Mercenaries broken

[Lotor]

Are they not? You pretty much only need about 100k to raise decent merc army and snowball anything in your path getting hundreds of slaves and thousands of weapons in process. Of course those weapons are for sale because - mercenaries. At about 1mil coins (you could, for example, sell 2 regions you just conquered) you can raise a merc army that will just destroy everything even without any cheese netting you new thousands of (brokenly valuable) slaves, pops to pardon and ludicrous amounts of expensive provisions to sell and get more mercs. This is of course helped by the fact that AI never moves its army, but that's a different issue.

[Friends with Benedicts]

They are. Thats why I play "mercenarieless" or "mercless" runs.

Still, many of the overworld aspects are still in development. City building and internal mechanics seem much more fleshed out than world map ones. Tributaries also seem a little bit broken, diplomacy mechanics still are very beta but there's a lot of fun stuff that, if improved, will honestly make this game really great.

[robtock216]

practically everything world map related are currently placeholders for further development on that side of things.

we had a massive discussion not long ago about all of this, in particular that mercs should probably retain looting rights IE = you get no loot from battles, i also think there should be a risk of them betraying you, not a high risk but always that potential.
they should cost more to hire, cost more to upkeep (this isn't that off though i don't think)

all of this is to tip the scales of balance back in favour of having your own professional army which is currently far too complex in comparison to just hiring merc's.

[Lotor]

Well, I'm obviously late for discussion you mentioned but will give my two cents. Keep it "simple", no betraying and looting shenanigans, just make them (much) more expensive and even more important severely limit the number available.

[robtock216]

simply making them more expensive sounds boring to me, this is an incredibly well thought out game, the initial cost of them is very cheap but the upkeep isn't miles off where i feel it should be really, currently seems to be about 50% of the hire cost per day which is relatively hefty over the long term.

I don't see a way to balance battle loot economically in the long term, even if you say your getting 50% of the enemies armour and weapons per battle to allow for breakages that's still a huge amount of golds worth of loot, vastly more than it cost to hire the mercs in the first place leaving it easily open to cheesability as it is now, and if you simply get less then its unrealistic.

Historically most mercenary groups retained full looting rights on the battlefield, some contracts allowed for the the patron to take a percentage but very few, that's the price of using mercenaries together with lack of loyalty, they fight as long as the gold keeps coming but should they fight as well as professional lifetime soldiers dedicated to a kingdom or cause? and should they fight against overwhelming odds they will probably die to?

No, and No, and that needs to be shown in game through more than simply making them too expensive to use.

[Friends with Benedicts]

I think mercenaries should be balanced AFTER the trade system is more solid and AI players economy is fixed.

No point in messing with mercenaries before those are settled

[Lotor]

Publicado originalmente por robtock216:

simply making them more expensive sounds boring to me, this is an incredibly well thought out game, the initial cost of them is very cheap but the upkeep isn't miles off where i feel it should be really, currently seems to be about 50% of the hire cost per day which is relatively hefty over the long term.

I don't see a way to balance battle loot economically in the long term, even if you say your getting 50% of the enemies armour and weapons per battle to allow for breakages that's still a huge amount of golds worth of loot, vastly more than it cost to hire the mercs in the first place leaving it easily open to cheesability as it is now, and if you simply get less then its unrealistic.

Historically most mercenary groups retained full looting rights on the battlefield, some contracts allowed for the the patron to take a percentage but very few, that's the price of using mercenaries together with lack of loyalty, they fight as long as the gold keeps coming but should they fight as well as professional lifetime soldiers dedicated to a kingdom or cause? and should they fight against overwhelming odds they will probably die to?

No, and No, and that needs to be shown in game through more than simply making them too expensive to use.

Eventually making more complex changes is very welcome. Changes I proposed could be literally made in 20 mins and would make the game instantly much more playable. Of course you could always play without mercenaries as the other guy suggested but I always hated to self ban strategies like that. I want to use all the tools at my disposal and it's up to the game to optimise them.

[Friends with Benedicts]

Im only fine with not using mercenaries because it's harder for me and more fun and also because the game is in development and I knew that before hand. Also it's a one man dev.

Wouldn't accept it from the likes of total war.

[cafe*slacker]

Publicado originalmente por robtock216:

practically everything world map related are currently placeholders for further development on that side of things.

we had a massive discussion not long ago about all of this, in particular that mercs should probably retain looting rights IE = you get no loot from battles, i also think there should be a risk of them betraying you, not a high risk but always that potential.
they should cost more to hire, cost more to upkeep (this isn't that off though i don't think)

all of this is to tip the scales of balance back in favour of having your own professional army which is currently far too complex in comparison to just hiring merc's.

It would be hilarious if your merc army decided to set up its own kingdom in a high-value region you spent half the game acquiring. I could see getting reduced loot from mercs, why would they report everything they stole? You could even implement a loot slider during recruitment, more loot = less upkeep after conquest.

[Friends with Benedicts]

Publicado originalmente por cafe*slacker:

Publicado originalmente por robtock216:

practically everything world map related are currently placeholders for further development on that side of things.

we had a massive discussion not long ago about all of this, in particular that mercs should probably retain looting rights IE = you get no loot from battles, i also think there should be a risk of them betraying you, not a high risk but always that potential.
they should cost more to hire, cost more to upkeep (this isn't that off though i don't think)

all of this is to tip the scales of balance back in favour of having your own professional army which is currently far too complex in comparison to just hiring merc's.

It would be hilarious if your merc army decided to set up its own kingdom in a high-value region you spent half the game acquiring. I could see getting reduced loot from mercs, why would they report everything they stole? You could even implement a loot slider during recruitment, more loot = less upkeep after conquest.

this is actually interesting. Mercenary contracts would usually vary in the agreements. It was very common for contractors to negotiate mercenary contracts allowing the to either loot or dont loot, rape or dont rape, pick prisioners or not, spare or purge... So its only fair to negotiate that in the contract as well. Very interesting.

Although that might make the game very much harder to both code and also more complex to play. Either way it goes I'm curious to see where we'll get.

[robtock216]

Publicado originalmente por cafe*slacker:

Publicado originalmente por robtock216:

practically everything world map related are currently placeholders for further development on that side of things.

we had a massive discussion not long ago about all of this, in particular that mercs should probably retain looting rights IE = you get no loot from battles, i also think there should be a risk of them betraying you, not a high risk but always that potential.
they should cost more to hire, cost more to upkeep (this isn't that off though i don't think)

all of this is to tip the scales of balance back in favour of having your own professional army which is currently far too complex in comparison to just hiring merc's.

It would be hilarious if your merc army decided to set up its own kingdom in a high-value region you spent half the game acquiring. I could see getting reduced loot from mercs, why would they report everything they stole? You could even implement a loot slider during recruitment, more loot = less upkeep after conquest.

Exactly, it may or may not happen, its always a risk, i always hated total war Rome 2 for that, it was lazy design, you WOULD have a civil war eventually, no if's or but's the game was just coded that way and i always found it sh*t because if you could actually go back in time and lead the roman empire through its development while also taking time to grow and nurture each region, if you could instigate fair elections for senators and citizens lives were good, if you rooted out the corruption and ensured the loyalty of your commanders, would it ever be hard coded that it all just falls apart, just coz.

Likewise Mercenaries are generally pushed to stick to there contract and fight whoever you send them against because a reputation for breaking your contract is terribly bad for business.
but there are plenty of historical cases of mercenaries leaving the battlefield and dooming there patron to defeat, be it because they thought it was unwinnable, because they didn't like where they were positioned or because the other side approached them to betray there patron.

This would be amazing to put into SoS.