Post mercenary units in strategy games, they can be your favorite if you want.

>>2032043 (OP)
>post mercenaries
>for free
Heh, not going to happen

>>2032043 (OP)
>ILLIRIAN MERCENARIES!!

>>2032043 (OP)
>casually revolutionizes cavalry warfare in europe
nothing personnel, kniggits

I don't think I ever understood mercs in Total War games.
As far as I'm aware historically the point is
>not my shit to deal with
>ready to go
>can be dropped like a hat
but Total War is entirely about cheap permanent armies with the infrastructure to make strong units.

I like how Medieval II had crusader mercenaries early game. Shame they dry up.

>>2033196
The point is that same as it was historically. You hire mercs when your armies need more units ASAP and it'll take too long to get regular reinforcements.

>solves warfare

>>2033444
why did the cretins not simply conquer the world?

>>2033511
Too busy enjoying free titties and jumping over cows.

>>2033196
The idea (to me at least) was to get a bunch of decent yet disposable troops either early or quickly, for example in TW Medieval 2 i got sieged by 2 French Armies while my garrison was shit and was somehow able to beat them both back with some mercenaries i hired on the spot.

The Band of the Hippo niggas and the Finnish Band snowniggas won me so many early wars in Crusader Kings 2.

>>2034100
What about the steppenigger mercenaries that just instantly add 1500 horse archers to your army while everyone else is still running armies of 60-70% light inf

>>2032054
WUZ

>>2033196
I think mercs as a distinct unit type made sense in older games where units didn't replenish on their own and there was no take on captives button and with high infrasture requirements for good units, limited recruitment slots and/or pool. Because there was a reason to merge units and advantage in quickly filing slots.

>>2033196
Mercanaries are the way to go in M2TW.

Mercanary Spearmen = Armoured Sergeants with 19% higher upkeep
Mercenary Crossbowmen = Crossbowmen with 44% higher upkeep and 33% higher attack range

But since you can higher them directly before combat they tend to be cheaper then the native troops. Also it takes a long time to build your castles up until you can recruit Armoured Sergeants and Crossbowmen. Meanwhile you can hire those mercs on turn 1 and they are considerable stronger and more cost efficient than stuff like Sergeant Spearmen and Peasant Crossbowmen even with the increased upkeep. By mass hiring mercs at the start you can wipe out another player within the first 10 turns. It's a better option then going after rebel villages.

>>2033444
>extra range
>extra damage
>fairly cheap
best mercs, also merc armies are fun

>>2034144
so you say that they should have higher upkeep?

>>2034200
Making them cheap to hire but with a high upkeep cost makes a lot of sense to me. Thematically, it represents not having to spend anything on training or equipping them, but having to pay them higher wages. Mechanically, it encourages hiring them for specific purposes and not keeping them around for longer than you need them.

>>2034211
Mercenaries were expensive to hire in the middle ages though. They came with all their own high tier kit and were professional soldiers during a time there weren't many. In most cases, levied soldiers had to bring their own equipment, and it's not like they spent weeks in a boot camp right before being deployed. The levied freemen in an army would have some level of training that was legally mandated. But their main occupation was still a civilian one. They could be compared to a modern reservist in that sense. The cost of levying them was administrative (recruiters), cost to tax base and labor force (taking men out of the economy) and cost of transportation to the war. But the levies would come with non-standardized equipment and varied levels of training, making them overall poorer soldiers than professional mercenaries. Whereas mercenaries were veteran fighters to wanted to fight in wars for a living. They were scarce and leveraged the demand for their services with high retainer and stipend costs. They should be more expensive to hire and maintain, but they should also mog most regular units (noble units being the exception).

>>2034108
Carthaginians?

>>2034108
>not cavalry
What were they fucking thinking?

>>2034199
What mod are you using?

>>2036560
my own based on bug fixer, mostly reskins with some extra changes
its essentially a vanilla+

>>2033196
medieval 2 does mercenaries decently
for a long time they are far superior to generic units and much more available
if anything mercenaries should have been even stronger

>>2033518
>Too busy enjoying free titties
Are we talking about Cretins?
The ones who bugger little boys?
Those Cretins?

>>2034438
Nobody will use mercenaries then. His suggestion is based off considerations for the player, playing a game.

