Modelling recruitment (the "mercenary" alternative)

[LorDBulA]

Using Mercenaries as recruitment system would be great especially for "barbarian " factions.

But its not up to the task. Its just to simple.
You cant define recruitment based on development level of province (buildings).
You cant restrict units on per faction basis.
Hell even given unit in all faction will have the same skin.

This is how I understand how Merc recruitment work.
Correct me if i am mistaken since this is not really my area.

RTW scripting also wont do the trick. Its just to simple for this job.

[O'ETAIPOS]

The biggest problem is you jus cant limit recruitment of merc's - they are available to everybody under every condition.

also AI do not handle units with low cost/high upkeep well, as it cant disband them.

[Schatten]

The biggest problem is you jus cant limit recruitment of merc's - they are available to everybody under every condition.

also AI do not handle units with low cost/high upkeep well, as it cant disband them.

mayby were a force-disband entry into the script a solution? it should be possible to make such entry into the script that make a auto-disband of AI-units if AI upkeep costs goes over income...beginning with Ship´s and than with worst land Units and those in field army´s first (to avoid rebelions of AI Cities).

After that it were mayby a idea to force the AI (once more over script) to use the financial or balanced Citygoverment (like a human player has as option if he uses auto-gov.) so the income and infrastructure of AI Cities go more balanced.

[Foot]

mayby were a force-disband entry into the script a solution? it should be possible to make such entry into the script that make a auto-disband of AI-units if AI upkeep costs goes over income...beginning with Ship´s and than with worst land Units and those in field army´s first (to avoid rebelions of AI Cities).

After that it were mayby a idea to force the AI (once more over script) to use the financial or balanced Citygoverment (like a human player has as option if he uses auto-gov.) so the income and infrastructure of AI Cities go more balanced.

Neither of those options are open to us via scripting. There is no option to disband or destroy troops via the script, nor is there any way to change how the ai balances its economy (we would have used it by now if there was).

Foot

[mrtwisties]

ALX.exe lets you specify mercenaries as being recruitable only by a given faction (per Maksimus). You couldn't do levies or historical reforms, but you could certainly create pools of manpower that were exhausted and then gradually replenished.

[konny]

Yes, the ALX.exe is the only way to make it work. Because of the named problem with the governmental system it would not be wise to change completely to the merc pool and drop the MICs all together. An idea could be to move selected elite units that should be limited but are spammed by the AI, like Gaesatae, to the merc pool and assign them to the respective factions. Another idea could be to drop the regional MICs and move all these units to the merc pool, again assigned to their factions per region.

[mrtwisties]

Slingers could be thus restricted.