Mercenary Advisors

[Steffan]

This thing has been popping up in another thread.

How do they feel? Other than the -4 penalty and the lack of dialogue options (I heard). Can they save a key position or your kingdom management? Has somebody successfully completed a game on a decent difficulty with such advisors on key positions? Just inquisitive.

[CHAO$$$]

I have not used them.

They can probably fix a missing advisor - so thats nice.

Losing out on the kingdom choices and the dialogue that goes along with it is a pretty big deal imo. Thats a fairly nice part of the game. A few items can only be gained by making specific choices during kingdom management.
Some of the kingdom management choices make a huge difference for how easy/difficult you make it on yourself.

Especially now that all the results are previewed - having/not having those choices can make a pretty big difference.

Id say use them if you missed a companion and it doesnt matter. But favoring them over companions is going to give you a worse result on average.

[Szarekh the Silent King]

Mercs can not be an advisor. Never. Also you can use mod "Respec" from Nexus to rebuild them from a first level adding them 25 stat points instead of 20.

[.]

Originally posted by Szarekh the Silent King:

Mercs can not be an advisor.

It may surprise you to know that mercs can be advisors; it is possible. It's especially helpful near the beginning when you haven't encountered Jubilost yet. If you have a Int based merc, use him as your treasurer until Jubi, in order to get a jumpstart on various projects.

[Szarekh the Silent King]

Originally posted by Asymptotic Spacetime:

Originally posted by Szarekh the Silent King:

Mercs can not be an advisor.

It may surprise you to know that mercs can be advisors; it is possible. It's especially helpful near the beginning when you haven't encountered Jubilost yet. If you have a Int based merc, use him as your treasurer until Jubi, in order to get a jumpstart on various projects.

That's... that's absolute idiocy... While you can wait to level up your 2nd level until you reach Oleg's post and create several mercs with broken stats (all possible points in one stat) just for this s*it in a future... with only 500 gold for a head...

[jerrypocalypse]

Originally posted by Szarekh the Silent King:

Originally posted by Asymptotic Spacetime:

It may surprise you to know that mercs can be advisors; it is possible. It's especially helpful near the beginning when you haven't encountered Jubilost yet. If you have a Int based merc, use him as your treasurer until Jubi, in order to get a jumpstart on various projects.

That's... that's absolute idiocy... While you can wait to level up your 2nd level until you reach Oleg's post and create several mercs with broken stats (all possible points in one stat) just for this s*it in a future... with only 500 gold for a head...

It's only 89 gold at level 1 (due to the amount being glitched)

[Szarekh the Silent King]

Originally posted by jerrypocalypse:

Originally posted by Szarekh the Silent King:

That's... that's absolute idiocy... While you can wait to level up your 2nd level until you reach Oleg's post and create several mercs with broken stats (all possible points in one stat) just for this s*it in a future... with only 500 gold for a head...

It's only 89 gold at level 1 (due to the amount being glitched)

Oh... crap...

[alation13]

I get a whole party of mercs at level 1 to play the game with. I use the recruitable party members as advisors and just build them into those roles. That way I get the best of both worlds.

[MΛƬΉΣΛƧ]

Originally posted by jerrypocalypse:

Originally posted by Szarekh the Silent King:

That's... that's absolute idiocy... While you can wait to level up your 2nd level until you reach Oleg's post and create several mercs with broken stats (all possible points in one stat) just for this s*it in a future... with only 500 gold for a head...

It's only 89 gold at level 1 (due to the amount being glitched)

certanly wasnt for me, i guess some just get more lucky than others

[MΛƬΉΣΛƧ]

Originally posted by Szarekh the Silent King:

Originally posted by Asymptotic Spacetime:

It may surprise you to know that mercs can be advisors; it is possible. It's especially helpful near the beginning when you haven't encountered Jubilost yet. If you have a Int based merc, use him as your treasurer until Jubi, in order to get a jumpstart on various projects.

That's... that's absolute idiocy... While you can wait to level up your 2nd level until you reach Oleg's post and create several mercs with broken stats (all possible points in one stat) just for this s*it in a future... with only 500 gold for a head...

the merks have less stat points than the story chars, though you can redistribute those points better

also it should be of note that the mercs get penalties as advisors, so the story chars will always be better atleast in that position

[alation13]

Originally posted by Lord_Matheas:

Originally posted by jerrypocalypse:

It's only 89 gold at level 1 (due to the amount being glitched)

certanly wasnt for me, i guess some just get more lucky than others

I haven't bothered checking the EXACT price but they are around 100 gold each AT LEVEL ONE, they have been like that from the 1.0 release to the current release as I only just bought a full squad of level 1 mercs a few hours ago.

[jerrypocalypse]

Originally posted by alation13:

Originally posted by Lord_Matheas:

certanly wasnt for me, i guess some just get more lucky than others

I haven't bothered checking the EXACT price but they are around 100 gold each AT LEVEL ONE, they have been like that from the 1.0 release to the current release as I only just bought a full squad of level 1 mercs a few hours ago.

I only recently started playing, but that's my understanding from what I've read, and my experience as well. It appears you do need at least the 500 displayed cost in gold for it to give you the option, but then only deducts the 89/100 from your gold amount.

[alation13]

I just checked now, it was only 89 gold. I just rounded it to 100 in my own mind because I didn't write down or take notice of my exact gold before and after hiring. I just knew it was approx 500 gold for a full squad of level 1's instead of 2500.

Edit:
After 1000+ hours in the game you tend to know what you can and can't do without checking every little detail.

[burningmime]

My current unfair run (but only Normal kingdom difficulty) I dismissed most of the companions. I have 5 advisors as mercs. The -4 penalty hurts a lot; they're definitely suboptimal, but they mostly work.

The biggest issue I've found is that the dialogue also talks about important events. Like suddenly your kingdom goes to Unrest and you have a Rebellion task, but your mute advisor didn't tell you anything about a rebelllion. I don't even think it would be *that* hard to put in "dialogue". It doesn't need to be actual words just something like:

Your Culture advisor says some dude is writing an opera and wants you to finance it. Do you a) Give him 40 BP b) Give him 100 BP, c) tell him opera sucks

Also, there's a bug when you reach level 5 espionage (I think it was that) with a mercenary where it loops and he kept reporting the same thing every time I entered the throne room; I had to sub Jubliost in for it to keep progressing past level 5.