Mercenaries Question

[YAKOBU]

Hi everyone http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

I tend to build inn's in every region but as your empire grows it is a pain to check them all. Is there a rule on which region gets mercenaries. I remember recently having a choice of approx 20 units in Brittany and only 1 next door in Normandy. If I know which regions mercenaries prefer I can prioritise inn's there and only monitor those as needed.

Any advice is gratefully received http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-2thumbsup.gif

[Mouzafphaerre]

-
AFAIK

Certain buildings attract or detract mercaneries. A coloumn in the buildprod file determines it.

Whether a certain unit can be hired as mercanery is determined in the last coloumn of the unitprod file.

Border provinces attract more mercaneries than inland ones.
[/list]
All the rest is random/hardcoded.
_

[barocca]

the bigger the castle the less likely to get merc's


ALSO
it is theorised that some improvements have a hardcoded effect that we are not aware of,
one possibilty is a province with a port is more active in generating merc's - but it only a theory

[YAKOBU]

Cheers Barocca / Mouzafphaerre

That may make sense, playing as English I usually upgrade Normandy as good farmland (and train agents), but leave Brittany as fort with inn as poor farmland and only 1 trade good. I assume coastal regions at rear still count as border province? It's a shame as you would expect mercenaries to be attracted to more developed areas

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/bigthumb.gif

[tombom]

You can always mod the mercenary attraction rate in the Build_prod files. You can use something like Gnome editor if you find it hard.

[Tricky Lady]

Quote[/b] (YAKOBU @ May 21 2004,17:02)]It's a shame as you would expect mercenaries to be attracted to more developed areas
You can also see it the other way around: mercenaries are a bunch of outlaws (assassins, bandits, deserters etc) that prefer not to roam through well-defended or well-guarded (= with big castles in MTW gameplay) provinces...

[katank]

yep, tombom is right, there's a merc magnetism column in there and bigger castles and title giving buildings all detract about 10 from it.

base inn rating is about 40.

also, the year the inn goes up, there's usually a lot and then drops off if not on frontlines.

always build an inn on the border you plan to attack on and as your starting units finish their first attack, the inn should also be completed.

mercs can take over as spear head and your national army becomes defense/sieger/loyalty maintaineance.

[garion]

the inns are in a way the least realistic part of the game, because I couldn't possibly imagne you can hire cataphracts in wessex 3 in 1091, but it works in the game

[katank]

I've never seen a katank mercs though.

having a few units of druzhina two years into early means 60 men FFK and are really OP though.

[Seven.the.Hun]

hmm, seems like there are always more mercs near the 'action'...is this true?

[katank]

yep.

I often have inns right on the border on which I'm fighting and another one province away and the border one always gets more traffic.

the best is an outpost surrounded by provinces with hostile factions controlling them.

that way, it's possible to even get mercs while there's a fortress in the province.

this occurred in Khazar and Flanders for me where both were fortresses but inns were still packed

[motorhead]

It certainly does seem you see alot more mercenaries closer to where the action is. I also noticed in a recent russian/high game that just having lots of units moving around on a border seems to heat up things at the inn. The english or germans started to suddenly mass large numbers on my border, but i matched them an no action resulted, and there was no other combat whatsoever in the region, but the inns literally bloomed with lots of mercs. I don't know if the player shuffling around stacks has the same affect.

- also, disbanded units and failed crusades/jihads provide mercs to inns. I once picked up a 4-star Knight of Santiago general in an inn. I think the chapter house was destroyed so many nearly intact crusader units appeared sudddenly.

- conditions permitting, the game will also generate units from scratch to put into inns, druzhina are always nice catches, and as turks i always scour inns for arbs.

[katank]

yep. druzhina are almost always there.

I love remnants of a crusade.

In one of my Eggy campaigns, I was able to hire an entire German Crusade.

Once, I destroyed a Spanish Chapterhouse by raiding it and then hired most of the crusade army and landed in Rome with that to teach the Pope a lesson.

ahhh, the irony. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

[Oaty]

Quote[/b] (garion @ May 21 2004,15:53)]the inns are in a way the least realistic part of the game, because I couldn't possibly imagne you can hire cataphracts in wessex 3 in 1091, but it works in the game
And where did the Byzantines get ther Varangian guard from. From the northlands. So in a way it is accurate because you can't go to another factions inn and hire mercs. Varangians were mercenaries for the Byzantines but to represent how much they used them it would have needed to be implemented that way. So they took the easy way out and made them trainable for them. But they do have that heftyy pricetag on them.

[katank]

well, it's not that fair that they start with one.

that starting varangian has caused many headaches whenever I oppose the Byz early on.

with the katank emperors and princes, it's already not fair. tag on that varangian and I don't see good way to counter them if you don't have HAs.

[garion]

lots and lots of archers, and lots of running away could help, but you'd have to have a big army to destroy that unit

[katank]

that's true. I know how to counter them but unless using pure HAs, you need about 2-3 units on one of their's and you simply can't get 48 units on the field at a time.