Mercenary Availability

[j.a.luna]

May be I should have made myself more clear

We're trying to put more variety in the rosters. If you implement too many multiskilled units, you will basically kill that.
About specialisation, I'm in favor to implement it but by factions, not by units. I mean, some factions should rely more on heavy cavalry (i.e. France) while some others on missiles troops (i.e. England) while some others on infantry (i.e. Scotland, Norway), etc...
The main problem is to find a way to compensate the weakness of each faction by a specific advantage in order to make each faction unique regarding the gameplay. For those who have played it, that's a bit something like in Warhammer in which each faction has its specificity.

Mmmm in my opinion exist a very easy solution...hire mercenaries...if you lack of cavalry units you should recruit mercenaries, for thisa i said about implemented more mercenaries buildings and units andas more in the oriental regions for muslims and rus factions
If you are Norway and you have good infantry but lack of cavalry, pay the mercenaries! For example hire mercenaries knights( yes , i know that they are expensive but they are a good solution)
Same for cumans or other factions that lack of good infantry, why not recruit some mercenaries steppe spearmen?

[Lifthrasir]

That's not my point. Basically you're proposing to compensate the lack in each roster by more mercenaries available.
It can work that way. For instance, Norway used quite a lot of German mercenaries. But it has to be done in a realistic and limited way.

[j.a.luna]

That's not my point. Basically you're proposing to compensate the lack in each roster by more mercenaries available.
It can work that way. For instance, Norway used quite a lot of German mercenaries. But it has to be done in a realistic and limited way.

Of course mate, but this is a real and historical solution, also some time ago i read an article about that english king used hire norwegian and danish mercenaries as infantry, and i like your opinion about unit roster, is more inmersive and i like challenges and differents rosters, for example, castilians and aragoneses had a lot pf jinetes units and they used javelins for fight against moors but not much heavy cavalry as france for example.

[Navajo Joe]

Guys,

On thinking about Mercenaries, is it fair to say that you will find Mercenaries where the action is happening, I cannot imagine that a Mercenary that is going to sit in a settlement waiting to be hired, knowing that the region is pacified with no likely action. So that begs the question shall we have a limited Merc pool when the region is at peace and on outbreak of war, then the pool grows.

Naturally the Holy land should have a high amount of Mercs available, as should Iberia due to the continual Moor threat.

What do you think?

NJ

[Jurand of Cracow]

Hi Navajo, haven't seen you for a long time!
I think this is another discussion - on mercs, not on the missiles. Maybe you'd set up a new thread "Mercenaries - ideas on access and availability:
This would provide food for thoughts for MWY and Lifthrasir since it will always be their views which prevail as this is their work.
You've got moderators comptences so you can just move your entry to a new thread :-)
JoC

[Navajo Joe]

Hi Navajo, haven't seen you for a long time!
I think this is another discussion - on mercs, not on the missiles. Maybe you'd set up a new thread "Mercenaries - ideas on access and availability:
This would provide food for thoughts for MWY and Lifthrasir since it will always be their views which prevail as this is their work.
You've got moderators comptences so you can just move your entry to a new thread :-)
JoC

JOC, I am around all the time, I just don't post very often, I am responding to posts 111-113 by Luna & Lifth

[Lifthrasir]

I like NJ idea about mercs. However, not sure how it can be implemented
That brings the question of religious order knights as well. That's not logical that they can be employed by a Catholic faction against another Catholic one.

To go back on the missiles units, if multi-skilled, they can't be as good as other infantry units in melee. For instance, if an archer unit is equipped with swords as secondary weapon, they should be at a lower level compare to any swordmen unit. So basically, just by increasing slightly their moral and replacing their secondary weapon (for models) should do the trick.

I confirm that there's no disband script for crusading and jihading armies.

[Jurand of Cracow]

I like NJ idea about mercs. However, not sure how it can be implemented
That brings the question of religious order knights as well. That's not logical that they can be employed by a Catholic faction against another Catholic one

Both issues were dealt with in the DLV mod, I think. As I've mentioned - there's a crusader-troops disbandment script, a few turns after the crusade is over. Also the recruitment pool re-filling is faster during the war - so I think it's possible for the mercs as well.

To go back on the missiles units, if multi-skilled, they can't be as good as other infantry units in melee. For instance, if an archer unit is equipped with swords as secondary weapon, they should be at a lower level compare to any swordmen unit. So basically, just by increasing slightly their moral and replacing their secondary weapon (for models) should do the trick.

That sounds good. On the other side of the spectrum, some melee units should have some abilities to shoot missiles - I think it was the idea of Khevsur and Levan that Monaspa and Metsikhovne should have the ability to shoot bows, but it's rather additional to their basic task of fighting with spears and swords. So we may equip such units with weak abilities to shoot (like Missile attack of 2, little amount of arrows, limited range).

JOC, I am around all the time, I just don't post very often, I am responding to posts 111-113 by Luna & Lifth

Yes, but the thread is devoted to a different subject (missile troops). It was just a suggestion; let's leave it to Lifthrasis if he sees the merit (but don't put in in "General discussion" since it'll get buried in the quickly in the thread).

BTW - there's a Rozanov's script to destroy unused crusade units in the RR/RC. Whatever it is, it might be used.

[Alavaria]

I like NJ idea about mercs. However, not sure how it can be implemented

You may be able to link merc pools to event counters (eg: gunpowder, even in vanilla?) if so you can manipulate certain counters via script.

As said before, sometimes compromise has to be made and I'd prefer to keep these units simply as infantry rather than as multi-skilled (with an useless hability basically).

