Insane mercenary recruitment.

[Dram]

I was just fighting some Romans in my Aedui campaign, having just moved in my army to siege Api after making sure i had eneough troop strength to defeat any armies in the area. I had fog of war off so I know for sure what was there.

After ending the turn, as expected I was attacked by a nearby roman general who before the end of the turn had a total of about 6 units in his army.

In that one end turn, he recruited FOURTEEN units of mercs, most of whom were really good quality, including samnite heavy inf., samnite spears, lucanian inf., peltasti, pezhetaroi, mist. hoplites, and classical hoplites.

Now when this happened I just thought 'this is absolute BS' so just ended up doing auto_win defender since i dont want to have to deal with that sort of thing. The rigged auto resolve resulted in me winning and leaving him with 600 men from his original 1600.

The thing that really suprised me though, was that after I did this, in the same turn he actually recruited another NINE units of mercs and attacked me again!

Please tell me this is not intended!

[Tellos Athenaios]

I guess the Roman used all his 'help the AI funds' money to recruit mercs and after your auto win battle this commander moved to a different mercenary pool - allowing him to recruit another bunch of mercs.

It's still rather odd that he could attack you twice in the same turn...

[Dram]

yeah i know the AI has a ton on money. when i looked at the faction ranking screen for money the turn after there was a huge dip in the graph.

i just cant work out where he got the 21 units from considering threre typically is no more than 8 avaliable in any one zone.

ive never seen anything like it before.

[fallen851]

Wow, I think that is pretty awesome actually.

Why would you not fight the battle?

I seek adversity. I want the AI to slap me silly, so any advantage it gets only makes my victories that much more sweet.

[NeoSpartan]

...which is why its a BAD idea to have an enemy general roaming through ur lands. Especially in Gaul, which filled with Mercs.

[Dram]

Wow, I think that is pretty awesome actually.

Why would you not fight the battle?

I seek adversity. I want the AI to slap me silly, so any advantage it gets only makes my victories that much more sweet.

im not a masochist.

...which is why its a BAD idea to have an enemy general roaming through ur lands. Especially in Gaul, which filled with Mercs.

it was in southern italy.

[MSB]

it was in southern italy.

That's not much better.

[Dram]

yeah, i guess its perfectly normal to recruit 21 units in one turn.

nevermind.

[Kull]

Please tell me this is not intended!

Ummm, no. You are certain these were mercs? Did you check to see how many you could recruit in the area before the battle? Because if he could grab about 20+ units, you should have had the same capability. Not that I want you to, just need the info to help us triangulate in.

Please tell us the name of the province, and if possible, before the battle march your general off to neighboring provinces to check their merc loads too (just to give us more data to work with here).

[skuzzy]

Heh, yeah I had a Roman army attack me on my Sweboz campaign with all mercs and one Roman family member. I found it even funnier because the quote for the battle load was about Epeiros and having more mercs than loyal soldiers.

[Aristophanes]

Ummm, no. You are certain these were mercs? Did you check to see how many you could recruit in the area before the battle? Because if he could grab about 20+ units, you should have had the same capability. Not that I want you to, just need the info to help us triangulate in.

Please tell us the name of the province, and if possible, before the battle march your general off to neighboring provinces to check their merc loads too (just to give us more data to work with here).

The area around Taras and Arpi has a lot of mercs, but I think he's exaggerating a tad.

[Dram]

The area around Taras and Arpi has a lot of mercs, but I think he's exaggerating a tad.

previous turn-

mercs avaliable in apulia- 10 units



mercs avaliable in kalabria- 16 units (moved general from roma to check)



the garrison of taras



the army of quintus the nearby roman general



the turn is ended here-

the army the general attacks me with during the end turn, he has recruited 14units



auto_win results, he has 594 men remaining



the garrison attacks me during the same end turn, assisted by quintus



the roman general has recruited another 9 units in the same turn




total merc pool for apulia and kalabria is 26 units, and im sure he would of recruited them all if he had the space.

this is actually from the same end turn of the save game i uploaded because i was getting a CTD from the romans attacking me at meidolanium during the end turn, but only if i load the battle and play through it rather than auto-resolve, so if you wanna check it to verify this info, its uploaded on your website as DRAMCTD.rar

[-Praetor-]

WTF???!!!

I`ve never seen something like that in my campaigns, LOL...

Boy, you must be having an excellent campaign

[NeoSpartan]

YEP that sounds about right.... southern Italy is FILLED with mercs. I am playing as the Romani and I "COULD" buy myself a full stack of mercs on my to Syracuse (sp). But I didn't..... still half of the army was merc.


Anyways.... I think the mercs thing are a little too much. Just tone it down a bit on the number of mercs....

[-Praetor-]

I personally think that what happened to Dram was an exception, and, if no one else presents himself with the same problem, it`s really exceptional that the AI buys himself a full stack of mercs... thus, I think that the mercenary pool shouldn`t be reduced because of the happening of one or two exceptions...

It must have been pretty crappy for Dram to see 2 stacks of mercenaries hired by the AI on the same turn... It certainly would bother me... but what are the odds?

I mean, who else has had the same problem?

I wouldn`t truly place a bet on it, but probably this may be the only chance that Dram sees this kind of things in his game...

[NeoSpartan]

I personally think that what happened to Dram was an exception, and, if no one else presents himself with the same problem, it`s really exceptional that the AI buys himself a full stack of mercs... thus, I think that the mercenary pool shouldn`t be reduced because of the happening of one or two exceptions...

It must have been pretty crappy for Dram to see 2 stacks of mercenaries hired by the AI on the same turn... It certainly would bother me... but what are the odds?

I mean, who else has had the same problem?

I wouldn`t truly place a bet on it, but probably this may be the only chance that Dram sees this kind of things in his game...

The odds aren't as rare as u may think.... Attack a faction, leave it with only 3 cities and siege its 3rd city. Make sure that faction doesn't have a full stack army, nor can it train enough men to make a full stack, AND you will see the AI buy all the mercs because it is in a TIGHT spot.

I bet u $10 bucks it will happen if u try it.