Mercenaries and what you can do with them

[macsen rufus]

Well, despite thinking I'll try this after I'd got more of my modding out of the way, I did actually fire up a Turkish/Early/Hard GA campaign when I got home from work, and have played through to around 1107AD.

Another thing that made me a bit nervous was the fact that there were a number of years that went by in the beginning that didn't have any Mercs at all. None. For the first 5-9 years I had zero Mercs in my Inns (must have been the bad beer and ugly women ).

That's because they're all hanging out with Hassan i Sabah, the Old Man of the Mountains, in Syria, a-toking and a-poking with his hookahs and hookers I had way more mercs available than I could afford to hire, so snaffled up a few Druzhina and Faris units, plus a couple of Bulgarian Brigands and armoured spears and kicked the Egyptians out of Antioch and Tripoli (GA homeland for me), during which I managed to accidentally drop their sultan on his head and wiped out the faction. They re-emerged pretty quickly, and left me having to regain Tripoli by jihad, for an extra couple of points. The jihad was pretty poor at that stage of the game, mostly catapults and peasants.... but it did at least give me some reasonable governor candidates. But you can't expect a lot with zeal pootling along at 20%.

I also (re)discovered that down that way CAMELS are a fort-trained unit as well

To be honest, though, when your armies are mostly merc, it doesn't make a huge difference which faction you play, so I don't feel deeply deprived. Generally I quite like horse-archer factions, but as I'm buying rather than training, it seems ... strange

I'm now the richest faction, and my sultan gained "Steward" virtue, then promptly died - and left the sultanate to his "straight-zeroes" elder son - I didn't prune the vine in time, I'm afraid, the vintage is ruined Of course, being richest only applies on one side of the ledger - the income. Despite massive farm-building programmes, my outgoings are pretty high, too.

Anyway, I'm poised to push on towards Egypt (I think I snapped up Palestine before I quit last night...), then I shall have to turn my attention to the Purple Ones on the northern border, as they are the main threat on the GA points. If I can kick them out of Asia Minor, they'll suffer a huge hit. I'm currently one point ahead thanks to the jihad

[Martok]

Interesting results so far, guys. One question I have for you: Are you noticing a trend as far as which provinces the mercs appear in? Or are they pretty evenly spread thus far?

I also (re)discovered that down that way CAMELS are a fort-trained unit as well

....

Nah, too easy.

[Sensei Warrior]

Update and Answers:

I am in the Early 1100s right now. Me and my Merc army have been steadily gaining ground in Europe while we addressed the French issue. The French are now a Footnote in the Annals of History, and I own all French lands except for Toulouse (the Italians took that), and Champagne (which went rebel and I decided to leave alone for a bit. The Spanish border me to the South who for the moment seem to be strong allies. HRE and the Italians border me to the East. I am allied to the Italians, but not allied to HRE (they decided to back the French).

On the finance front, its alot of easy come easy go, which seems to be the same with macsen. I'm not the richest but do have a large income. Course as soon as I get some money I lay it down on money improvements. I've been able to focus on building up Agriculture and started getting some trade. I have 1 ship producing provence, and am trying to get 2 more to start churning out ships.

Right now my focus is on the precious Crusading Goals. I'm going to be shoring up expenses during my next push, trim the fat from the budget, and press out the ships to get to those GA goals.

I am thinking of sneaking into macsen's game and ing his hookas and ing his hookers. The Mercs haven't been as free flowing as I would have liked. I've gotten enough to 'git r dun', but I certainly dont have as many as macsen seems to have.

I haven't really been paying attention to where the troops are coming from, but I definately got quite a few from Normandy during this push. They definately are more prevalent where my provences border another faction's provence. I'll keep track of it, and give a more definative answer next time.

The types of merc troops available for purchase has almost solely been Cav and Spear types. Virtually no melee troops have been available for purchase. So far I've been getting by with Druzina Cav. Gotta love those guys. I'm still thinking I might have to shore up my melee units with Highland Clansmen. I am still holding off of making them for the moment. I'm goin to give the game as long as I can to produce some melee troops before I resort to making them.

That's it for now. I keep you guys in the loop.

