Inns in regions without training facilities?

I started building Inns because I thought I would be able to hire mercenaries while I built up my regions to train my own troops. Then when I got some training facilities after awhile and started training some units, I noticed the hire mercenaries box in regions with inns.

The first campaign I played I had auto build buildings on so I could get used to a few things. I remember the AI building a bunch of inns early on. Why would it, or anyone do this if they can't be utilized until a training facilty exists?

Also, this whole system seems odd to me. You are hiring the mercenary unit, not training it. WHy else would it pop onto the map right as you hit the pay button? To me that says they already existed and you hired them. In this light you should be able to hire them from any region that has an inn regardless of whether it has training facilities for your own troops. I mean, how does a faction train a specific ethnic mercenary unit it has no ability to train in it's own facilities otherwise?

I realize that if you could do this you could hire mercenaries from alot of different places and you may be able to build up your force too quickly. My answer for that is fewer mecs available at a time. You often get a choice of 4 units or so. If there were only one, this would help. You could find a unit in more places, but you would only find one.

There rarity of them could increased as well. Inns are relatively cheap, I wouldn't feel cheated if the nercs were staying at my inns less than now if I could find them in more places. This would need to be balanced of course. There is a point, after which I would start to feel cheated if I VERY rarely found them.

You can hire mercs even without training facilities - there will be a train units button to use. You can also mod their availability - in the build_prod file there is a column for merc magnetism - edit this to a higher value to get more mercs or make it lower to get less. MedMod does this.

It seems mercenary units tend to congregate to border territories, especially if it is a hostile border. I think the balance is found in the mercenary units generally being disloyal and having a higher upkeep cost. I am not sure but I think they may also have lower valor than a trained unit.

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Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (Malcolm Big Head @ April 06 2004,19:03)]It seems mercenary units tend to congregate to border territories, especially if it is a hostile border. I think the balance is found in the mercenary units generally being disloyal and having a higher upkeep cost. I am not sure but I think they may also have lower valor than a trained unit.

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Mercenary units can have a higher valour than ordinary ones, since they are drawn from disbanded units and a 'pool' of general mercenaries. If a high valour unit has been disbanded by another faction, you may be able to hire it. The main disadvantage to mercenaries is their upkeep-double that of the normal units cost. I generally use mercenary units like smart bombs-I buy a whole army of them, and then send them in to a hevily defended enemy province to weaken their defences-usually dying in the attempt. This means that their high upkeep cost doesn't affect me as much.

The great thing about these forums is that bad information only lives for minutes.

TOMBOM- I have not seen this. So it is unwise to simply scroll through the queue? I must click on the actual region and look for a train units button? I have never seen a blank page for training units of my own, but a hire mercenaries button below. Is this perhaps because there haven't as yet been any available, and I just have to be patient to see this happen? I've only been playing for about a week now. Maybe 10 hours total.

Yes, it is possible to only have an inn in a region and still hire mercenaries, without training facilities. I don't really use mercs myself, but if you want to quickly build up a force, that's a good way to do it. You have to physically click the province and click train units, and the hire screen will automatically appear.

You won't see the training window empty, as clicking on the training icon goes directly to the hire mercs screen and the switch back to regular training does nothing if you have no training facilities.

Also not that cycling through provinces via the arrows on the build menu is modal. If you're in the train screen, it will only switch to provinces that can train units. If you switch to the hire mercs screen, those arrows only switch to provinces where there is an inn and mercenaries to hire. So, if you have no training facilities but a tavern, cycling through the training menu will never show the province, as it only shows provinces where training is an option.