Mercenaries and what you can do with them

[Martok]

Despite playing this game for years, I'm still finding the odd thing I never knew.

I don't use mercenaries much and when I do I don't keep them around once they've achieved their immediate objective. So it was a surprise when I found I could have the leader of a mercenary unit marry into my royal family.

So what would happen if all the heirs died and this guy was the only one left when the king died? Could he become king or would it just be game over? I suspect the latter.

The game would simply end. It was long rumored that generals married into the royal family could become the new faction ruler upon the death of the current monarch, but it's (unfortunately) not true.

It would be nice if merc units could reinforce themselves over time, like the king can. It would be historically accurate. Is that moddable, or hard-coded? Being able to name specific units, like in Panzer General, is the one thing missing from the game that would have really have enhanced it, IMO.

I agree it would be nice if mercenary regiments in MTW replenished their ranks. Unfortunately, Prussian1 is essentially correct that this would unbalance things. To be specific, it would unbalance things *further*, as the AI does not (and probably cannot) take advantage of mercs at all.

I'm not sure if the mercs can be modded so that their numbers rebound after battle losses. I doubt it, though. I seem to recall others have investigated this, only to discover it was hard-coded.

I would have personally loved to have seen a "contract conversion feature" in which you could buy out a merc company's contract and bring them on a full-time household troops.

Me too! The Byzantines were well-known for employing mercenaries who -- for all intents and purposes -- were a part of the regular army.