Mercenaries and the Guild of the Nine

[redazncommieDXP]

I find the Guild of the Nine a bit overpowered, and would like to increase the buying price of mercenaries. How can I do so?

[MagisterCultuum]

Just open to C:\Program Files (x86)\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Fall from Heaven 2\Assets\XML\Units\CIV4SpellInfos.xml, scroll down to the SPELL_RECRUIT_MERCENARY spell, and increase the number in the <iCost> tag from 180 to whatever you want.

(Personally, I prefer to make the Guild of the nine mercenaries work like that from Mangadine's Hire Units spell, which is a bit more complicated as it involves triggering events.)


Edit: of course, if you are not using Windows 7 ignore that " (x86)" part. If you are, you'll need to give yourself special permissions to edit things in the mods folder.

[redazncommieDXP]

Awesome. Thank you.

[Tasunke]

I can't wait till I get Windows 7 64-bit

currently im using 32-bit Windows XP ... with only 2 gigs of RAM

[MagisterCultuum]

Originally Posted by Tasunke

I can't wait till I get Windows 7 64-bit

currently im using 32-bit Windows XP ... with only 2 gigs of RAM

I was in your position a week ago. Worse probably, as my old laptop was overheating a lot, its touch-pad and keyboard were starting to be unreliable, its battery lasted only 3 minutes, its CD drive sounded like a lawnmower, and most obviously its screen had about 85 1-pixel wide lines of random colors that would not go away.

I'm now using the laptop I got as a Christmas present (the only one I'm getting from my parents, except maybe some socks). I went ahead and got it early (last Wednesday) because it was a clearance item with only 12 left. (I went back yesterday with gift cards I got at my half-brothers' Christmas party and got a chill pad for it, and noticed that this model had sold out.) This HP Pavilion dv6-2088dx was the only model BestBuy was selling that came with 8GB of RAM. I got it for $594.95 (reduced from $664.95 when I looked the day before and from $699.99 on Black Friday), after seeing that the HP website said a laptop with these stats should cost a little over $1,300. (It said the upgrade to 8GB of RAM alone should cost $400.) My mom had bought $600 in gift cards (because she got $10 back for each $100) and had a $15 coupon, so when I picked it up I actually only payed $16.05, including sales tax. (I was a little surprised that the salesman on the day I bought pretty much ignored me, and did not try to sell a warranty.) The salesman I spoke to the day before was much more knowledgeable and helpful.)

[Tasunke]

yea ... im getting a quad-core desktop CPU with a terabyte bootable hard-drive, and I already have another 500 gig extra hard-drive im gonna add to it. And it already comes with 64-bit Windows 7 ... the only thing it doesn't have that I might want is an XP emulator ... although not sure how reliable an XP emulator would be (especially since it would entail upgrading to a "premium" or "professional" version of Windows 7 ... which would probably be a whole lot of crap I don't need) .... luckily, when I do finally get this baby, geeksquad will take 4 hours to optimize it and such ... so that all I will need to do is immediately start re-downloading games from Impulse xD

It'll also have 8 gigs of ram, I might add more later.

[Llewen]

I realize that this is a bit of a necro post, but I also find the Guild of the Nine to be more than a little op. I think perhaps there should be a limit to the number of mercenaries you can hire per turn. Perhaps two would be a good number. That would still make the Guild plenty powerful.

[algonacy]

I used to think it was a little OP until just yesterday. Took a city from Mahala and had about 8 injured units sitting in it after capture. Bought 4 mercenaries to protect it until my units healed. Mahala had a stack of Sons on the way already so they were able to reach city that same turn and re-attack their former city. My 4 mercenaries each lost easily against the Sons (not one victory among them) and my 8 injured units were destroyed (with a few victories, but not enough). So... the short of it is, mercenaries with the lack of initial promotion really lose a lot of their strength. They are only good for me so that I can pull an archer from the backline and replace him with a mercenary to keep the city happy. After a few promotions they are okay I guess.

[Humakty]

I find the power of the Guild to be very situational. If you're not filthy rich, it's utterly useless.

I mean, gold as a lot more use than just pulling out crappy units (apart if you're Hippus).

[Llewen]

If you are in a war of conquest, and have the technological advantage, and lots of gold, they make you completely unstoppable. I roll into a city with my stack of units, buy four mercenaries, or as many as I feel I need to hold the city, and move on to the next city. I don't have to worry about lugging garrison units around with me all over the map.

I also don't find them weak. They can use iron and mithril weapons and aren't that much weaker than most leader's champion units, which makes them almost as strong as the most advanced melee unit that forms the base for most armies in the game. They certainly aren't storm troop quality, but they are more than enough to hold a city in most situations, and make excellent cannon fodder.

[aimlessgun]

They're absolutely ridiculous as Hippus also.

If your economy is the frontrunner in the game and you can give em Mithril weps it's also pretty out of control. Set your science to 0% for a bit and bam, instant army. Though really there are a lot of crazy good wonders in FFH.

[a_civilian]

Keep in mind you can also spam warriors and upgrade them and this will generally give you a significantly better conversion of gold to strength at minimal hammer cost, especially if you have apprenticeship or the like. The main advantage of mercenaries is that you can get them instantly.

(I'm referring to normal speed. If the cost to hire a mercenary doesn't scale with game speed, then mercenaries become a much better deal at slower game speeds.)

[Kamen Rider]

Originally Posted by Humakty

I find the power of the Guild to be very situational. If you're not filthy rich, it's utterly useless.

I mean, gold as a lot more use than just pulling out crappy units (apart if you're Hippus).

Moneyslapping is always awesome. It's like you can devote yourself to getting rich and just buy off an entire army at war time. Waaaaiit.

But then, there's Slave trading Doviello. Buying slaves and upgrade them to battlemasters and all. Not to mention upgrading slaves on the heat of battle with slavery on.

[Morphem01]

Originally Posted by MagisterCultuum

Just open to C:\Program Files (x86)\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Fall from Heaven 2\Assets\XML\Units\CIV4SpellInfos.xml, scroll down to the SPELL_RECRUIT_MERCENARY spell, and increase the number in the <iCost> tag from 180 to whatever you want.

(Personally, I prefer to make the Guild of the nine mercenaries work like that from Mangadine's Hire Units spell, which is a bit more complicated as it involves triggering events.)


Edit: of course, if you are not using Windows 7 ignore that " (x86)" part. If you are, you'll need to give yourself special permissions to edit things in the mods folder.

(late) Thanks for this, been looking for a long time to solve this.

I too think the Guild of Nine is way overpowered