FfH2 0.40 Changelog

How about mercs actually work for the highest bidder?

A set of mechanics like this might be good:

Magnadine and The GOTN can "build" new mercs at a discount price, but anyone can hire existing mercs with the "hire" spell...that would be available to all civs at a certain tech (for instance whatever allows you to build GOTN).

In order to cast the "hire mercs" spell, one would need to pay gold...but the price would keep going up.

Let's say I build a merc with GOTN and pay 120gp.
We'll say this is a discount rate, and the merc won't change sides for less than twice that or 240gp.

Player 2, on his turn, has over 240 gp and casts "hire merc." The only merc in the game switches sides and now belongs to player 2.

Player 3 want's the merc, and if it's still alive on his turn he can cast "hire merc" for 264gp (+10% each time after the first)

If I build a second merc, I can do so for 120gp. Player 2 can again "steal" the merc for 240gp. And player two could cast hire merc a second time and hire the next cheapest merc away from player 3, who now costs 304.

Player 3, is rolling in money and he decides he wants another turn with the mercs...so he casts "hire merc" twice and buys the first one away for 304, and then the second one for 331.

and so on...

Mercs would switch sides at whatever location they are on the map,unless then need to move to not occupy a tile with units they will be at war with. They will start with their entire movement and attacks available.

It would also be interesting to give the mercs XP each time they get hired away...just to reflect that the more expensive mercs buy better equipment and are in theory the best mercs to have.

In this way the GOTN allows you the easiest access to mercs, but they are a double edged sword.

Or, clearly it would be nice to try to hire away only the particular merc you want...but that would require some sort of targeting ability and you would need enough money for that particular merc.

Maybe it wouldn't be difficult for the AI to understand this...if it's at war with a merc in it's territory and it has the money to hire it, it probably should.

Sounds very accurate and flavorful, but certainly very complex. Personally, I would love this option but I think the sheer complexity of it would make it very hard to implement. It would probably require some sort of mercenary menu like the one used in Rhye's and Fall for the mercenaries to be usefull, there's too much risk if you can't see what you're getting. Plus, the AI would need to learn this system as well and be able to accurately judge whether a merc will be helpful, or immediately be slaughtered. If this amount of complexity was supported, I would definitely enjoy it, but I think a solution with simpler mechanics would be better.
 
25. Units level 2 and higher are immune to the death explore lair result ("you unit goes into the lair and never returns").

Great, but there is still an equivalent result: Crazed from mutation or demon posession.
 
Allowing everyone to hire Mercenaries after reaching a certain tech as bdmarti suggested and having GotN allow a very big discount, let's say 1/3 of the price, is really a great idea! But the rest of the mechanic does not sound very nice to me, since it introduces too much complexity...
Another really great idea is for the mercs to get extra payment each time they win a battle as Chandrasekhar suggests, and if you do not have the money, they will abandon you.

Both suggestions really balance the GotN, in my opinion, and shouldn't be difficult to implement. I hope the development team agrees and will include something like that to balance it.

Most of the other suggestions seem to be very complex or serious demotion of the mercenary unit, which make the hiring of the mercenaries more of a danger rather than a support... And having the mercs be a National Unit really goes against the whole mercenary consept IMO.
 
Another option to prevent people from relying on mercs as fodder too much would be any time you lose a merc in combat, you have to pay a certain amount, perhaps based on the number of other mercs you have, to keep the other mercs(or the rest of them have a chance of either deleting or going barb). The mercs are happy to be involved in a war where they are winning and none or few of them are dying, but its going to be really expensive to keep them around once they start dying left and right. Could also perhaps keep track of the number of mercs lost in the past(sort of merc weariness), and have that effect merc hiring cost/payment on the loss of a merc. Finally, if you do default on the cost, and have all the mercs leave you, that pushes up the "merc weariness" by quite a bit as well. Since the cost would be partially based on how many mercs you have, this would limit the ability to keep a huge army of mercs around for general use unless you were really rolling in the money.

I would suggest adding this to something like Thunder_gr's and bdmarti's, where everyone has access to them but also allow the guild to reduce the cost, and the rate at which the weariness goes up.
 
Not too sure about everyone having Mercenaries right off the bat. A tech requirement such as Currency is a better bet.

Increasing the cost of Mercenaries based on the number of Mercs in your army, say +10 Gold per existing Merc is easy to understand and calculate. Go9 could give a 20% discount.

There could also be some events that are dependent on the existence of Mercs.
 
You've probably never seen them with the ability to buy mercs. I know I haven't.
 
Well, I know that back when you could build Mercenaries they would span them like crazy. Basium seemed to rarely build anything but mercenaries and culture.
 
Man can't wait! At least I have internet access for the holidays so I will be able to grab it right away this time.
 
I really cannot wait for this. I thank the FFH team for all their great work and for giving me something to do before Christmas:D
 
Hmm, there is some merit to the concept of mercs that take a bit of gold when they kill.

Perhaps the Guild of the nine wonder lets you build strength 5 mercenaries (As normal) in all your cities, for the hammer cost of (Whatever 120 gold gives you hammers) but then steals money from your treasure whenever they win a combat.
 
In lore terms, "120 gold" translates into "a crapload of money." It's about what a large metropolis that contains money making buildings and the holy shrine of the biggest religion in a well populated world makes in whatever's considered a turn. I've always imagined the process of hiring one mercenary unit as saying to a band of mercs, "here's enough gold, up front, to live comfortably on for the rest of your life, go kill my enemies." What merc would refuse that?
 
Maybe -1 gold each time Mercenaries win a battle, and if you have 0 gold they disband. I think adding complex, extra mechanics for 1 unit isn't really a step in the right direction.
 
Bounty Hunter promotion gives +1 gold for killing a unit. So just make a Mercenary promotion that gives -1 gold for killing a unit. Seems easy and reasonable. And if possible, have mercenary units act as animals regarding city unhappiness for the lack of a defender.
 
Great, but there is still an equivalent result: Crazed from mutation or demon posession.

And from touching some murky water and picking up a wicked sword and hearing some scary voices. Seriously, there are way too many ways to become crazed if you ask me. What's really annoying is that some of these will destroy the lair. That's not much fun.


57. Removed the Compassion civic category (all civics removed except for Sacrifice the Weak, which is now a Social Values civic).

Oh, well that's interesting. Is anything being put in their place? I'm a little bothered that many things which have been in need of improvement (guilds, late game buildings, and now compassion civic) are just getting the ax. Certainly makes it easier to reach a state of "done" if you just knock out features, but that kind of makes the world less interesting.
 
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