>>2037115
Yes they would. If professional soldiers were harder to acquire, and they are already decently difficult, then using mercenaries would be a massive force multiplier in the early game, as it should be. Outside of limited numbers of knights, which should cost even more than mercenaries, mercenaries should be your only real option for good soldiers until the mid game.
Overall, I would say that medieval 2 hits a decent balance between this and gameplay but it would stand to be exacerbated. A unit of armoured spearmen should crush 3x their number in rabble and they often can in m2.

>>2037115
Do you avoid recruiting the best and most expensive troops now? If mercs of equal stats were cheaper to recruit then you'd barely use faction troops at all. Even with higher upkeep cost, you'd still get several turns to use them before the cost is equalized. That would be equally as game breaking by the same logic in addition to inverting historical reality.

>>2037122
The moment you said 'if' was the moment I stopped listening to you.

>>2036956
could you upload it somewhere?

>>2037153
well yes but its not really finished and you should use alx exe to play it also I am not sure what changes are there and I would probably need upload whole game
I guess having somebody playing it would be nice tho

What was the life expectancy for a merc back in the day, anyways? If you lose one battle aren't you fucked?

>>2037340
Well yeah mostly but "back then" imo that applied to everyone who lost a battle, Mercenaries were usually drawn from people already in armies who decided to not go back to their normal lives and earn way more living as a professional soldier.

>>2037340
Didn't medieval battles have fairly low losses in general? With losing a third of your force after losing a battle being considered high losses.

>>2037340
>If you lose one battle aren't you fucked?
if you didn't get killed in the battle or trampled in the rout you'd just switch sides to whoever beat your employer

>>2037340
Death is part of a mercenary's job description

>>2037340
If you don't think you're going to win, you run away. That decision can be made before or during the battle.

love me Swabian Swordsmen

>>2037876
For the most part yes, certainly by modern standards. Most commanders avoided pitched battles unless they were 100% sure of the win. There was lots of skirmishing, raiding, and besieging, but surprisingly few full-scale engagements.
Battles like Agincourt were notable largely because of how different they were from the norm.

>>2037340
Probably better than the average levied commoner. The mercenaries were their captain's assets, each with gear, experience, and training that was not easy to come by. This made their lives worth inherently more than a levied commoner. If the men got destroyed then their captain would lose his source of income, so he would be selective in what contracts he takes and how he uses the men.
Plus there was little reason to massacre mercenaries in battle. Doing so would earn that king a bad reputation among mercenaries and lose him access to their services. It's kind of like how nobility was more often captured than executed. Mercenary lives were simply worth more because they could be ransomed for their inherent values, but most commoner lives could not and were therefore worth less. They were not worth as much as nobility because they had no part in dynastic succession, but they were certainly worth more than a commoner subject who was simply ordered to show up to a war. So in addition to having better survivability due to gear and training, they would also be executed much less frequently. Source: I made it up but I choose to think true.

>>2037156
It looks good anon

>>2032043 (OP)
MISTOPHOROI TOXOTAI KRETIKOI

>>2037340
It's not like as if anybody back then bothered making a real distinction between mercenary and non-mercenary troops. Once a feudal host transitioned to being paid with coin instead of serving as an obligation (and this could happen within the same campaign or even exist simultaneously at an individual or group level) they counted as mercenaries. You also have to consider that while it was a risky job there were many careerist mercenaries so it clearly wasn't a guaranteed suicide. Survival in a loss was maximised on whether you was on a horse (and hence could run away) and whether you was obviously rich enough to be worth ransoming (depending on time period). On a fundamental level, within the time period of a typical Medieval Total War game, there were few standing armies and the pure feudal levy (meaning they weren't paid) didn't exist any more and all soldiers had to be paid.

>>2033196
in the early tws the mercs were great if you wanted to not touch your pop growth and save it for later when you could make really professional units.
In m2tw for example I would run with nearly all merc army around a 9 stack or 10 stack and just go conquering knowing that my town pops were going up much quicker and not being depleted by war. And if I lost the whole army which never happened I would still be able to hire my actual units. WIN WIN.
Plus I like playing with mercs it gives the game more diversity in looks and it give me better rp flavour.