Hopefully people in that time didn't use soliferrum/pila/etc, mods of that period had some hilarious effects when your line infantry got to a flank and used their heavy "pre-charge" weaponry.

[tmodelsk]

Guys,

On thinking about Mercenaries, is it fair to say that you will find Mercenaries where the action is happening, I cannot imagine that a Mercenary that is going to sit in a settlement waiting to be hired, knowing that the region is pacified with no likely action. So that begs the question shall we have a limited Merc pool when the region is at peace and on outbreak of war, then the pool grows.

Naturally the Holy land should have a high amount of Mercs available, as should Iberia due to the continual Moor threat.

What do you think?

NJ

I was thinking about this (very good idea) - how it can be implemented.
As far as I know - it's hard (or even impossible) to implement it directly, because we need to know in script (campaign_script.txt) where battles are fought, don't know if there's any event (monitor type) that exports province data.
Even if there's such event -> it's still a lot o work to do.

But I think it can be implemented as 'workarounds'.

First :
> Naturally the Holy land should have a high amount of Mercs available, as should Iberia due to the continual Moor threat.

Second : Mercenary pools sizes : maybe larger or smaller pools will fit better

Third: My idea : Boost up mercenary replenish rates, so they are available everywhere in high numbers. Make recruit & upkeep prices much more higher.
So -> in times of peace nobody will recruit them (expensive).
In times of war they will be available it 'hot' region for anyone willing to hire them.

[Alavaria]

While it is amusing to see AIs suddenly "appear" with a stack of mercs (usually with a decent composition too) I wonder if they get that much advantage from that compared to all the cash they spend on it. Even more if you ransom back the expensive mercs to them

[Lifthrasir]

@ tmodelsk, that will still make mercenaries available aywhere. It basically doesn't change the current principle in game. This would just modify its form.
As far I as I get it, that's not NJ's idea (but I might be wong ).

But to keep your idea to imlement it, could it be possible to attach it to the devastation (more devastation = more mercenaries available)?

[tmodelsk]

I've checked that NJ idea can be done technically.

There's monitor PostBattle which exports region_id record and there's condition IsRegionOnOf (additional info).

So there's possibility in campaign_script via monitors to intercept every battle and in what region / merc pool it occurred,
set some counters / event counters and add merc pool recruitment entries with conditions on those new event counters.

One or a few battles should trigger higher merc availability for a few years - I think.
So anyway - that's a lot of work to do and additional monitors which will slow down end turn time a little bit.
I wonder if it's worth the work.

[Lifthrasir]

There are 199 provinces plus the sea. That means 199 times that monitor. So yes, it might increase the AI turn duration. However, I'm not a specialist when it comes to script. Anyone for more input on this?

[tmodelsk]

There are 199 provinces plus the sea. That means 199 times that monitor. So yes, it might increase the AI turn duration. However, I'm not a specialist when it comes to script. Anyone for more input on this?

It's possible to do this like this :

monitor PostBattle IsRegionOnOf Region1 Region2 Region3

so group provinces in one monitor by mercenary pools and it works, see thread additional info
That will reduce number of monitors approximately to number of mercenary pools.

[Alavaria]

It's possible to do this like this :

monitor PostBattle IsRegionOnOf Region1 Region2 Region3

so group provinces in one monitor by mercenary pools and it works, see thread additional info
That will reduce number of monitors approximately to number of mercenary pools.

Yeah, 50 merc pools, as opposed to 199 land regions.

[Jurand of Cracow]

Second : Mercenary pools sizes : maybe larger or smaller pools will fit better

Third: My idea : Boost up mercenary replenish rates, so they are available everywhere in high numbers. Make recruit & upkeep prices much more higher.
So -> in times of peace nobody will recruit them (expensive).
In times of war they will be available it 'hot' region for anyone willing to hire them.

I'm not sure about this. My biggest concern is the AI: how it will handle it? (both in war and in peace) I think the SSHIP controls the stack-spam (ie: there're not myriads of the AI armies) mainly through replemnishment rates. Making merc available could un-balance it.

But to keep your idea to imlement it, could it be possible to attach it to the devastation (more devastation = more mercenaries available)?

On one hand it doesn't sound convincing for me: why more devastation would provide more mercenarias? I think it would rather cripple the manpower potential of the owner of the province It's how it's implemented in the Europa Universalis IV.

On the other side, devastation provides some opportunities for modding - in the EBII they have a script for the nomad factions which provide them outright money if they devastate a tile.

[j.a.luna]

''On the other side, devastation provides some opportunities for modding - in the EBII they have a script for the nomad factions which provide them outright money if they devastate a tile.''

Mmm that sound very well for cumans and mongols, they could earn a lot of money as ''War spoil'' from their hordes...

[Lifthrasir]

The idea of using the devastation is based on the fact that if there's devastation, there's an foreign army and so conflict somehow.
The more that army stays, the more the devastation increases, the more you get mercenaries available because the risk of conflict increases as well (as opportunities for these mercenaries).
That's my reasonning but it doesn't necessary mean that I'm right

[Alavaria]

The idea of using the devastation is based on the fact that if there's devastation, there's an foreign army and so conflict somehow.
The more that army stays, the more the devastation increases, the more you get mercenaries available because the risk of conflict increases as well (as opportunities for these mercenaries).
That's my reasonning but it doesn't necessary mean that I'm right

That would be handy if you get the "rebel stack devestates area" bug allowing greater throughput of merc units.