Mercenary Availability

[Lifthrasir]

Well, if do-able, I don't think that one prevents the other

[Jurand of Cracow]

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

I really do like the Alavarias knowledge, experience and ingeniouity of how to hack the game engine!
(yes, this would be a side effect).

Actually, I'd be more inclined to the first tmodelsk idea of naming the zones where mercs were more popular (Iberlia, Italy, ERE, Holy Land), while not messing much with the mechanics.

[Lifthrasir]

It might be a short term solution but not logical for the reason below and not suitable if we want to implement an AoR system (hidden_resource wasted from my opinion).
If you conquer the whole Iberia and make it as a peaceful area, what's the point of keeping a high mercenary pool in there?

Anyway, I think that we're disgresssing here

[Jurand of Cracow]

After creation of the new thread content of this entry was irrelevant and was deleted.

[j.a.luna]

Haha i dont know that i had started a new thread! But ok, is better that we talk here and dont mix different opinions in wrong threads...
Anyways make a script that link high pool of mercenaries with war(devastation of armies) is logical
Other thing is that if sship team think in add new mercenaries units for the next version( i commented this some time ago about implement more ''generic'' units for oriental and rus regions

[Lifthrasir]

Thanks for that NJ

[Navajo Joe]

Haha i dont know that i had started a new thread! But ok, is better that we talk here and dont mix different opinions in wrong threads...
Anyways make a script that link high pool of mercenaries with war(devastation of armies) is logical
Other thing is that if sship team think in add new mercenaries units for the next version( i commented this some time ago about implement more ''generic'' units for oriental and rus regions

j.a Luna,

Don't worry you have not been hacked, it is your friendly neighbourhood Forum Moderator, who decided that really it needed its own thread!!!!!! JOC did point out to me early on the errors of my ways, instead I decided to let it ride. Eventually I came to the same conclusion, it needed its own place. At least I cannot move it to General Discussion, LOL.

NJ
SS Forum Mod

[Navajo Joe]

A question before a thought, how does the morale of Merc Crossbowman compare against a Faction Crossbowman?

[Alavaria]

A question before a thought, how does the morale of Merc Crossbowman compare against a Faction Crossbowman?

Sure.

Mercenary Crossbowmen
stat_mental      6, low, trained

Urban Crossbow Militia
stat_mental      5, low, trained

EE Crossbow Militia
stat_mental      4, low, untrained

Crossbow Militia
stat_mental      7, low, untrained

Templar Crossbowmen
stat_mental      14, normal, trained

There might be a few other "turn 1" useable crossbow units I'm missing, of course.

[Navajo Joe]

Alavaria,

Thanks that is very useful and that answers my thought very sadly.

[tmodelsk]

There's script event GeneralDevastatesTile , it exports settlement & region_id data, so it looks like it's possible to do it via devastation either.
But there could be one problem - quick army actions -> example : move & battle it one turn -> it could not turn devastation on.

Identifier:    GeneralDevastatesTile  
 Event:    A General and his army has devastated an enemy's fertile land  
 Exports:    nc_character_record, character_record, faction, region_id, character_type, settlement

[Ichon]

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

Italy usually had one of the largest mercenary pools in the past due to that idea. Most Crusaders states weren't known for using mercenaries- you can call Turkopoles and some of the Italian city states mercenaries but overall it was more volunteers, feudal levies, and knight orders. Lusignans in Cyprus is the main Crusader kingdom that used mercenaries that I can think of.

Byzantines, Italian city states, Holy Roman Empire, Fatimids, Denmark, and Kwharezmians are the biggest users of mercenaries in the starting timeline. Later France, England, Granada, and Hungary were well known for using mercenaries. Most Muslim states it was complicated- some of the warriors in their armies fought nearly entirely for loot while there were also more standing professional armies of ghulams or mameluks that had some mercenary characteristics but not really the same thing. There were a few mercenaries working in other places but usually it was more warlordism- some leader had a group of warriors, found some success on the battlefield and tried to parley that into more titles for himself that he could then hand off to loyal men and create a little feudal patronage network where money rarely changed hands but land rights, protection, and obligation was the currency.

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.

Very nice idea! Adding additional scripts is always a hard decision in any SS submod because there are already quite a few scripts. It doesn't seem a huge work though so might be easily tested if its worth it on a small scale first. I do wonder how many battles occurring in most regions won't just make large merc pools everywhere.