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Go to the Kingdoms page to check out who is at war with whom. Find whichever Kingdom is at war with the most enemies then find one of their nobles to talk to, even wives will do, and find out how much they pay at that particular moment. Most of the time the weaker the Kingdom is the more they will pay you. When you are working for a Kingdom you do not want to do things that piss the other Kingdoms off cause the next war you might want a paying job with them. Raiding villages piss them off but taking a 'hostile' action against the village or intercepting their trade with the cities does not piss them off. Ideally you want to hijack the villagers on the way to the city to sell their goods. You can even let the nobles you capture go to improve relations with them even while you Land Pirate their Kingdoms to death.
You get paid by cashing in the Influence you earn by winning fights. Basically the leader of the Kingdom you are working for pays you for the influence you earn. If you invest into Charm enough you can gain influence by doing absolutely nothing but existing.
You will want to move fast so hopefully you've invest into perks that increase you map movement speed. Speed is king as a Merc, you want to be able to get out of trouble as fast as you get into it. If you see a no win fight about to descend on you go to the Kingdoms page and drop faction, all the red surrounding you disappears and does not hurt your rep. Try not to join the kingdoms you work for Armies cause they will get your troops killed for little or no reason. What you really want to do is attack the highest value weak targets. Sieges are the bane of you existence so avoid them. As a Merc you are not the lion, you are the vulture looking for high paying easy to kill targets. Merchant caravans are the highest paying targets but you have to be fast to catch them or use terrain to your advantage. You can also make good coin selling prisoners, I tend to let all nobles that are part of kingdom go for rep but capture and ransom the minor faction nobles.
As a Merc investing into the much maligned Cunning can net you big dollars. With Scouting you get the speeed but you can hire a good scout but they will never be as good as you at it. With Roguery you increase the amount of Battle Loot you get and it will let you do underway replenishment by getting Bandits units to join your warband on the go. Even investing into Tactics can pay off by making you better at auto resolving battles, you will only need to actually fight the big battles.
There you go all you need to know to make the big dollars picking the bones of Kingdoms.
Also these village and villager parties are easy to beat. You make a bit of money from them and get the goods the village has and the goods the Villager parties are carrying to sell. You willl also get a lot of Sumpter horses from them to use, sell, cut up for hides, even meat to feed your cheap Bandit troops, and some battle loot to sell. Sure the battle loot from them is not great like defeating a Lords Warband but it all adds up. If you are leveling Blacksmithing or have Trade Enterprises you can target villages and Villager parties that produce the goods you need for them, basically getting the stuff for just rounding it up off the local rubes. Heck, by attacking Villager parties you will even get Peasants of the culture of the village they are from that you can 'hold' till they are ready to be recruits for your Warband.
I am not talking about Raiding the villages, that takes to much time and draws the attent.ion of the Local Lords. Take a 'Hostile Action' against the village rubes making them give you goods and cash, or to get them to give you Recruits for your Warband. You get in and out fast so you get on to the next set of rubes or villages.
The cherry on top of all this is you get easy targets to train the troops in your Warband up. This is all made out of win for you and your bank account. Once you get your troops in tip top shape it is time to hunt Lords and Warbands that are enemies of your Employer.
The real Merc money is in Caravans and Lords Warbands but do not ignore what you can get from the local peasants. Remember Mercs are not lions but the Vultures that pick the bones of Kingdoms.
But gains ARE petty, i agree with that. I do raiding only when i need to suffcate supply lines, not for gains from raiding directly, they are way too small.
I might have to try some of this on one of my merc playthroughs. Though while I somewhat agree with your assessment I think there's more nuance to it. I often times join the big armies. Especially as your roguery skill increases those big battles are where you find weapons and armor that sells for 5-6 figures, sometimes multiple pieces per fight. Also the really big battles giving you a lump sum of 40-50 influence will very quickly turn your 4 figure negative net daily income and turn it into a 4-5 figure profit for a week or so assuming you don't win another big battle and go even higher. And don't forget you get free influence just from having your clan's parties in armies, and the more clan parties you have in armies the more influence you generate. Think on my more recent merc playthrough I was generating ~5 influence with 3 or 4 parties per day, just w/o the charm ultimate perk. Coupled with various companion/personal perks reducing food/wages while part of an army this can be significant. This gets even better if you roll with primarily bandits while taking the perk to reduce bandit wages while having the better equipped troops in the army making up for your lack of quality (although some of the bandit troops are quite good).
Also, you can always just abandon your army if they are about to do something stupid, and as long as your side is the one attacking you can even wait to see the respective size of the armies before making your decision.
Defeated armies and castles can also serve as free replacement armies sometimes if the qty and quality of their prisoners is right, but this is more a bonus than a strategy since if your employer is winning they are unlikely to have good prisoners.
Also I generally avoid killing caravans or pissing off villages since long term you'll just lock yourself out of new recruits since no one will join your armies. But maybe that's not as big a deal as I think it is since I've never been able to stay invested in bandit playthroughs (please TW expand bandit play) long enough to actually experience the long term effects and my current merc playthrough I just roll around with half my prisoners being bandits I recruit from, periodically raiding bandit hideouts to replenish the ranks.
The 'Hostile Action' option is just basically shaking the village down for goods/cash or recruits for your Warband. Equate it to shaking the village down for 'Protection Money' to stop the bad bandits from actually Raiding them. When you do the 'Hostile Action' instead of Raiding the village you can trade or recruit from the same village you just 'Shook Down'. Understand you need to be at war with the Kingdom the village belongs to thru your Mercenary Contract.
Now with a true Raid on a village it makes you sit there for an amount of time while the Raid takes place. The Raid also puts the village out of commision for some time. The 'Hostile Action' is just a quick in and out even the villages Lord does not get an alert it just a local transaction like the village paying taxes.
After you do this enough times and your rep is up the villages will just give you the taxes without a fight. Even the village parties will just pay you off with goods or cash for their taxes to use the roads. The problem with taking the pay out from the village parties Is the party stays on the map awhile making it longer before the rube village sends another party to the market in the towns.
Caravans work kinda the same, they will offer to pay you off instead of fighting you. If you take the payment though you will typically only get around 1,000 Bannerlord dollars. If you tell them you want it all you sill have to fight them you can easily make 20-30k from the small caravans while selling loot and ransoming prisoners while the medium and large caravans pay even more.
By the way ransoming prisoners net you more Roguery experience.
Keep in mind you only do this stuff to Villages and Caravans of the Kingdom you are at war with thru your Merc contract. You can do it to everyone but it will just make everyone hate you. It seems like you either become a Privateer or get a letter of Marque from your employer. You can do all this to one faction you are at war with, quit the faction you are working for, immediately join the Faction you were a Land Pirate against and it is all good with everyone.
Life is hard in Calradia and even harder on the poor peasants.
On a side note. An advantage of forcing villages to give you food or recruits is that it can draw enemy lords to pursue you; its alot more efficient to hunt them if they come to you.