MasterofDisasta
Prince
- Joined
- Apr 26, 2008
- Messages
- 355
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.