[macsen rufus]

So far Syria is my big merc recruiting ground, and the odd unit or two pops up in Armenia. I've seen - but not necessarily been able to hire - armoured spearmen, jinettes, hobbies, Druzhina, Faris, FMAA, Bulg Brigands, Turc horse, archers, Italian Inf, vanilla spears, Feudal sergeants, catapults, Rus spears, trebuchet (1 only - lost it in a siege ), horse archers, Arab infantry, militia sergeants.

I know from previous experience thouigh that mercs will tend to congregate at your front line. Hence as Syria borders Egyptian territory where I am at war, it has more mercs than Armenia which borders neutral Byz lands. The presence of a port should help too, as that has a mercenary magnetism factor.

@ Martok, well, I've kept my camel training down to two units, mostly in preparation for the desert war - as you've probably noticed, most of my mercs have been quite heavily armoured for this stage of the game, so putting together a desert army is going a bit slowly.

I haven't got any ships in the water yet, but building up Antioch for that next. I've already got my merchant running, and he's handing over 132fl in tax per year, so by the time I multiply that by a few ports I should be rolling in it

[Sensei Warrior]

macsen rufus and I are like duelling banjos in this thread. Next push is in so here we go.

Its 1133 and a whole heck of alot has happened. For starters, the French reemerged. Caught me off guard at first so lots of down and dirty battles. They reappeared in Champagne, the French Porvence that rebelled earlier in the game. During that time the Spanish have decided to attack as well, the traitorous dogs. They are really putting the screws to me, but I think I'll be able to ford through that as well. The Italians have decided to take a whack at my shipping lanes as well, but some lucky sea battles for me have the Italians licking their wounds.

I have a Crusade marker all ready to go and am hoovering up my still meager Merc supply. Maybe I shouldn't say that, there was alot of fighting going on during this push so it wasn't like they weren't being used. Anyways, I'm staged to Crusade to Palestine, my Crusading Objectives being my next goal.

Moneywise I am the richest. I have a good amount coming in, and a large amount going out to keep the Mercs well paid.

I have been getting the same variety of Mercs as macsen so nothing different there. Mercs almost always proc on my border states. An occassional Port city away from the front may have 1 every once in awhile but not often. It also seems that my Provences that border a faction I am at war with produce a good deal more Mercs then ones that just border another faction. When the French attacked me, Flanders started to have large amounts of Mercs, about double what they usually did. When Spain back doored me, Aquitaine's Merc supply doubled as well.

Another thing that I noticed that was interesting was when HRE moved a Crusade through my lands. The year after the Crusade passed through the Provence, I had 8-9 units of troops available in that Provence but the units had very few men in the unit, (like a unit of Archers with 3men). I also noticed when I disbanded a unit of Longbowmen (they only had 3 men left in the unit) the next year that unit was available (with the same 3 men, also the same general) as a unit of Mercs. The year after that they disappeared.

Complaint time. What a pain in the hoop Mercs are. You cant do anything with them. I can't merge 2 units together to get a full unit or anything. I have a ton of units at 1/2 to 1/3 full. I'm not sure if I should disband them or what. Right now they are border guards. I was goin to try and replace them when full Merc units became available, but everyone started English hatin so they were sent on the defense.

Well thats it for now, I'm sure this weekend I'm gonna have alot more to tell so see you guys then.

[Martok]

Appreciate hearing your results, guys. Looking forward to hearing more next week.

I also noticed when I disbanded a unit of Longbowmen (they only had 3 men left in the unit) the next year that unit was available (with the same 3 men, also the same general) as a unit of Mercs. The year after that they disappeared.

I'd noticed that early on when I first started playing the game. If you disband regular units, they're likely to reappear as mercs. I think it's a nice touch, actually.

[Sensei Warrior]

I must admit my ignorance with using Mercs. I never used them in the past. Heck I really don't even bother building Inns. Noticing the Longbowmen appearing as Mercs, and what seems to be the units that go AWOL while Crusading appearing as Mercs, makes me wonder how Mercs appear in the game.

Does the game wait until factions start disbanding units, or losing units through Crusade attrition? Does it manufacture units yearly or periodically to make them available as Mercs? Is it a mixture of both? I suspect the answer lies closer to the last one, it does both. Do those units end up Touring the Inns, like people who go barhopping?

I never really thought much about Mercs before. This little exercise has peaked my interest in those little details, even though IMHO I will never rely on Mercs solely again. I like nice full units, not to mention this must be the first game that I've played as the English that I haven't been able to tinker with Tancred de Normandie. I believe I might be going through withdrawl.