Mercenaries Qn

[Vermin]

It always bugged me slightly in EB that there was an endless supply of mercenaries willing to die for my cause.

In fact they were so numerous and so quickly replenished that whole campaigns could be conducted with them. (And my limited knowledge indicates this might even be accurate). However I wanted Mercs. to have a role of providing some capability that was not available to the faction through the usual native and faction recruitment options. As such I felt they should be sufficiently rare that that the player would usually seek to preserve them if recruited.

So to give Mercs. some value I edited the relevant file slightly to reduce their availability by a factor of 10. (I would have preferred 5 but this was the easiest to implement using search/replace to insert a 0 and then manually editing the few exceptions.) I would have raised their cost too but I thought this might seriously nobble the AI.

Now I have no real idea just how available Mercs. were in the time frame of EB, so I trust that the availability in game in EB was the result of considerable research. (Hence my little homemade mod made them grossly unhistorically rare).

So I am curious whether Mercs. in EBII will be as prevalent and cheap as in EBI? Also will their casual extermination by the player make them rarer or more expensive?

Finally, among the new units, will we see a lesser spotted Boeotian camel slinger? :)

Regards

Vermin

[Brennus]

Hi Vermin, apologies it has taken a long time fore anyone to respond to your questions.

As an researcher I can't answer your first question I am afraid. I will try to get someone to do so as soon as possible.

Secondly, yes, the lesser spotter Boeotian camel slinger will be available for Koinon Hellenon, Epirus and Makedon. Along with Baktrian Tarbosaurus and the Ptolemy FM dressed as Ronald Reagan.

[Brennus]

@JMRC Would you be able to answer Vermin's question?

[Cyclops]

I really am looking forward to how mercs work in EB2. As I understand it there's a all kinds of tweaks available; faction specific mercs and conditional mercs.

So you could say have the naked fanatic inf available to a Gallic faction but no-one else, after all the sources mention the Gaesatoi or whatever they're called now were mercs. Also you might have some mercs become available when you are allied to certain factions: the case that springs to mind is the 5000 cataphracts loaned by the Armenians to Mithradates I think it was. That would be way cool.

You could have all kinds of shades, say certain Iberian mercenaries available to everyone, then more of the same sort if you are an Iberian faction and more still if you're allied to an Iberian faction (so 1 line of Spanish spearman if you're invading as Rome, 2 if you're Celtiberia and a bonus one if you're allied to the Lussotannan.

You might have rare elephant mercs available to factions allied to the Mauryan statraps? Not sure if anything like that ever happened LOL I'm just getting excited now.

[JMRC]

Mercs were very common in this time period, so it's not correct to reduce their availability. Iberians, Celts and Greeks lived basically by hiring their services to foreign powers. You will definitely get more mercs in those regions. Along the ages, mercs have always been expendable - even today you can find them in the toughest areas, where the regular soldier doesn't want to go due to high attrition rates.
In EB2, they will be a bit costly to hire, but come with more experience and stats than other similar units, and will have a lower cost of upkeep.

[cahtush]

A bit off-topic, but were mounted slingers ever used?

[JMRC]

Nope, at least not in a military situation.
Reasons:
- the sling is a cheap weapon, to be used by peasants. A soldier that could afford a horse, would have far better weapons.
- the horse is not a very stable platform to launch stones.

[cahtush]

Oh well, it would have been a nice (although probably somewhat overpowered) unit.

[Brennus]

There is also the slight danger that, when swinging your sling, you will concuss your horse.

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

It always bugged me slightly in EB that there was an endless supply of mercenaries willing to die for my cause.

In fact they were so numerous and so quickly replenished that whole campaigns could be conducted with them.

Absolutely - when I play EB, in the early game, nearly all the units I recruit are mercenaries. They are pricey, but they don't deplete your town population, and in the early game when you trying to grow your towns, that is a key advantage.

The comment about 'willing to die for my cause' made me think. Mercenaries were fighting for pay and loot, not for their employer's cause. What a mercenary wants is an easy victory, not a hard fight. If a battle looked to be going badly, the mercenaries would leg it out of there at the first opportunity. Particularly mercenary cavalry, who being mounted could pull out and retreat whenever they wanted. It was harder for mercenary infantry to withdraw, but they often did, or tried to.

