mercenary shopping.

[gigi]

playing as the brutii i'm gonna build an army with only mercenaries.

so i woul'd like some feedback on where to go and what merc's i should hire.

ps.i'm playing on m/m.

thanks in advance.

[YAKOBU]

Hi gigi

My personal favourite is Rhodes and Crete for those Rhodian Slingers and Cretian Archers !!!

[Dutch_guy]

travel to pergamun ( that area ) and buy bastarnae , cretans , merc hoplites , rodian slingers and thracian mercs.
That 'will give you quite a good army.

[Mahrabals apprentice]

I go for all mercanery armies all the time, and just send them on a MTW style crusade

'go and get alesia from those stinking gauls'

If they get annialiated so what? They're only mere mercs

And if they manage to get their objective build some town watch there and find them a new objective, I have made myself some fine generals that way.

[Deus ret.]

If you're up to a little travelling, also visit the levante (Antioch etc) to add some camels and arab cav to the roster. Admittedly they serve you best int the desert but at least the camels are always useful....You might even find mercenary war elephants in the area if you're lucky.

[gigi]

If you're up to a little travelling, also visit the levante (Antioch etc) to add some camels and arab cav to the roster. Admittedly they serve you best int the desert but at least the camels are always useful....You might even find mercenary war elephants in the area if you're lucky.

has anybody found some mercenary elephants?
and if so where is the biggest change on finding them?

thanks in advance.

[Duke of Gelre]

i've often found some mercenary Elephants in carthage.

[Mr Frost]

Send a Family member on a decent fleet {sufficient to fight its' way home if need be} to Crimea and by a Steppe horse army over the years . You should get 3 or 4 Sythian Horse archers per Samartian Lancer {whom are quite good themselves} and you will have an army able to dominate most any army it meets {only large numbers of Elephants would give it trouble} . If you send enough ships for two fleets {I use 4 minimum per fleet as a rule of thumb} then you could get enough extra units to replace losses for years .
Being strategically fast , it makes a great army for guarding regions deep within your empire with lots of coastline . They can keep the anoying "brigands" that can cost you cashflow by not only devistating regions , but also by simply standing on roads with heavy merchant traffic , yet still take on full house invasion armies without notable disadvantage . They are also relativly cheap to upkeep .

See a dealer about some today , you wont be disapointed

[Deus ret.]

has anybody found some mercenary elephants?
and if so where is the biggest change on finding them?

AFAIK the chance of getting elephants is not "big". I didn't look it up in the respective text file, but when I was Armenia it took until 220BC until one unit finally showed up around Antioch whereas when I played Greeks I sent an invasion army there around 253BC and immediately got some mercenary war elephants....

[Dutch_guy]

I got them near Antioch once, and once in ( or near ) lepcis magna.
overall there isn't a very big chance of gettnig them...

[Mahrabals apprentice]

as far as i remember the appearance rate is 0.015

[Seamus Fermanagh]

... as in and average of 9 times over the course of 600 turns!!!!

[Marquis of Roland]

Get some bedouin camels for fun and laughs

[swirly_the_toilet_fish]

Libyan Mercs are the best.

[HarunTaiwan]

People overlook those Illyrian Mercs...excellent missiles and then some decent fighting capability. They also pop up in large numbers and are cheap.

Best province is the one next to Austria?

It has Illyrians, Thracians, Basternae, and Sarmations.


p.s. I think basternae are too expensive compared to Thracians...am I insane?

[The Stranger]

no bastarnae have 2HP and better attack.

[gardibolt]

I found some elephants at Antioch; they were a real hoot, especially after they ran amok right in the middle of the Egyptian army! My forces just sat back and watched the show. Pretty much nothing left but little greasy smears when they got done. Shame I couldn't keep them, but it was worth it in pure entertainment value.

[Horatius]

The East Coast of Greece and Pergamum, along with the Crimea have the best mercenaries.

Bedouin Archers are great though.

[Suladan]

The mercenary hoplites in Laconia start with 3 extra experience chevrons. Kinda nice if you're in the neighborhood.

[PseRamesses]

My fav combo of mercs is 8-12 hoplites, 4-6 cretan archers, 2-4 bastarne and 2 sarmatian cavs. Easy obtainable from the start and frequently re-emerging, highly versatile and defensible impregnable. Playing mostly in or around the eastern Med I do always tend to get Cretan archers, Sarmatian/ Scythian horse archers and Bedouin camel archers for armies in thoose regions.
It´s a pity though that the merc pool in RTW is so small, compared with MTW, and europe only have 2 mercs - barb.inf. and barb.cav. Africa has only 2 also so there´s not much to shop around for is there? Try out RTR 6.0 it has alot of diff units and mercs - most enjoyable and best on the market, so far.

[RTW King]

If you want a mod to help with your merc army, my V2 Realism mod in my sig makes mercenaries appear significantly more often and creates more at start.

[pezhetairoi]

You can also edit the descr_mercenaries text file to raise chances, starting numbers, merc max numbers, and speed of regeneration.

For the best recruitment grounds, Asia Minor in general is best, with an extension into the north to get Scythian mercenaries. You get hoplites and thracians and bastarnae (the balanced army the Greeks never had and the Thracians seem incapable of creating) as well as more-than-sufficient firepower support from Rhodians, Cretans and HA. Heavy cavalry will be provided in the form of Sarmatians, Bedouins and Arabs if you so choose to extend your recruitment run into Dacia or Syria. The optimum would be barb cav, but that's as good as saying run through the entire known world which defeats the purpose of localised recruitment.