>>2034100
in ck2 a good op way of expanding in the mid stage when you got a good income base is to hire mercs and keep them near the border with the enemy and declare war, while the enemy is gathering their levies you can blitzkrieg their disorganized stacks of 500 to 100 men and destroy their army before they can group up.

>>2037340
Only like 10 percent of the people in a battle actually died.
Mercs made a fuck ton of money and free companies were around for a very long time so their life expectancy must have been pretty high all things considered.

>>2038712
all stolen assets

>>2039680
Why did CA remove units being disorganizaed and may charge without orders?

>>2039682
Because players are brainlets.

>>2033518
Those were Minoans. They got btfo and replaced by Mycenaeans long before RTW's start date.

Love these little tree shredders like you wouldn't believe.

>>2039682
MPfags cried about it

>takes your cargo
>refuses to elaborate
>leaves

ALLA BATTAGLIA
STO PER FARLO
SI

>>2041466
I wish you could BE theae guys, i mean there are quests to take down caravans, and there are quests to intercept bandits treasure if i remember, but i wouldnt mind one where i ambush another merc company carrying cargo

>>2044656
I am still salty there are no southern mercs despite banners existing.

>>2040007
Minoans were ancestors of the Cretans, they weren't wiped out.

>>2037122
>If professional soldiers were harder to acquire
>>2037123
>Do you avoid recruiting the best and most expensive troops now? If mercs of equal stats were cheaper to recruit then you'd barely use faction troops at all.
Reading down the chain I'm not sure what anons are arguing but I'm definitely confused by this part.
Mercs are harder to acquire in game because you need to step outside your city, be in the correct region, and then need to deal with the fact there is a limited number of mercs to hire with unexplained mechanics as to when and how they come back.
If you made mercs 100% superior, you'd still be using your faction soldiers.

>>2037340
>go to pre-modern times
>son, you can stay on the farm, marry your cousin, earn no money, give half your crops away to the landowner, and die by 30 with at most a 5 year old daughter to inherit a tenancy because all 14 of your other children, and wife, and then your second wife, died
>or you can find glory in the current war, travel to distant lands, get paid money to steal crops and rape women, never see an actual battle, and die by 22 shitting out your guts because sanitation, medicine and common sense were lost with the library of alexandria or were never invented and we don't know if they ever will

>>2049059
>unexplained mechanics as to when and how they come back
It's well explained. There are 30 mercenary pools that are each shared between 1-7 regions. For most mercenaries a random number between 0.08-0.25 gets added their available numbers each turn so you get a new full merc on average every 6 turns. That is for each unit type and each pool.

>>2032043 (OP)
I like his hat

>>2049059
>>go to pre-modern times
>>son, you can stay on the farm, marry your cousin, earn no money, give half your crops away to the landowner, and die by 30 with at most a 5 year old daughter to inherit a tenancy because all 14 of your other children, and wife, and then your second wife, died
>>or you can find glory in the current war, travel to distant lands, get paid money to steal crops and rape women, never see an actual battle, and die by 22 shitting out your guts because sanitation, medicine and common sense were lost with the library of alexandria or were never invented and we don't know if they ever will
all what you wrote is enlightenment period propaganda.
idk how somebody who is even beginner level interested into history can believe so many false theories. My only theory on the reason why you are like this is that you are a homosexual american.

>>2055570
Nta yeah most of it is stereotypical retarded 18th-19th century pretentious thinoint but the point still sort of stands, i honestly think they pretty much had the same mindset as modern mercenaries or mercenaries from the 60s, the ones who go merc are the ones who just sort of prefer the life or something. Considering a lot of guys who fought in some of the French-English wars went merc in Italy.

>>2051297
These guys are a godsend if you side with the Cossacks

>>2055792
You couldn't just decide to become a mercenary in the middle ages, though. A company wouldn't hire you unless you had high tier kit and some fighting experience. These were relatively well off commoner men, sons of successful merchants and such.

>>2058377
Yeah

>>2055570
>son go to modern times
>son, you can stay in this apartment paying rent forever, marry nobody. Earn no money, give all your prosperity away to the state and die by 40 to cancer with at most a 5 year old cat to carry on your will.
It just seems silly at this point, trying to get people to hate on the old times.

>>2032043 (OP)
Cav mercs are usually good investment. My fave is pic rel