View Full Version : lib Questions about Mercs.
Bob the Insane
11-08-2002, 18:38
I few question for anyone who might know...
Is there a central pool of mercenary units which is distributed to the different provinces on the map.
In theory, is it possible that some mercenary are are sat in a province without an Inn but are effectively invisible to the player without the Inn to hire them?
Does the game generate Mercenary only units or are all Mercs cast offs from other Factions?
How can you tell if another faction is using mercs (other than the Egyptian suddenly using Longbows..)?
Do the availble Merc unit move around the map waiting to be hired?
If so, how do they move, from province to province or randomly?
What determines how likely it is that mercenaries are available? I realise that building bigger and bigger Forts, keeps and castles, etc makes it less likely that mercenaries will be available...
What happens to the Mercenaries when everyone has lots of castles and few inns?
Does the AI make much use of mercenaries?
Thanks in advance... http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif
[This message has been edited by Bob the Insane (edited 11-08-2002).]
MonkeyMan
11-08-2002, 18:55
Does the game generate Mercenary only units or are all Mercs cast offs from other Factions?
I don't think so because there are some merc. only units like alans. I think there's a mixture of full merc. units and some cast offs.
As for the rest of the questions i have no idea.
Firstly you must not have a castle in the province in order to have some mercs gathered. Also the merc units which appear in the inn are units of other factions which are disbanded(with the exception of Alan Merc Cavalry). From my experience (so I am not that sure for that) its more likely that foreign disbanded units will appear in your inn if you are allied to their faction.
And yes the AI use mercs. I once had this Cataphract unit with 10 men remaining disbanded. They where valour 4. Some years later the previously allied Sicilians invaded Serbia and among their formations I recognised a small unit of Catphracts with 4 flags (=4 valour).
Tough Guy
11-08-2002, 19:18
You must not have a castle?
Is this true? If so it explains why I never have mercenaries to choose from!
Rosacrux
11-08-2002, 19:23
Err... no, the castle bit is wrong. I've had regularely mercs showing up to my various inns in my empires, so there is no restriction of the sort.
And, again, no the merc units are not the dispanded units of other armies. There must be some sort of mercenary pool where the game gets them,but I don't know how it is working.
the only pattern that is applicable should be this: The less advanced your region is, the more mercs pop up in the inn.
Even that rule is sometimes not strong at all.
The castle-bit is not true.
I've read that the more you build in a province the less chance of mercs. So make a province in the central/forward part of your empire into a merc-magnet by only building a fort and an inn - lotsa mercs come running.
Well,yes. Whenever I build a castle in a province with an Inn AND many many mercenaries, they all disappear (or they just move to another un-castled province).I think that CA did that in order to make any given province harder to defend. If you have a castle, then you can produce good faction units with minor support cost, but you can have 1 unit / year. If you have an inn and no castle then you can create a huge *expensive* army in one year, but it will have major support cost and you'll have to deal with the risk of having no mercs when you'll need them.
Well, maybe there is such a pool, but I think that most of them are disbanded units. The manual writes about it and if you disband a unit is very likely that it will appear in an inn.
Rosacrux
11-08-2002, 19:29
Usually, a while in the game, ALL my provinces have castles (and most of them have also numerous other improvements). I've never had a problem to get lots of mercs. Maybe it is true if you have indeed provinces with an Inn and without a castle, but I'll have to test this out.
Quote Originally posted by Ktonos:
Well, maybe there is such a pool, but I think that most of them are disbanded units. The manual writes about it and if you disband a unit is very likely that it will appear in an inn.[/QUOTE]
Not most, but any disbanded unit will be there for a time.
As you notice most units are at full strength, while I mostly disband when there are few men left.
But have you noticed we can't reinforce mercs anymore? I'm sitting with two units of 20 Mounted Crossbowmen Mercs and I can't merge them to 40. Neither can I make the forced conversion by using mercs as reinforcements to units I already have.
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BTW, Danish Crusades are true to history.
You may not care about war, but war cares about you!
I think that you can realocate men from a merc unit to another & from a merc unit to another faction unit as long as they are of the same type. Eg I once hade this 4 men Trebuchet merc crew moved to a 15 men regular Trebuchet crew, making a regular 19 men trebuchet unit.
Quote Originally posted by Ktonos:
I think that you can realocate men from a merc unit to another & from a merc unit to another faction unit as long as they are of the same type. Eg I once hade this 4 men Trebuchet merc crew moved to a 15 men regular Trebuchet crew, making a regular 19 men trebuchet unit.[/QUOTE]
Ahhh... but that once was it not pre-patch?
I did it a lot of times too. Granted I have not yet ried because I have no units in need of reinforcements that I also have as mercs.
But the fact is I can't reinforce my mercs with mercs of the same type either.
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BTW, Danish Crusades are true to history.
You may not care about war, but war cares about you!
They changed it in the patch? Well I guess that the mercenaries are too emotionaly tied to their unit to accept moving to another one...
...and a question of mine: As I said I believe that the possibility for a foreign disbanded unit to appear as a merc unit in one of your Inn's depends on your relations with its previous faction. Am I wrong about this?
I don't know about relations, I don't think they have any impact. The disbanded guys have been kicked out, so now they look for anybody to fill their purses.
But any disbanded unit might drop by you.
A good way to keep good mercs coming is to hire when you can. For the more you hire them more will show up (you know: "hey they will take anybody overthere"). So I have often hired units of dubious quality only to let more units come. That was I have gotten Knights (as Byz), Almughavars, Nizari, Futuwwa, Turcomans (both foot and horse), MAA. Mostly you will see Vikings, Khwarasmian Cavalry, Saracens, Italians and the run of normal units.
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BTW, Danish Crusades are true to history.
You may not care about war, but war cares about you!
I am only writing this because when I make a new alliance my inns suddently get crowded with unit types of the faction I just got allied to ... but not vise versa. This is happening many times-if not all the time. If it is so then there is an extra point for diplomacy. But I am not so sure about it.
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