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Spiritus Imperi

First Lieutenant
21 Badges
Aug 7, 2013
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So in my latest game, I was playing as a Jewish Abyssinia, trying to bring Solomon's line back to Jerusalem. A noble goal, I guess, but I ended up getting curbstomped by the Muslims (I did own the Kingdom of Arabia at one point, but was forced to give it up via jihad). Anyways, I may have had fewer levy troops than the Caliph and his cronies, but for most of the game I was sitting on some fairly fat stacks of cash. One problem, though: there were no mercenaries I could call. I don't mean that they were already being used, I mean that there were just no mercenary companies in the area after I converted to Judaism (I'm assuming that the conversion was the reason I couldn't hire either of the two mercenary companies normally available in the area).

How can this be fixed? Well, I think the best way is to let landless characters do the work for you. After all, they can already go adventuring; why can't a sufficiently martial character set of to become one of the great mercenary captains of his time?

Obviously, there should be a limit, and it should be rather low: if a region has 5 mercenary companies, characters in that area shouldn't be able to found any mercenary bands. But if there are fewer than five, landless characters should be able to create mercenary companies in the same way that they can go adventuring. The companies could be named in various ways, such as "The [culture] Band" or "Company of the [item determined bhy culture/religion]".

If the character's likelihood of founding a mercenary company is governed by the same factors of going adventuring (and the two are mutually exclusive events, as they should be), there is little chance of a mercenary captain gaining a landed title, except by normal methods and player intervention. And as it is, the player can already intervene to vassalize various mercenary companies, so this wouldn't be a new exploit.

Thoughts?
 
Kind of a neat idea, but I'd rather see all merc companies created dynamically like this.
 
I've always fancied the idea of various mercenary companies being capable of gaining various levels of prestige and having that affect their size/strength/cost and what have you. Rather then having the static across the board increases over time having it evolve organically would be interesting and allow for some added RP dynamics. Of course, it would need some special rules wrt the Varangian's, Mamulukes, etc. This is something I'd wish I had the ability to mod, but I lack the skill.

But yeah, imagine having various mercenary groups starting and either growing to prominence or withering and dying. All dependent on the variety and success of contracts and what have you... I dunno, if it's feasible but I'll dream of it anyways.
 
Seems like a good idea to me. More and more formerly random things are becoming organic, like the papacy, so organically created (or destroyed) mercenary groups would be a sensible step forward. It would also be a good opportunity to be balance mercenaries better with the current levy mechanics. And if they were more balanced, it wouldn't be objectionable for a king to retain their own mercenary force (via land or money grants), as with the Varangian Guard.