Perhaps, to simulate this, all mercenary units should have low morale. Very low morale. So they are more likely to rout if they start taking heavy losses than an equivalent factional unit. To compensate for this low morale, perhaps all mercenary units should come with several levels of experience, so they are better at killing because their skill levels are higher - but worse at standing firm when taking heavy losses, and more easily frightened by being outflanked or outnumbered.

This would make newly-recruited mercenary units better (more experienced and skillful) but less reliable and trustworthy than your own factional units.

[JMRC]

Actually, in our time period, mercenaries were the most reliable units to have in any army. The stereotype of the unreliable merc was created after the hellenistic period, when the massive chaos and constant shifting in power made mercs more insecure, while most mercs now came from the invading barbarian tribes which had a different attitude towards their "profession".

In the hellenistic period mercs in general had several advantages for an employer:

They were professionals - while most of the other soldiers fought between harvests and had very little training
They had seen it all - as carnage in a battlefield gets tough, the non-mercs tend to get their morale very low, very fast
They had no families close-by - this reduced the risk of abandoning the army if the family became in danger
They had no way to go if they ran away - the large empires of this period made a "runaway merc group" an easy target. They couldn't mingle with the population and most often didn't even speak their language (iberians in Carthage, Celts and Germans in the Roman Empire, etc). That's why the odissey of the Ten Thousand was so remarkable. They survived because they were so many and even then, they were attacked all the way home.

One of the keys for Alexander's success was that as a moved deeper into the Persian Empire, their troops got farther from home and each battle was a "win or die" situation. Interestingly, he used mercenaries to garrison the cities in Greece (he trusted them more than the local troops) and along the way, keeping the macedonian troops always on the move with him.

[B-Wing]

In EB2, they will be a bit costly to hire, but come with more experience and stats than other similar units, and will have a lower cost of upkeep.

Thinking about this, it seems to me like mercenaries would have a lower purchase cost than comparable units, but higher upkeep. I guess I assumed that it cost more to pay mercenaries over time than it did to keep your own troops raised. Is that incorrect or are there gameplay reasons for modeling it differently?

[Ca Putt]

yeah, that was my take of it aswell. I like to buy mercs and disband them when their task is done, even with the EB1 prices this is only sometimes a good idea. With this "New concept" it will be utterly pointless. I'm sure tho you guys have your reasons for this.

[JMRC]

The reasons for being more expensive is that they start with more experience and are immediately available. This may be offset by the fact that they should have a lower base cost because the employer doesn't need to buy their equipment. This is something that we can easily change, so we'll fine-tune it during testing time.

[Vermin]

Thanks folks.

I appreciate the comprehensive response. (and I might add that I learned a few things about ancient mercs too!)

Now to the critical issue of the Bactrian Tarbosaurus - does it come with an armed driver and two bowmen in a howdah? :)

Thanks

Vermin

[cahtush]

On the subject of mercenary cost/upkeep, will you use the free upkeep garrison thingy they had in Med 2?
It seems like a good way to represent the cost of having your farmers and craftsmen away to fight a war, making those units very high upkeep but if they're in a city ("at home") it's free.
And like that making mercenaries the better campaigning unit, in the economic sense.

[Cambyses]

On the subject of mercenary cost/upkeep, will you use the free upkeep garrison thingy they had in Med 2?
It seems like a good way to represent the cost of having your farmers and craftsmen away to fight a war, making those units very high upkeep but if they're in a city ("at home") it's free.
And like that making mercenaries the better campaigning unit, in the economic sense.

The debate on this point is more to do with how the AI uses (or actually doesnt use) the feature - which means the AI would need to get an even more significant financial boost. Some people accept this, others believe it isnt desirable as its "cheating".

[moonburn]

i still believe that the ai financial aid should be capped at 0 for negative amounts that would enable it to have larger armies without disrupting the game when factions become protectorates

so the ai could never go negative on money but that being said they couldn´t be exploited as cash cows

[Lugh Lamhfada]

I am fairly sure at one point there were elite Roman scout cavalry trained to sling from horseback. You can release your sling with only one rotation from many different angles, you are as unlikely to hit your horse being a trained slinger as slinger on foot is to hit his comrade beside him.