Machiavelli on mercanaries.

[Zimfan]

I was reading Machiavelli's The Prince the other day and came across this interesting observation of his.

"Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy. The fact is, they have no other attraction or reason for keeping the field than a trifle of stipend, which is not sufficient to make them willing to die for you. They are ready enough to be your soldiers whilst you do not make war, but if war comes they take themselves off or run from the foe;"

I learned that the hard way during a Saxon campaign in VI. I was expanding up into Mercia(or is it North Umbria?) and noticed a border province w of mine was able to hire nearly a full stack of mercenaries, mostly armored spearmen, some regular, viking mercenaries, and a couple archers. SO I hired them and invaded a province defended by a slightly larger army consisting mainly of peasant rabble. During the battle the comp ganged up on one of my weaker units, managed to route it, which routed the armoured spearmen next to them, and the ones next to them, before I knew it, my whole army routes and is chased off the map by peasants.

Edited to note that I had a five start general, while the opposing army had about a two star one.

[Zimfan]

Just found this digging through the posts here.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=52733

[naut]

lol

I find that they are useful for adding casualties to a large enemy before my main army strikes the turn after.

[Martok]

They can also be useful for padding out Crusades. Since units in a Crusade army don't cost upkeep, and mercs' hiring cost is only half that of a "national" unit of the same type, you can really fill out a Crusading army's ranks on the cheap.

Of course, I still don't recommend adding a lot of mercenaries to a Crusade since they do generally run like little girls once in combat. The only exception to this rule is artillery--I will hire them in relatively large numbers, particlarly if I can't build that artillery piece myself yet.

[gaijinalways]

I like merc myself. As I posted earlier about my English campaign (on hold as new semester gets ready to start), I use mercs to clean house and conduct my 'dry earth' campaigns. I usually try to bring along some regulars too to get training, with the mercs sometimes selflessly sacrifising themselves for the good of the empire setting up final counter blows by my regulars or just getting mor stars for my generals.

[Mooks]

I like to hire mercs. But only specialty mercs. AKA Extremely powerful archers, pikemen, artillery, heavy horsemen. And so on, basically any unit thats rare and can do some danmage.