Need info on swords for hire

[Crunkers]

Hey, Im planning on playing tall, I figured swords for hire would be a good tradition for my custom culture because I have gold. my question is, do the extra 100% avalible mercenaries from the tradition mean i have more mercenaries no matter how big I am, or does it add to the maximum amount of mercenaries meaning i would have to expand? I dont know if anyone knows this as I couldn't find the answer anywhere.

[ShepherdOfCats]

It's just more in general. I don't think your size matters.

The question I've always had about that tradition, is if it is based on the culture of the captain of the mercenary band or the origin of the band. Used to be an issue where you'd have a mercenary band called 'the Saxon band of' but the leader himself might be Greek or something crazy like that. And because there was (probably still is) no breakdown of the costs, I can't tell if the discount applies or not.

I haven't used it much because I never got a straight-answer on that so I can't tell if it is broken or not. But you should still get more merc bands to choose from at least.

[Crunkers]

Originally posted by ShepherdOfCats:

It's just more in general. I don't think your size matters.

The question I've always had about that tradition, is if it is based on the culture of the captain of the mercenary band or the origin of the band. Used to be an issue where you'd have a mercenary band called 'the Saxon band of' but the leader himself might be Greek or something crazy like that. And because there was (probably still is) no breakdown of the costs, I can't tell if the discount applies or not.

I haven't used it much because I never got a straight-answer on that so I can't tell if it is broken or not. But you should still get more merc bands to choose from at least.

Thanks, I really wanted more merc companies because I only have 2 as Im playing as iceland and for some reason I only have mercs of my own culture. I will try it out.

[spasti696969]

Originally posted by Crunkers:

Thanks, I really wanted more merc companies because I only have 2 as Im playing as iceland and for some reason I only have mercs of my own culture. I will try it out.

If that's the case, try to get "Malleable Subjects". It gives you +200% available mercenary companies and =50% to their cost, which is what you actually want if you're using a lot of mercenaries. There are already more than enough mercenary companies to choose from anyways.

Whenever I fight in Spain they always have a ton of mercenaries because of Malleable Subjects.

[Ragatokk]

I have Malleable Subjects and swords for hire in a culture of size 65.
I still only get three mercenary companies from my culture.
And the cost is 1067 for 1749 soldiers (1118 levies, 209 armored horsemen, 419 light footmen)

These traditions do not seem like they work at all.

[vortex_13]

Originally posted by Ragatokk:

I have Malleable Subjects and swords for hire in a culture of size 65.
I still only get three mercenary companies from my culture.
And the cost is 1067 for 1749 soldiers (1118 levies, 209 armored horsemen, 419 light footmen)

These traditions do not seem like they work at all.

Iceland probably only had one mercenary company available originally. +200% available mercenary companies means you now have 3. Works perfectly well it seems.

[Yen Lo Wang]

Originally posted by vortex_13:

Originally posted by Ragatokk:

I have Malleable Subjects and swords for hire in a culture of size 65.
I still only get three mercenary companies from my culture.
And the cost is 1067 for 1749 soldiers (1118 levies, 209 armored horsemen, 419 light footmen)

These traditions do not seem like they work at all.

Iceland probably only had one mercenary company available originally. +200% available mercenary companies means you now have 3. Works perfectly well it seems.

How many counties have your culture? The base number mercenary companies available to each culture is dependent upon the number of counties that share that culture so vortex_13 is likely correct.

[ShepherdOfCats]

Iceland is Norse though correct? Should be more Norse counties than Iceland, or is there a range limitation.

When I used it last, I was of the Cuman culture and I think it only has 4-5 counties of the Cumans in an 867 start, but even so I noticed there were quite a few bands to choose from. (it starts with that tradition if I recall). But as I said I stopped using it because the discount benefit didn't seem like it worked. The problem was it would say "cuman band of . . . " but it would be led by some Khazar or Pecheneg-culture captain, perhaps disqualifying it from discount?

[ChaosKhan]

Originally posted by Crunkers:

Thanks, I really wanted more merc companies because I only have 2 as Im playing as iceland and for some reason I only have mercs of my own culture. I will try it out.

That's most likely because of your limited diplomatic range. Iceland is extremely far away from the rest of Europe. If you also happened to take the isolationist tradition, it becomes even worse.

That's why "malleable subjects" is worthless for you to boost your merc availability, because it only boosts the amount of mercs you can have, as long as there is enough space for them. If they are out of diplomatic range though, you can't increase anything. Reason is, that every mercenary company has a "de jure" county as its "capital" and this capital requires it to have the same culture as the mercenary company. Every county can only have 1 mercenary company.

So if your culture has only 3 counties, you can drop malleable subjects, swords for hire and belliclose on it and you will still only be able to hire 3 mercenary companies of your culture, because there aren't enough counties to house more mercenary companies.

So long story short: You can't build tall and rely on mercenaries from your own culture, unless you make sure, that your culture also exist outside of your realm to hire mercenaries from.

Originally posted by ShepherdOfCats:

Iceland is Norse though correct? Should be more Norse counties than Iceland, or is there a range limitation.

It depends at which year he started. 1066, Norway, Sweden and Denmark have already divergent cultures and are not Norse. You only get increased hiring range with mercs of your own culture though, which means, that Norwegian and Scottish mercs are simply too far away for him to interact with, unless he somehow converts the cultures there or switches to the culture himself.