much they can pull in when at a expensive resource across the map.

Anyhow, with the "eat-a-merchant-a-turn" strategy, I pull in between 1-5k per merchant. The higher the merchant that you eat, the more money you'll get. Merchants on resources also tend to net more money when you eat them.

Again, when you are training DO NOT END YOUR TURN ON A RESOURCE. The deck is stacked against you vs the AI. I've seen 10 "star" Merchants eaten by 2 star merchants.

4th Maxed out: Once you have your merchants sufficently trained, send them to remote high value resources. The more remote, the better chance he'll be left alone. Bring a spy along for the ride.

Good remote locations:

1. Russia - Amber
2. North Afrika, South edge of the map near Timbuktu - Gold, Ivory
3. Asia Minor - Silk
4. Stokholm - Amber (watch out for Danish Merchants, they like it here.)

High Risk Areas -

Gold/Silver - Byzantine, Venice, HRE area.
Wine - France

The Spy is important, and you need to train him as well. Make sure you inspect any passing Agent or Army to gain levels. This will increase his line of sight, which is what he is there for.

You need to check your investments before hitting "end turn". If there is another merchant in the area, get off the resource and eat him. If you can't reach him, make a b-line towards him. Yet to be confirmed, but I have a theory that if your on a resource, the merchant was coming to eat you, not for the resource. Ive seen merchants turn around when I've stepped off the resource, when they had been making a b-line towards my merchant for a couple turns. The AI will never attack you so long as your not on a resource during their phase.

Note on passive training: Your merchants will gain traits and retuines that will raise their skill level without eating a single merchant. Leaving them on resources both foreign and domestic will raise their skill over time. The highest I've gotten a merchant through passive training is 8 "stars". I believe there is a trait specifically for foreign resources. This is a viable strategy, however, you won't get the influx of cash each turn which is to me very important. Again itis viable. Just make sure you keep a spy with them to avoid getting eaten while still weak."

More on eating other merchants:

"Short story:
if a mission doesn't work the first time, try something with near 100% success chance, and then save and go back and try your mission again. if it doesn't work, go do another 100% mission. after a few, it should work. it seems that the game decideds that it will not let below a certain % succeed at one particular time, there is some chance to this though, as seen in the quote above, after a while, he did succeed.


Long story:
from experiance, it seems that the game decides beforehand whether you will succeed or fail. back in RTW, i tried a 70% chance mission countless times, and then gave up and just left the mission be. then went over to my 100% guy and did a mission, then i had to stop playing for some reason or another and when i loaded the next time, i decided to do that 70% chance mission again, forgeting the trouble i had had with it. so it i did it, and it succeeded, and then i remembered all the times i had tried over and over to make to work. so i decided to experiment some. and after a while i found that if a mission fails, do an easy one and come back to it later. this seems to reset it, which gives you a better chance to succeed. try this out, and see if you get the same results. it has worked for me on RTW and M2TW. "