mercenary army

[Franconicus]

Mercenaries are good to give your army more diversity. But do you have experience with merc armies only. What are the pros and cons?

[The Stranger]

theyre not retrainable. not cheap to produce and are extremely restricted. also you need a general to get them.

pros are you can get them fast. you can get units you otherwise could never get.

[Watchman]

And there are certain advantages in fighting the Romans in the deserts Carthage with stacks of various Arab and Bedouin mercs (yes, hauled all the way from the Middle East; with top-level roads and an all-cavalry army it doesn't actually take too long) when you're the Seleucids. Goes a long way towards nullifying the "home ground" advantage of the Numidians too...

[Deus ret.]

I like to use merc-only armies as kind of suicide squads: Take a useless family member, hire all required troops on the way to the front and send him deep into enemy territory to wreck some havoc on them, far away from your own empire. If you capture cities, destroy them, but the goal is to lure their forces away from the main front and weaken them through a kind of guerilla war.
This is really entertaining because although your army will gradually diminish, you can hire new troops on the way, which makes up for a highly diverse and interesting-to-play army.

[Watchman]

Hee, that starts sounding very Thirty Years' War...

[Franconicus]

Mercs armies pros:
- You do not have to care about casualities, just abandon them after the battle,
- You can recruit quite a lot
- It does not decrease your population (playing very large recruitments can ruin your best towns)
- If you delete them after the battle you can even increase your pop!
- You do not have to protect all your borders with a steady army. Just buy one when you need it
cons
- It takes a lot of money
- You cannot retrain them

[Al Khalifah]

In my crusaders campaign as Britannia I made extensive use of mercenaries because I find the British armies to be severely lacking many areas and the generally nomadic nature of any faction trying to perform such a scenario. I had to use mercenaries to replace fallen troops because I was only allowed to hold certain settlements. While my ships sailed around Spain I picked up mercenaries from Southern France, Iberia, Numidia and Africa so that by the time my fleet reached Sicily, I had an unstoppable horde of an army with excellent troop variety. In Sicily I was able to recruit hoplites. I decided the destruction of the SPQR faction would help my cause by breaking the Roman factions apart so I captured Rome and gave it to the Greek Cities as a gift, which allowed me to recruit Samnite mercenaries (with the huge cash boost this gave).

I often found myself left with armies that were more mercenary than regular or totally mercenary save for the general. A truly multi-national Britannic Empire it was.