Quote Originally Posted by drone View Post
Some of the ships have era/faction settings for mercenary status in the unit prod file, I don't build inns so I can't say I've ever seen a ship on offer though. With respect to the bribing/retraining, I'm guessing the problem is the sea region. You can't move a ship into a province for retraining, and you can't move agents onto sea regions to do their abilities.
I build inns and hire the mercs pretty often but I never saw a ship wanting to be hired. As for bribing, you don't need to send the agent to a province to bribe the army, you just point him at the army from any neighboring province of yours and then you are asked for a confirmation of you desire to further corruption in alien countries. Why can't you do the same with a fleet dispatching your spy from an adjacent maritime province?