How To Build Mercenary Armies (C3C)

[Cabbit]

I haven't actually done any sort of testing on this yet, but here's my idea on how to create a semi-releastic concept of mercenary employment in Conquests:

The current method for "hiring" mercenaries is simply to allow whatever civ, would be in a position to build merenary units to be able to build said units, usually requiring a particular resource or luxury.

This has it's advantages and disadvantages.

The main advantages is that the AI can deal well with this system.

The main disadvantage is that it defeats the purpose of these being "mercenary" units if the are build by the civ itself.

In general, mercanary units, as compared to domestically trained amries:

1. Cost more money
2. Are less loyal
3. Are not trained and outfitted by the country they are fighting for, but rather offer their services as a ready to fight army.
(This isn't always the case but, I think, would be in most cases where mercenary armies would be used in Civ III)

I can't think of any way to do anything about 2 but my idea would be somewhat better suited to simulate 1 and 3.

My idea is to have certain improvements available that would create mercenary units every couple of terms.

For some intentions a small wonder would be the best choice, and there are various variations on this idea that could work.

By my idea, which is a little bit wierder, is to have a "base improvement", a "mercenary guild" be a prerequisite structure for other structures that would "hire" a mercenary every couple of turns.

These "hiring" structures would be named after the unit they hire and be cheap as far as shields go, maybe five shields.

They would, however, be extremely expensive to maintain, costing something like 15 gold per turn. If such a structure produced a unit every 10 turns, then it would be like paying 150 gold to "hire" that unit.

This has the advantage of somewhat releastically simulating the way hiring mercenaries would cost a lot of gold to hire but would free up your cities to produce either domestic units or improvements.

The big disadvantage to this aproach is I doubt that the AI would handle this well, the AI conceivably would not utilize mercenaries at all, or possible over utilize them, and thus cripple it's economy, the one thing that I most definately doubt it would do is utizlize the Mercenary system intelligently, becuase I don't think the designer ever had this sort of thing in mind when the desighned the AI.

Anyway, maybe somebody might find this aproach useful in a scenario or mod, or possibly just be inspired to come up with a better system. (just adding my 2 cents worth)

 

[Bobby Lee]

sounds like a pretty smart way of doing it...or at least u spent the time to think about it...i wont use it myself i dont think (unless perhaps i make a scenario requireing sumthin like that) but I would be interested in seeing how the AI handles it

 

[Count Red]

It sounds very good to me. In my game, The Modern World, I was just going to give certain Civs the ability to make units called Mercenaries.

 

[ocedius]

Most interesting concept Cabbit. And would you also suggest that these 'merc' units have hidden nationality and something like +1 or +2 hitpoints to simulate a rouge unit that pillages resouces to survive and can't be traced back to the nation that 'hires' it.

Maybe with a little tweaking the AI will handle them intellegently, then again may be not. Its one of those trial and error things that'l need to be done.

 

[embryodead]

I have it in WH-Mod, but I strongly advice not to have 10 turns intervals... it won't be worth waiting. The amount of money doesn't seem to be appriopriate too, though it depends how strong you want mercs to be. I made them just a little better than medieval infantry of that time, 9.5.1 vs. 8.5.1. As for the names, I use Guild Charters. These are great wonders, that anyone can build. If a faction gets Fighter's Guild Charter, it has "exclusive access" to mercs from that guild. ps. I don't think usual mercs should have hidden nationaly, these weren't hidden assasins, just hired part of normal armies.

 

[Red Boxer]

As a way of portraying disloyalty the building could also make people unhappy.

 

[embryodead]

BTW another way, less interesting is to simply have expensive mercenary replacement if you don't have access to resources ie.
Infantry - 80 shields, req.: Iron
Mercenary infantry - same stats, 120 shields, upgrades to Infantry

and there's also Neomega's idea of jumping mercenary resources (with high appearace/disaparrance rate)

 

[mrtn]

In my mod I'll have gold and silver as luxuries, and will have mercs requiring these, just as in the first idea. They'll also be more expensive.

 

[tjedge1]

I don't see how it wouldn't work for the AI. If the wonder builds too many units for the AI to support they would do what they do with their own units and disband some. Am I correct on this?

I hope so I was planning on doing this in my mod.

 

[Cabbit]

My idea was to have city improvements, not wonders, and expensive city improvements at that... the rational being that being dependant on Mercanaries can cripple a state financially, while the advantage being that they aren't really your troops... so maybe these improvements could curb war-weariness?

Anyways I see the advantage as being you can still get units even if you want your cities to be producing something else...

The wonder idea is good if you just want a civ to have limited access to a particular mercenary unit, say the Varangien Guard for Byzantium in a Mideaval Scenario... but if you actually want to simulate a country hiring mostly mercenaries you would need to have more than one improvement producing them...

The down-side here is even though I bet the AI can handle have an over-ubandance of units I suspect it isn't as smart about improvements (It might start selling temples, marketplaces, before it sells the mercenary improvements)

I really out to try the idea out, but I've just started my fall semester of college and on the side want to find time to play Embryodeads war hammer mod through agian.